The Entry Of Government Project Into Villages And Corruption Of Village Cadres

This paper describes in detail the process of projects entering the case village and the corrupt behavior of the village cadres.In a village located in the urban-rural junction,the village cadres draw a lot of illegitimate interests under the bandage of a large amount of national resources and commercial capital.Village cadres and township cadres often form a collusion of interests,especially in villages where the superior level of government focuses on creating highlights of political achievements.For some deviant behaviors of village cadres,township cadres usually choose to ignore or merge with them.For remote mountain villages far away from the county,with poor economic foundation and inconvenient transportation,the project is less likely to benefit these villages.The project resources available in these poor areas are far less than those with relatively good economic bases,but the poor areas do receive inclusive project resources,such as rural compulsory education projects,five-guarantee households,dilapidated house renovation and other rural poverty alleviation projects.In recent years,village cadres' corruption problems occur frequently in the field of poverty alleviation.In general,the development of these villages has received little attention from higher authorities.Under the political background of China's pressure-type system and promotion incentive for officials,local governments devote almost all their energy to attracting investment and creating political highlights,they pour a large amount of resources and attention into the project central village,but pay little attention to the development of poor villages.Township governments have increasingly become"suspended governments"and the supervision and restrictions from higher levels of government for village cadres have losend,especially after the reform of taxes and fees.In addition,before the tax and fee reform,the supply of public goods was self-raised by the village,any collective expenditure in the village was related to the vital interests of the villagers,so villagers had high enthusiasm to supervise village cadres.However,after completely abolished the agricultural tax in 2004,the state began to import a large amount of resources into the rural areas through the project system.The source of funds was changed from the extraction of villagers to the top-down transfer payment,villagers no longer need to hand over their property to the village collective,they pay less attention to collective affairs,thus reducing the supervision and restraint on the behavior of village cadres.At the same time,the villagers have no information on the total amount of project funds,what projects,where to use them and how to use them.Under these circumstances,villager's autonomy evolved into village cadre autonomy.The project system therefore not only provides a direct material source for corruption of village cadres as a governance resource,but also serves as a governance system that changes the relationships between village cadres and villagers on the one hand and between village cadres and township governments(either the village interest community or the suspended government which is increasingly divorced from the village)on the other.Thus,the internal and external supervision of the village over its cadres become unsustainable,and the behavior of village cadres can not be effectively monitored,which provides a good opportunity for their corrupt behavior to occur.The more abundant the project resources are,the more serious the corruption becomes.