Chinese Journal of Sociology

Previous Articles     Next Articles

The Hierarchy of Profit Division and Grassroots Governance Involution: The Logic of Rural Governance under the Background of the Resource Input

  

  1. Chen Feng， Collaborative Innovation Center of Beijing SocietyBuilding & Social Governance，School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing University of Technology
  • Online:2015-05-20 Published:2015-05-20
  • Contact: Chen Feng, Collaborative Innovation Center of Beijing SocietyBuilding & Social Governance，School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing University of Technology E-mail: chenfeng_0110@163.com
  • Supported by:
    This research is supported by the Social Science Found Major Program of Beijing（14SHC025）, the Social Science Found Program of Beijing（14SHC025）, the Humanities and Social Science Fund Program of Beijing University of Technology（X5014021201301）.

PDF

1030

Cited

22

Abstract: Since the launch of the reform of taxes and fees in 2002, the central government has issued a series of favorable policies for farmers and took a lot of resources to the countryside. Industry started to support agriculture. It brings new opportunity for rural development and rural governance, which gains support of the broad masses of farmers. In a way, it also helps consolidate the ruling foundation of Chinese Communist Party, and enhance the legitimacy of the state power. However, the political efficiency of the reform of the agricultural taxes and fees has quickly reduced, and the resource input to the countryside did not achieve the desired effect. On the one hand, grassroots organizations cannot undertake topdown inputted resources effectively，and connect scattered farmers. On the other hand, the noncooperation between officials and the farmers often ended up with predicament of governance of the “nail house” in the construction of the project. Under this background, grassroots organizations mainly present two basic forms of governance. Some village cadres were afraid of “accident” and did things passively so much so that some even avoided the input of resources for the village construction. Other villages mainly were ruled by the rich and the grey black forces. They actively fight for resources and projects, and take a variety of means to solve the “nail households”, and gain some benefits from the project or political capital for the development of their individual economy. Both governance forms have eroded the national resources and local public resources, and the authority and legitimacy of grassroots organizations further decline. On the resources input chain, a profit division hierarchy has been formed among people involved in power rentseeking, local social forces of the rich and the grey black forces, opportunistic and interestoriented farmers and so on. Ordinary people should have been the biggest beneficiaries of the input resources, but the hierarchal profit division impairs the interests of the broad masses of farmers. But they are reluctant to protest as the resources are mainly input from the above, not extracted from them. Grassroots governance is suffering from involution. Fundamentally, it is resulted from the tension between the oppressive system and effective governance, and it happens during the transformation of the rural societies from under integrity governance to under technology governance. However, the counterbalance relations of interests and responsibility among the state, grassroots organizations and farmers produce fracture, and it is difficult for the input resources to produce maximum effectiveness and improve the condition of the rural governance. On the contrary, the input resources help nourish a profitsharing group and the hierarchal profit division of the grassroots society has put rural governance into a new dilemma.

Key words: the order of profit division , involution , rural governance power ,  resources , technology governance