Dear Teacher Zhang, Teacher Xu, colleagues, online and offline students, good afternoon! I just heard Teacher Lang Youxing say that we are mainly here to discuss Mr. Zhang Hou'an's academic thoughts today, so I also want to find some clues to establish a certain relationship with Teacher Zhang. For a long time, Teacher Zhang was mainly a legend for me, because I established a real academic relationship with Huashi, and I followed Professor Xu as a postdoctoral fellow from 2011 to 2014. Before that, since 2005, I was preparing to do a doctoral dissertation, and my doctoral dissertation was on village politics, so I began to read the relevant works of scholars on the Side of the Chinese Master, including several books by Teacher Zhang. Moving forward, in 1998, when I was a sophomore in college, we organized a village-level social practice team in the field of democracy, and some members of the detachment also made a special trip to Huashi to visit Teacher Xu, when Teacher Xu gave us a lot of guidance, and also sent us a copy of "Chinese Rural Villagers' Autonomy" that had just been published. In the same issue, There is an article by Mr. Zhang Hou'an on the "village governance" experiment in Shuiyue'an Village. Therefore, I also feel that there is a certain connection with the tradition of "theoretical farming" of Central China Normal University. Here, first of all, I would like to express my respect and blessings to Teacher Zhang.
In the traditional rural grassroots governance model, Mr. Huang Zongzhi talked about the three dimensions, the first is semi-formal administration, the second is the third field, and the third is centralized simple governance. At that time, the administration was the majority of the members of this, there was no formal official status, with these people to do things, these people are from the rural grassroots society, the state uses the relevant rules of the rural grassroots to govern the society, where there is a constructive space for interaction between the state and society, as the space behind is getting smaller and smaller, more and more compressed, rural governance is becoming more and more formalized. The third is the simple governance of centralized power, the entire power of the countryside and the state is still centralized to the central government, and the integration relationship between the countryside and the whole country is like this, but after all, it was to deal with disputes and cooperation at that time, or to use a relatively simplified way to develop. Therefore, the social basis for the operation of centralized and simple governance was a set of mechanisms of the economy and society itself at that time, and after this mechanism was impacted, the intervention of the entire state may change. The picture of rural grassroots governance changes is roughly in these periods, the early years of the Qing Dynasty to the middle and late period is basically "centralized simple governance", to the Republic of China period is Du Zanqi's research proposed "state power construction within the volume", that is, at this time the country is going down, but it is not very ideal, did not form a very effective state over the rural grassroots society and the establishment of public rules. In the Mao Zedong era, it is more special, the Mao Zedong era is through the political universality of the restrictions, and then add political mobilization, on the basis of a strong control to guide the countryside, the transformation of the countryside, but even in this period there are actually some fundamentals still unchanged, that is, the countryside is very familiar to everyone, because at that time the population flow is too weak, the relationship between villagers is still a traditional relationship, the natural village as a unit of action still has a certain influence to some extent. By the 1980s, the formal state power had receded to the township level, and villagers had exercised villagers' autonomy and revitalized the rural society. That is to say, the model of "township government and village governance" proposed by Mr. Zhang Hou'an can basically be said to return to "centralized and simple governance" in a sense, at least partially close. Under this framework and background, in the mid-to-early 1980s until the tax reform, it should be said that villagers' autonomy has been vigorously promoted, but the trend of rural administrativeization has become stronger and stronger, and the problems of the villages themselves are also increasing, and many governance tasks at that time still have to rely on the expansion of township administrative power to the villages.
After the tax reform, some changes have taken place, some scholars have found that the formalization of village-level organizations, some village cadres take fixed salaries like civil servants and commute to work on time, and the interaction between the state and farmers has changed, and the state has changed from drawing resources to going to the countryside and increasing public services. At the beginning of the rural governance after the tax and fee reform, there was a certain kind of "regime suspension", the national capacity weakened, and the grass-roots penetration capacity was insufficient, but soon we jumped this stage. After the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the new comprehensive intervention with political parties as the main leading force, including from "precise poverty alleviation" to the current rural revitalization, the whole country is fully entered. Roughly such a vein, this model of high centralization and high grassroots penetration has been formed. In this model, it is very clear, the first is the comprehensive sinking of the center of gravity of governance, the second is the comprehensive extension of the political party system in the grass-roots society, and now everything is emphasized to lead the party building, and the entire rural governance is driven by the party organization, which is a big change at the grass-roots level. The third is the rule to go to the countryside. The rules, including party discipline and party rules, have gone down, and there are particularly many inspections and inspections. The fourth is the all-round sinking of ideas, symbols and ideologies. And the fifth, is the governance means and governance technology this piece is more and more sophisticated, very emphasis on the use of information and technology, which is specific to the application of human information, the latter platform is also very developed. I think that in general, the development of monitoring and management technology in the whole countryside was difficult to imagine before, and the overall trend is that the space for social autonomy is getting smaller and smaller, but there are still some, after all, to carry out work in the countryside, it is still necessary to use the set of acquaintance relationships and local knowledge. In the third field, there is also a structural transformation, that is, there are changes in the balance of forces and patterns, and now the whole countryside is increasingly forming a dependency relationship with the party and government system, rather than the interaction of relative balance as before, and the current rural autonomy is relatively weak, because it is strongly dependent on the country, the state is strong in helping the countryside, giving more resources, and the right to speak is also strong, which is this trend.
Finally, I would like to add that we should go a little farther and deeper in academic research, so that we can make some "harsh" reflections, the first is that the current highly centralized and highly grassroots penetration model, is there still some governance risk? In terms of its sustainability, cost consumption and effectiveness, it also includes whether it has really been fully expressed by the peasants, whether it has fully communicated with them and obtained their consent, or whether the party and the government have replaced them to make decisions. These questions are both theoretically and practically reflective. Therefore, I think that after our rural areas really realize rural revitalization, they should still have a stable degree of autonomy. The second is the current sinking model, which may obscure or inhibit the autonomy of the countryside and farmers, and cause the peasants to always distrust the local and grass-roots levels but trust the central government, and this model cannot be fundamentally changed. Therefore, the last sentence summarizes that in the future, it is necessary to carefully position the role and role of "centralized simple governance" in rural grassroots governance. The framework of high centralization and high grassroots penetration is the premise, but the existence of "centralized and simple governance" as a supplementary existence, proper consideration and arrangement, may still be beneficial to the long-term governance of the rural grassroots. That concludes my remarks. Thank you!
(The author is a professor and vice dean of the School of Politics and Public Administration of Wuhan University, a doctoral supervisor of Chinese and foreign political systems, a member of the Academic Committee of Wuhan University, and the executive director of the Local Political Research Center; rural discoveries are transferred from: Field Politics WeChat public account)
