Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China 9004448276, 9789004448278

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Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China
 9004448276, 9789004448278

Table of contents :
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
Series Editor’s Note
Preface
1
2
3
Part 1 Who Can Be a Village Cadre? The Capable, the Ruthless, or the Rich?
Chapter 1 Plutocratic Village Governance and Openness in Village Politics
1
2
3
Chapter 2 The Wealthy as Representatives of the People
Chapter 3 Plutocratic Village Governance in Central Shandong Province
1
2
3
Chapter 4 Vote-Buying in Developed Areas
1 A Village Cadre Worth 10 Million Yuan
1.1 The 2008 Villagers’ Committee Election: A Case in Luge Village
1.2 The 2011 Villagers’ Committee Election
1.3 The 2011 Village Party Branch Elections
1.4 Village Representative Elections
2 The Motivation for Vote-Buying
2.1
2.2
2.3
3 A Consensus on Plutocratic Village Governance
4 Villages Dominated by Wealth and Power
Chapter 5 How the Village Cadres of Southern Jiangsu Province Became Mobile
1
2
3
4
Chapter 6 Plutocratic Village Governance in Mei County, Shaanxi Province
1
2
2.1 The Gujiabao Village (古家堡村) Party Branch Secretary
2.2 The Gucheng Village (古城村) Party Branch Secretary
2.3 The Hengqu Village Party Branch Secretary
2.4 The Fengchi Village (凤池村) Party Branch Secretary
2.5 The Sunjiayuan Village (孙家园村) Party Branch Secretary
2.6 The Shimali Village (石马李村) Party Branch Secretary
3
4
5
6
Chapter 7 The Income of Village Cadres in Southern Jiangxi Province
1
2
3
Chapter 8 The Salary and Professionalization of Village Cadres
1
2
3
4
5
Chapter 9 Village Doctors, Village Teachers, and Village Governance
1
2
3
4
Chapter 10 People with Few Family Obligations Become the Mainstay of Village Governance in the Central and Western Regions
1
2
3
4
5
6
Chapter 11 The Evolution of Village Cadres in Agricultural Areas
1
2
3
4
Part 2 Village Politics and Peasant Participation
Chapter 12 Uncivil People
1
2
3
4
5
Chapter 13 Why Are There Trouble-Makers?
1
2
3
4
Chapter 14 Being Reasonable and Being Ruthless
1
2
3
Chapter 15 Conflicts Unavoidable in Maintaining Stability
1
2
3
Chapter 16 Farmland Reallocation and Good Village Governance in Central Shandong Province
1
2
3
Chapter 17 Convening a Peasants’ Assembly to Reach Consensus
1
2
3
Part 3 State Resources to the Countryside and Peasant Participation
Chapter 18 Offering Job Opportunities Instead of Sheer Relief
Chapter 19 Peasant Participation in Rural Land Consolidation Projects
1
2
3
Chapter 20 Emphasis on Peasants’ Participation in the Transfer Payment Process
Chapter 21 How Financial Resources Should Be Allocated to Villages
1
2
3
Chapter 22 The Integration of Funds in the Villages of Qingyuan City
Chapter 23 Village Debt: An Ulcer on Village Governance
1
2
3
4
Chapter 24 The Failure of Transfer Payments to Generate Vitality in Hollow-Shell Villages
Part 4 Exploring the Village Governance System
Chapter 25 The Paradox between Small Government and Convenient Service Platforms
1
2
3
4
Chapter 26 Low Probability Events and Dilemmas of Grassroots Governance
1
2
3
4
5
6
Chapter 27 The More Interests Are Involved, the More Complicated the Rural Governance System
1
2
3
4
Chapter 28 Supervision Mechanisms in the Grassroots Governance of Central Western Villages
1
2
3
4
5
6
Chapter 29 The Secret of Building Happy Villages
1
2
Chapter 30 The Necessity of Low-Cost Grassroots Governance
1
2
3
Chapter 31 Village Governance by the Capable in Southern Jiangsu Province and Types of Chinese Village Governance
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Chapter 32 Village Governance in Shanghai: An Outlier Village Type
1
2
3
4
5
5.1 Village Governance Centered on the Allocation of Financial Resources
5.2 Why There Is No Vote-Buying in Shanghai’s Villages
5.3 Village Cadre as a Profession
6
Part 5 The Social Foundation of Village Governance: Class, Faction, and Clan
Chapter 33 How Peasant Differentiation Affects Village Governance
1
2
3
Chapter 34 From the Rural Community of Interests to Profit-Sharing Order
1
2
3
4
Chapter 35 Land Expropriation and Demolition Breed Factional Politics
Chapter 36 The Unaffordability of Village Governance for Poor Village Collectives
1
2
3
Chapter 37 Clan Power and Village Governance in Southern Jiangxi Province
1 Family Planning in Southern Jiangxi Province
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
2 Peasant Burden and Cadre-masses Relationship in Southern Jiangxi
2.1
2.2
2.3
Chapter 38 The Downward Shift of Villagers’ Autonomy in Qingyuan Village
1
2
3
Chapter 39 Small Kinship Groups and Village Politics in Central Shandong Province
1
2
3
Part 6 The Drivers of Village Governance
Chapter 40 The Need for More Varied Modes of Village Governance in China
1
2
Chapter 41 Endogenous and Exogenous: The Driving Forces in Two Types of Village Governance
1
2
3
4
Chapter 42 Superior and Subordinate: The Asymmetrical Distribution of Responsibility, Power, and Benefits
1
2
Chapter 43 Grassroots Innovation Created the Chinese Miracle
1
2
3
Index

Citation preview

Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China

The Social Sciences of Practice the social history and sociology of practice

Series Editor Philip C.C. Huang (University of California, Los Angeles and Renmin University of China)

volume 7

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​ssop

Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China By

He Xuefeng

Translated by

Yuan Jingyan

LEIDEN | BOSTON

This book is the result of the translation license agreement between Peking University Press and Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is translated into English from the original《治村》(贺雪峰著)(Zhi Cun by He Xuefeng) with the financial support from the Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences (中华社会科学基金). The English translation was copyedited by Thomas E. Smith. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: He, Xuefeng, 1968- author. Title: Improving village governance in contemporary China / by Xuefeng He ; translated by Jingyuan Yuan. Other titles: Zhi cun. English Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: The social sciences of practice, 2214-952X ; volume 7 | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020050734 (print) | LCCN 2020050735 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004448278 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004448285 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Local government–China. | Villages–China. | China–Rural conditions Classification: LCC JS7353.A8 H428713 2021 (print) | LCC JS7353.A8 (ebook) | DDC 320.80951–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050734 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050735

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. ISSN 2214-​9 52X ISBN 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 4827-​8 (hardback) ISBN 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 4828-​5 (e-​book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-​use and/​or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents  Series Editor’s Note ix  Preface xi

part 1 Who Can Be a Village Cadre? The Capable, the Ruthless, or the Rich? 1  Plutocratic Village Governance and Openness in Village Politics 3 The Wealthy as Representatives of the People 9 2  Plutocratic Village Governance in Central Shandong Province 11 3  Vote-​Buying in Developed Areas 17 4  How the Village Cadres of Southern Jiangsu Province Became 5  Mobile 30 Plutocratic Village Governance in Mei County, Shaanxi Province 36 6  The Income of Village Cadres in Southern Jiangxi Province 44 7  The Salary and Professionalization of Village Cadres 50 8  Village Doctors, Village Teachers, and Village Governance 60 9  People with Few Family Obligations Become the Mainstay of Village 10  Governance in the Central and Western Regions 65 The Evolution of Village Cadres in Agricultural Areas 72 11 

vi Contents

part 2 Village Politics and Peasant Participation 12  Uncivil People 81 Why Are There Trouble-​Makers? 85 13  Being Reasonable and Being Ruthless 96 14  Conflicts Unavoidable in Maintaining Stability 101 15  Farmland Reallocation and Good Village Governance in Central 16  Shandong Province 107 Convening a Peasants’ Assembly to Reach Consensus 112 17 

part 3 State Resources to the Countryside and Peasant Participation 18  Offering Job Opportunities Instead of Sheer Relief 119 Peasant Participation in Rural Land Consolidation Projects 123 19  Emphasis on Peasants’ Participation in the Transfer Payment 20  Process 130 How Financial Resources Should Be Allocated to Villages 135 21  The Integration of Funds in the Villages of Qingyuan City 141 22  Village Debt 23  An Ulcer on Village Governance 146 The Failure of Transfer Payments to Generate Vitality in Hollow-​Shell 24  Villages 153

Contents

vii

part 4 Exploring the Village Governance System 25  The Paradox between Small Government and Convenient Service Platforms 161 Low Probability Events and Dilemmas of Grassroots Governance 167 26  The More Interests Are Involved, the More Complicated the Rural 27  Governance System 175 Supervision Mechanisms in the Grassroots Governance of Central 28  Western Villages 182 The Secret of Building Happy Villages 192 29  The Necessity of Low-​Cost Grassroots Governance 199 30  Village Governance by the Capable in Southern Jiangsu Province and 31  Types of Chinese Village Governance 204 Village Governance in Shanghai 32  An Outlier Village Type 219

part 5 The Social Foundation of Village Governance: Class, Faction, and Clan 33  How Peasant Differentiation Affects Village Governance 235 From the Rural Community of Interests to Profit-​Sharing Order 241 34  Land Expropriation and Demolition Breed Factional Politics 249 35  The Unaffordability of Village Governance for Poor Village 36  Collectives 254

viii Contents 37  Clan Power and Village Governance in Southern Jiangxi Province 263 The Downward Shift of Villagers’ Autonomy in Qingyuan Village 276 38  Small Kinship Groups and Village Politics in Central Shandong 39  Province 286

part 6 The Drivers of Village Governance 40  The Need for More Varied Modes of Village Governance in China 295 Endogenous and Exogenous 41  The Driving Forces in Two Types of Village Governance 304 Superior and Subordinate 42  The Asymmetrical Distribution of Responsibility, Power, and Benefits 311 43  Grassroots Innovation Created the Chinese Miracle 317  Index 323

Series Editor’s Note

Announcing a New Subseries of the Social Sciences of Practice: Insights from Mainland Chinese Scholars

We are launching a new subseries “Insights from Mainland Chinese Scholars,” as a part of our longstanding Social Sciences of Practice book series. We are developing this new subseries to help bring to our readers the best and most important new insights from Chinese scholars. The first two volumes to be published in the subseries are English translations of He Xuefeng 贺雪峰’s book 《治村》(English title: Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China) and Wu Zhongmin 吴忠民’s book《治道之要:社会矛盾十二讲》(tentative English title: Essentials on Governance: Twelve Lectures on Social Contradictions in China.) To take full advantage of these translations of Chinese scholars’ works, readers should be aware of important differences in the discursive environments of Western and Chinese scholarship. While Western scholars are accustomed to a critical attitude toward the official positions taken by their governments, Chinese scholars must operate in a much more constrained environment when it comes to criticisms of government policies and positions. Sophisticated discussions and criticisms by Chinese scholars can easily be misunderstood by the Western reader as merely apologistic or “pro-​government,” or even as simply “propaganda,” which can become an obstacle to appreciating critical insights that come from creative use of officially condoned concepts, such as that of “social contradictions” in Wu Zhongmin’s Essentials on Governance: Twelve Lectures on Social Contradictions in China. His work represents in fact the sophisticated kinds of constructive criticism that are coming from some of the most creative minds in China, including those who have been granted official recognition and distinction, as in the case of Wu. Western scholars might also find some Chinese scholars’ observations either too specific or too general, often both, accustomed as we are to highly specialized monographs on a single topic and theme. That can keep us from appreciating the frequently thought-​provoking generalized insights and small details such as those offered in He Xuefeng’s Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China. Professor He is an unusually keen field observer who has spent months upon months each year in two decades of researching rural China firsthand. As the founder and leader of the largest and most influential program of rural studies in China, his on-​site observations have stimulated and influenced large numbers of theses, dissertations, articles, and books in

x

Series Editor’s Note

Chinese rural studies. The attentive reader can find much in his writing that is informative and stimulating. A final difference between the two scholarly discursive environments is that, while Western scholars’ goals are often to apply or test major Western social science theories against the empirical evidence from China, the best Chinese scholars are often more interested in finding or defining prospective paths for China and or the Chinese people. It is a concern that can cast a very different light on the empirical evidence. It is our belief that Western and Chinese scholars, given an understanding of the differential discursive contexts in which the two operate, can benefit greatly from learning from one another—​hence the launching of this new subseries under the overall rubric of our Social Sciences of Practice series. Our series emphasizes above all the understanding of the practical realities of China and their implications for existing social science theories, be they “neoliberal,” “Marxist,” “postmodernist,” “substantivist,” or other. The new subseries continues and expands that emphasis. Philip C. C. Huang, Editor, Social Sciences of Practice book series

Preface This book, Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China, is a compilation of research essays that I have written in recent years. In each of the 20 years since 1988, I have spent around two months in different rural areas in China conducting research, which gives me a more sensitive understanding of the latest changes in rural China. As we all know, the last 20 years may well be the fastest-​changing 20 years in Chinese history. With its sustained, rapid economic growth and rapid urbanization, China, particularly in its rural areas, has undergone tremendous changes. However, since China is a vast country, the kinds of changes that have occurred differ not only between urban and rural areas (urbanization of rural population), but also between rural areas themselves, depending on the region. To understand rural governance in China, one needs to explain it on both the spatial and temporal axes. 1 China’s vast rural areas vary greatly from region to region. To understand China’s rural and rural governance, we must first single out the differences among rural areas in China. We can probably discuss regional differences in rural China from three perspectives. The first is from village social structure. Based on the differences in the history of development, geographical features, planting structure, and distance from the central government, villages in China can be divided into southern, northern, and central types. The most important characteristic of southern villages is that they each tend to be dominated by a clan, which has a very fundamental impact on village governance and villagers’ psychology and behavior. Northern villages, on the other hand, have several small kinships within a village. The competition among these small kinships not only has a profound impact on village politics, but also greatly affects peasants’ psychology and behavior. Villages in the Yangtze River Delta, typical of villages in central China, lack the strong association of a bloodline. They are highly atomized, and peasants are responsible only for their own behavior. The social structures within the villages are distinguishing factors among China’s southern, northern, and central villages. Clan groups are the uniting force of the southern clan villages. The villages often act in unison when dealing with top-​down and outside-​inside policies and institutions. They have

xii Preface strong collective action ability. In the northern villages, many small kinship groups extending to five degrees of consanguinity live together, but the competition among the different small kinship groups has resulted in split villages. To gain competitive advantage within their village, these small kinship groups may even compete to introduce external forces. The lack of strong blood ties in villages in the Yangtze River Delta deters the formation of strong and powerful communities. These villages not only have difficulty resisting foreign institutions, but also rarely introduce external forces to achieve group aims. This variation in village structure has a history going back for centuries. Although China’s rapid urbanization and marketization have opened up these relatively closed villages and have also caused their internal structures to rapidly disintegrate, the traditional village structures still have an impact on grassroots governance and even villagers’ psychology and behavior. Hence, to understand villages in China, it is necessary to investigate the north-​south differences in China’s villages. The second perspective comes from east-​west differences. The eastern coastal areas of China, particularly the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta regions, were among the first to industrialize and have thus been the fastest-​growing areas. Currently, villages in both regions have been industrialized and integrated into the coastal urban economic belt, which is the most affluent area and attracts a continuous inflow of people. With the closure of township enterprises in the 1990s, rural industrialization stopped in the vast rural areas of the central and western regions, so that many strong, young workers from these regions have gone to cities to work or do business, while their middle-​aged and elderly parents remain in the villages to farm. The general aging and hollowing out of rural areas in central and western China have made their governance and economic foundation vastly different from those of the eastern coastal areas. Fierce competition in village politics is generally concentrated in the developed coastal areas. The main forces of rural governance in the central and western regions, by contrast, are the “mainstay peasants” and “people with fewer family burdens.” Most developed areas in the eastern coastal areas have undergone rural industrialization and are at the receiving end of an exodus of migrant workers. Due to differences in the starting point of rural industrialization, the eastern coastal developed region has a very distinctive village economic stratification and governance logic. This logic is best represented by the industrialization in southern Jiangsu Province based on collective economy, in Zhejiang Province based on “family workshop plus small commodity market,” and in the Pearl River Delta based on “three supplies and one compensation (sanlai yibu 三来一补)” and on investment promotion (zhaoshang yinzi 招商引资).

Preface

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Peasants in the Pearl River Delta build factories on collective land that they rent out, or they directly lease out the land to foreign enterprises which then build the factories; from this they collect rental income. This has given rise to the common phenomenon in the Pearl River Delta of collective landlords forming hardened interest groups (tuweizi 土围子). The more rental income received from the rented collective land, the more powerful the village collective is in confronting its superiors. The industrialization of southern Jiangsu Province began with the establishment of collective enterprises. The success of collective enterprises depends heavily on the capability of the village Party secretary. A  competent village Party secretary will be able to source for funds, technology, and markets while the collective land is present at hand. Therefore, the more successful a southern Jiangsu village is in industrializing, the more authority the village cadre will muster. However, village cadres must obey rules and take orders from both the county and township. As a result, unlike the Pearl River Delta, the stronger the collective economy of the southern Jiangsu villages, the easier it is for state power to penetrate them, which is why hardened interest groups cannot prevail here. Industrialization in Zhejiang Province began with family workshops. Peasants began manufacturing within their residences with machine tools that they had purchased. As production expanded, peasants invested in more machine tools, to the point where they often had to extend the fronts and backs of their houses or even build on empty land along village roads. Successful family workshop owners became village entrepreneurs. Most family workshop closures were due to market or technical reasons. Severe differentiation soon emerged in villages. Economic development has brought economic differentiation and subsequently social stratification, political competition, and marginal resistance. As a result, village political competition in Zhejiang Province has been particularly fierce. The third perspective comes from analyzing the impact of core and marginal zones of Chinese culture on village structure and peasants’ psychology. From a macro view, peasants in Shandong, Henan, and Anhui Provinces have an extremely strong sense of family and intergenerational responsibility ethics. To accumulate wealth for the family, peasants from these areas are generally very thrifty. The intergenerational responsibility ethics of peasants in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan Provinces, on the other hand, are not so strong. The first thing that migrant peasants from these areas do after earning their keep is to eat and drink well. We shall not, however, delve into this topic here.

xiv Preface 2 Let us look at the timeline of changes in rural governance in China. In 2006, China officially abolished agricultural taxes, which had a history going back millennia and had always been a key aspect of the state-​peasant relationship. During the People’s Commune era, Chinese villages implemented the “integration of government administration with commune management (zhengshe heyi 政社合一),” a tri-​level system that kept peasants highly organized. The state used the People’s Communes to extract resources through the price differences between agricultural and industrial products for its industrialization efforts. At the same time, the high degree of organization of the People’s Communes facilitated the mobilization of rural labor in building a large number of public facilities and utilities. The most typical was the rapid development of water conservancy construction, rural education, and medical facilities. One setback of the People’s Communes was the difficulty of continuously arousing peasants’ labor enthusiasm. After the division of farmland among households in the reform and opening up era, peasants regained their autonomy of production and management, and as a result, their labor enthusiasm and productivity improved greatly. At that time, two problems emerged. The first stemmed from the theory that peasants should “pay enough to the state, leave enough for the collective, and keep the remainder for yourself.” The problem arose when peasants’ agricultural income was limited, dampening peasants’ will to “pay enough to the state” and “leave enough for the collective.” In fact, in the 1990s, most peasants were in arrears on agricultural taxes and fees, and local governments aggravated the issue when they added to peasants’ burden with increases in taxes and fees. The second problem arose when peasants regained production autonomy and the People’s Communes were dissolved; the public service construction mechanism of the People’s Commune period could not be sustained. Hence, rural public service construction declined relative to the People’s Commune period. Since the abolition of agricultural taxes, the state no longer collects agricultural taxes from peasants. This has made it difficult to collect various joint production and public utility construction fees that had previously been collected together with agricultural taxes. To facilitate public utility construction, the state issued the “Management Measures of ‘One Project, One Discussion’ by Villagers for Collecting Funds and Labor” in order to cap peasants’ burden during these meetings, and to alleviate peasants’ burden while providing necessary public services for peasants’ agricultural production and everyday needs. However, “one project, one discussion” has not produced satisfactory results. Even after decisions on raising capital and labor have been made at meetings,

Preface

xv

many peasants are still unwilling to contribute capital or labor. An unwilling household will have a domino effect on other peasant households. There have been only a few successful cases of raising capital and labor via “one project, one discussion” to develop rural public services, and the capital and labor raised were far from meeting the needs of rural public service development. To solve this crisis, the state has begun to make large-​scale transfer payments to the countryside. Transfer payments are of two main types: the first directly distributes subsidies (for example, comprehensive agricultural subsidies) to peasant households via bankcards. The second provides peasants with infrastructural facilities such as farmland water conservancy, land consolidation, and village roads. Projects directly organized and implemented by the state are generally contracted to formal and qualified construction teams via official bidding procedures. For such projects, the state has an interest relationship with peasants through land expropriation, demolition, and land adjustment. Some peasants then take the opportunity to ask for high compensation from the external construction teams, which often have to give out compensation to avoid delays in the construction. In the process, as the demand for high compensation is targeted at the external construction teams and do not involve the interests of local peasants, other local peasants merely become bystanders. Once the involved peasants succeed in getting the compensation, the other peasants watching all the excitement demand high compensation, too. As a result, the more infrastructure the state builds, the more peasants take the opportunity to satisfy their interests. While the state does good things for the peasants, the rural marginalized groups, which are sensitive to profit, are becoming more and more mainstream because there is profit to gain. In the end, most villagers are out to gain profit. Meanwhile, many resources have been transferred from the state to the countryside. For instance, poor families and peasant households qualify for rural minimal living allowances, and the state also transfers various agriculture-​ related funds to the countryside, which must go through the hands of village cadres. To ensure the proper administration of these resources going to the countryside, the central government has promulgated various rules and supervisory measures. As more resources go to the countryside, the supply of public goods has become more and more dependent on the state, while the village cadres work more on completing tasks assigned by the state. This has led to a decline in the autonomy of village governance. While village governance has become increasingly formalized and standardized, and becoming more form than substance, the peasants’ real bottom-​up demand preferences for public goods are not effectively expressed.

xvi Preface In just 20  years, rural governance in China has undergone tremendous changes, which are still ongoing. 3 The vastness of China’s rural areas and the great differences among villages in different regions make it impossible to provide universal public goods, or merely to emphasize standardization and formalization. Hence, in the context of top-​down transfer of national resources, the question of how to let peasants effectively express their demand preferences in public goods becomes very important. In 2002, I  designed an “experiment on the provision of democratic public goods.” Five villages in Hubei Province were selected and each was freely granted 40,000 yuan per year. It was left to them to decide, via discussion at the villagers’ representatives’ meeting, on which construction project would be most important for them. Most of the five villages chose water conservancy projects, which still play an important role in agricultural production. Three villages used the funds obtained in the second year to build activity centers for the elderly, and these, too, are still playing effective roles. In 2008, Chengdu City took advantage of the implementation of overall planning for urban and rural pilot areas to invest in a large number of resources in the countryside. Among them was a public service fund of about 200,000 to 500,000 yuan, which was specifically dedicated to each village. The decision on how to use the fund rested with the village council. The top-​down transfer of resources in Chengdu City, targeted at meeting peasants’ demand preferences for public goods, greatly satisfied the demand for public goods in villages and improved the efficiency of use of those resources. However, it is a pity that in recent years, to prevent abuse of transferred resources for public service in villages, Chengdu City has implemented even more detailed regulations and more standardized procedures for using public service funds. These requirements have hampered the use of public service funds, where they were once decided by village council. Now it seems that a new project system is in place to implement projects. With rapid urbanization in China, more peasants are moving to the cities, giving rise to the problems of an aging population and the hollowing out of rural areas. However, the speed and manner of change vary among different rural areas in China. In the near term, rural governance in China will be decided by how the state transfers resources to villages and by the linkage between the transfer style and the specific situation of the village. Only when grassroots

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Preface

xvii

governance is based on rural democracy, with peasants as the core, can state-​ transferred resources be most effectively utilized in villages and villages become more harmonious. He Xuefeng (贺雪峰) 20 September 2019 Qingyuan Mountain Villa, Macheng City, Hubei

pa rt 1 Who Can Be a Village Cadre? The Capable, the Ruthless, or the Rich?



chapter 1

Plutocratic Village Governance and Openness in Village Politics

1

In the developed coastal areas, economic development has given rise to economic differentiation and social stratification. The close-​knit society of the village has gradually been differentiated into three groups:  the bosses, who have personal assets of around one to 10 million yuan and who have become rich from running factories and businesses. Although this group is small, its influence is great. The largest group, workers and peasants, make their living through labor, but their influence is limited. The third group is a very small group of low-​income households with little income-​earning capacity or have mentally or physically disabled family members. This group has been marginalized and has little influence in the village. The stratification of the villages in the developed coastal areas can be attributed to the development of rural industry after the policy of reform and opening-​up was implemented. In the 1990s especially, villages in developed coastal areas presented the scene, “Every village lights fire, every chimney belches smoke (cuncun dianhuo, huhu maoyan 村村点火,户户冒烟),” as rural industry began to prosper when villages capitalized on land use autonomy. Almost all villages have secondary and tertiary industries promoted by village collectives or individuals. In the late 1990s, collective enterprises were transformed into private ones, and those who became rich by running businesses in the village and remained in the village became bosses in the close-​knit society. Most villagers lack the opportunity to run factories and business firms. Some have failed in their business ventures and have to rely mainly on providing labor to contribute to family income. As the rich demonstrate their strong consumption capacity, the rest of the villagers who derive their income through labor face great economic pressure. They must work really hard and scrimp in order to keep up with the consumption trend led by the rich group. The other group, at the lowest strata of income, can scarcely keep up with such consumer trends or participate in many of the social interactions in the village, so they become the village’s marginalized group.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_002

4 Chapter 1 There are also immigrant workers who rarely participate in the activities of the village; they have no voting rights and have little impact on village governance. Villages in the developed coastal areas often have strong economic capability and on account of their strategic location, their collective land has become an asset. A typical example is the sky-​high market value of a rural homestead (zhaijidi 宅基地), which may cost as high as 500,000 or 1  million yuan in a private transaction. In the 1990s, when town and village industries were developing, village collectives had used their farmland to set up enterprises. Almost every village had many plots of collectively-​owned commercial construction land (jiti jingyingxing jianshe yongdi 集体经营性建设用地) that each year could bring high rental revenue for the village collective. Since village collectives have a lot of resources, village elections get a high level of attention from the villagers. Village cadres have plenty of opportunities to connect with the bosses of village enterprises established on collective land or in houses in the village. Village cadres who belong to the rich group in the village can also use their positions to establish close relationships with the local government, which is beneficial for their business activities. Besides, as village cadres, their credentials will be further enhanced. The rich who are running factories and businesses in the village are therefore more than eager to vie for village cadre positions. They compete for these positions not to obtain the cadre’s compensation for delayed farm work, but more importantly to look after their business interests, since that translates into much higher gains than what the compensation can provide, or what they might expect to earn from a cadre’s salary. In fact, the current remuneration for village cadres in the developed coastal areas is very low—​so low that it does not even cover their expenses on cigarettes. For a member of the bosses’ group, a village cadre position can reap for them even greater benefits, but to ordinary folks, it only means a very limited compensation. Hence, the rich are more inclined than ordinary villagers to compete for village cadre positions. The competition among bosses for cadre positions has led to the formation of a price for the position, which is far higher than what any ordinary villager can afford. The fierce competition includes vote-​buying in the current developed coastal areas. The resources in these coastal villages also attract the interest of a few ruthless people, who may also wish to gain from the village cadres election. The lure lies especially in various opportunities for construction projects. It is quite normal for them, as village cadres, to gain an advantage in contracting opportunities. Ordinary village cadres-​cum-​bosses (laoban cunganbu 老板村干部) in villages engaged in land expropriation and demolition may have difficulty

Plutocratic Village Governance and Openness

5

dealing with nail households (dingzihu 钉子户), so this attracts ruthless people with triad backgrounds to seize the opportunity to join the village cadre team, in which capacity they deal with the nail households on the one hand and participate in the construction projects on the other. After several years, these ruthless people are enriched by their work as contractors for construction projects.

2

In the developed coastal areas, it is now a given that the rich become village cadres. One could say that plutocratic village governance (furen zhicun 富人治村) is an irreversible trend, but this irreversibility is not limited to the rich becoming village cadres, but to other things, too. In coastal villages, fierce competition often breaks out in villagers’ committee elections among the bosses of village enterprises, not between bosses and ordinary villagers. When two rich bosses as public figures vie for the same position in the election, villagers take sides. The highly fierce competition in some villages has given rise to factional politics (paixing zhengzhi 派性政治). In a sense, to the extent that fierce competition has opened up village affairs to villagers, they have acquired a say in public affairs. In villages located in some developed areas, the county or town government intentionally restricts fiercely contested villagers’ committee elections in order to prevent vote-​buying, which is quite reasonable. Village cadres are selected from among the rich mainly by higher levels of government, for they have the capability and willingness to be village cadres and do the job well. The selection of village cadres by upper levels of government is primarily based on the hope that the candidates have the capacity to govern, and that includes completing the tasks their higher-​ups assign them. I need not repeat that the rich covet village cadre positions. The reason they have the ability comes from the funds and resources they can muster, which are things that ordinary folks lack. For instance, rich cadres have more ways to deal with nail households through their personal networks, for they “win arguments and fights” against the wayward. “Winning arguments” entails reasoned discussion and explaining government policies, while “winning fights” requires the village Party secretary (cunzhishu 村支书) to solicit the assistance of people or households who have connections with the nail households to persuade or threaten them to yield. For example, if a nail household does not give the Party secretary “face,” and the daughter-​in-​law of the nail household is working as an accountant in the factory of the village secretary, or as a cashier in a company owned

6 Chapter 1 by a friend of the village secretary, the Party secretary can accomplish his ends by working on her. The success rate of working through such channels is very high. However, the effectiveness of this approach will be limited if the person has been marginalized and has little contact with other villagers.

3

During my summer vacation in 2015, I made a field trip to Shaoxing, Zhejiang province. The local government was promoting innovation to strengthen and stimulate the vitality of grassroots governance. All kinds of civil organizations had been set up to raise social capital in village governance throughout the Shaoxing area. For instance, in 2011, Shaoxing City started to push for the establishment of village chambers of commerce by gathering the entrepreneurs of enterprises of reasonable size to form entrepreneurs’ unions. In Shaoxing, almost all of the village collective land is now occupied by enterprises that have grown in scale over time. On the initiative of the government, and with the mobilization of village cadres, the village chambers of commerce were established and became operational. The chambers have the membership of most of the reasonably large enterprises and are helmed by usually pioneering directors and senior entrepreneurs in their own villages who enjoy a certain popularity and reputation with the masses. Contribution of the membership fees is voluntary, but in general, it may cost at least 10,000 yuan a year, which gives the chambers a revenue of more than a million yuan in membership fees annually. The chambers have offices manned by permanent staff and are open to members to gather, conduct meetings, chat, and have tea. The chamber of commerce plays four important roles in village governance. First, it provides funding for public goods provision within the village. Second, it provides a platform in times of conflict; since most villagers work in village enterprises, instead of having village cadres to deal with conflicts, it is more effective if the bosses of the affected enterprises can settle the conflict directly. Third, it can play a part in disaster relief and mobilize donations for special hardship cases and for natural and man-​made calamities. Fourth, it helps deal with marginalized villagers, such as nail households, petitioners, or ne’er-​do-​ wells. When a village embarks on a public construction project, some jobless people resort to unscrupulous means to make personal gains by acting on behalf of nail households and demanding high compensation. Village cadres cannot accede to their requests, since this would create a precedent for other villagers follow suit. In such circumstances, the chamber can play its part,

Plutocratic Village Governance and Openness

7

converting the situation from a public issue to a private one by settling the conflict monetarily. For these reasons, village cadres in Shaoxing City welcomed having active chambers of commerce that could make a difference. Moreover, the village secretary is normally also an entrepreneur and a member of the chamber. For entrepreneurs in a village, an active chamber of commerce that organizes activities provides a more formal place for socializing or networking, which is far more appealing to them than having a private party with friends. Communications among entrepreneurs also promotes bonding, facilitates an exchange of business information, and provides a source for financing. A chamber that can influence village governance allows members to officially seek the assistance of village cadres in affairs relating to government departments, banks, or workers. According to one village secretary, “The support is mutual. While the chamber has been of great assistance to our village, the village has also lent a big hand to entrepreneurs in the chamber in other areas. Difficult cases that the village could not handle would be passed to the chamber. Similarly, the village will assist these entrepreneurs in whatever way possible in times of need.” China adopts a public land ownership system (gongyouzhi 公有制). At present, the vast majority of the land used by village-​owned industrial and commercial enterprises in developed coastal areas is the collective land rented out by village collectives, and annual rent is paid. In this instance, the interactions between the bosses of village enterprises and village cadres are frequent. In this sense, it is impossible for the bosses who run factories on village collective land not to deal with village cadres. Meanwhile, the vast majority of village peasant households have some connection—​most often, employment—​with these factories and businesses in the village. Thus in village governance, village cadres may rely on the bosses of village enterprises to accomplish tasks relating to peasant households, while village enterprises can seek the help of village cadres with regard to issues such as land use, taxes, business, and banks. The establishment of the chamber of commerce has formalized and systemized the connections between the bosses and village cadres, making money and power inseparable in village governance. This combination of money and power has strengthened the capabilities of village cadres in accomplishing tasks such as building a beautiful countryside, dealing with marginalized groups, and solving problems in the supply of public goods. Of course, it may also result in political exclusion: as ordinary villagers have fewer opportunities to express their opinions, and as village governance revolves even more around the demands of powerful groups, ordinary villagers are further marginalized in all respects.

8 Chapter 1 The Shaoxing chambers of commerce have undoubtedly increased social capital in villages and played a positive role in village governance. However, capital itself constitutes a strong force, and when it is combined with power at the village level, ordinary villagers are further deprived of the ability to intervene in village politics. Village politics have taken away villagers’ opportunity to express themselves through the close linkages between business and politics, so that villagers are left with no outlet for venting their pent-​up anger and dissatisfaction. As a result, they respond negatively to anything related to public affairs in their villages. Thus the expensive plants and trees that village collectives plant in order to beautify the countryside are being constantly vandalized, for example, by people who strip the bark off the trees. The polarization between the rich and ordinary villagers has filled the villages with a strange tension. From the beginning, capital itself constitutes a strong force, but when it is organized through the chambers of commerce and combined with power at the village level, a sense of oppression is created, as well as an imbalance in the social base upon which village power operates. This imbalance is already apparent in some villages of developed coastal areas, so it is worthy of vigilance. How to open up village politics and let ordinary villagers express their opinions is now a vital issue in the villages in developed coastal areas. A balance needs to be struck between plutocratic village governance and the openness of grassroots politics.

chapter 2

The Wealthy as Representatives of the People During a field trip to a town in the coastal area, I found that the election of deputies to the county People’s Congress (pc) (renda daibiao 人大代表) was fiercely competitive. It is a common phenomenon for the establishment candidate to lose an election to the reserve candidate. It also frequently occurs that a write-​in candidate wins an election. When the competition is at its fiercest, almost one-​third of the establishment candidates lose the election and fail to become deputies to the county pc. After the village and town authorities learned this painful lesson, they became more careful about recommending candidates for the subsequent elections. Does the fierce electoral competition imply the sudden awakening of peasants’ political consciousness and self-​mobilization to express their rights? Obviously not. It is rather the case that rich locals covet nice-​sounding titles and political status commensurate with their identity as rich people. Of the 14 deputies elected in the most recent election, two were county or town cadres, one was a county deputy Party secretary, one a chairman of a town pc, five village or community chairmen and Party secretaries, one community cadre, one cashier of the largest enterprise in the town, and five entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs are the rich locals and the five village cadres, including village heads and Party secretaries, are all entrepreneurs. Hence, among the 14 deputies, 10 are entrepreneurs or bosses. The 13 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (cppcc) members (zhengxie weiyuan 政协委员) of the town are not elected but are recommended by their respective industrial or professional sectors. Except for the Deputy Secretary of the town Party committee (zhenwei fushuji 镇委副书记) and Propaganda Committee member (xuanchuan weiyuan 宣传委员), who are nonvoting members of the cppcc, the other 11 recommended members come from the economic community or agriculture and forestry industries; they are almost all entrepreneurs, bosses, and rich. Of course, most of them are also either village heads (cunweihui zhuren 村委会主任, or cunzhuren 村主任) or village Party secretaries. At another, more developed town, I asked about the composition of county pc deputies and cppcc members. Surprisingly, there was not a single village cadre among the 10 pc deputies and cppcc members in this county. There were only a few village Party secretaries among Party representatives in the county Party committee. The reason lay in the town’s industrial strength. It

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_003

10 Chapter 2 had more than 200 enterprises of designated scale, i.e., with annual sales of over 50 million yuan. Most of its deputies to the county pc and members in the county cppcc are entrepreneurs. Although the village cadres were mostly wealthy people who had set up factories and businesses, they could not be county deputies or cppcc members because the scale of their businesses did not meet the criteria required of county pc deputies and cppcc members. Since the deputies and members from the towns are mainly factory and business bosses, it is clear that the bulk of the county pc deputies and cppcc members is comprised of rich people. The titles of pc deputy and cppcc member are first identities, secondly honors, and most importantly, a kind of power. Whether national or local, the annual “two sessions (lianghui 两会)” of the pc and cppcc are major political events. A county government has to report to the county pc, and the latter has the power to supervise various ministries, departments, and organizations of the local government. Government departments have to pay serious attention to the proposals raised by the pc and cppcc, since they have the authority to evaluate government work. The pc elects government officials and approves the appointment of heads of government departments, pc deputies can question the work done in government departments, and so on. When all of these political working processes are taken together, the wealthy, who as a group comprise virtually all of the “two sessions,” will exert an overwhelming influence. Government reports and actions must reflect these entrepreneurs’ expectations, satisfy their feelings, and represent their interests, so that local governance changes and becomes only a response to entrepreneurs’ interests. In a sense, the interests of the ordinary people who make up the vast majority of the population are not represented, so that the government’s work cannot respond to them, and the people’s government is therefore in danger of deteriorating. People will sometimes say that the PCs do not even play that big of a role in political life. However, in the developed coastal areas, the rich hope to use their political status as pc deputies and cppcc members to expand their personal networks and occupy a more advantageous position for dealing with local governments, so they devise various means, even vote-​buying, to get these positions. Ultimately, when virtually all of the local pc deputies and cppcc members are rich bosses, local politics quietly undergoes a huge change. If we continue to ignore this huge change in the makeup of the local pc s and cppcc s and only strengthen these bodies’ powers in the institutional framework, the direction of China’s politics may become a problem.

chapter 3

Plutocratic Village Governance in Central Shandong Province

1

Central Shandong is a comparatively developed area, with relatively high per capita gdp and a local industry-​supported economy providing not only employment opportunities for local peasants, but also secondary and tertiary industries with economic opportunities. As a result, a small but very important economic elite group has formed in the villages. This economic elite group has already become the group from which the major village cadres are selected. In other words, much of central Shandong is under plutocratic village governance (furen zhicun). In May 2016, we went to do a survey at Maqiao Town (马桥镇), Zibo City (淄博市) in central Shandong, and by combining this with earlier fieldwork done at the county-​level city of Qingzhou (青州市), in the district-​ level city of Weifang (潍坊), I can discuss the phenomenon of plutocratic village governance in central Shandong. Maqiao Town has 52 administrative villages and a population of around 50,000. Its main supporting industries are two large-​scale chemical plants, which employ about 30,000 people in total. Unlike ordinary manufacturing industries, chemical plants require few local support facilities, so the industry is not so strong a driving force for the local economy. However, it does provide job opportunities for the local peasants: they do not need to venture out of their home village for jobs to earn a reasonable income. As a result, they have created a huge demand for the services of secondary and tertiary industries. Among the various services formed around the two chemical plants, the most typical and common is in tank truck operation. Peasant households with good economic conditions can start their own business by buying two or three trucks for providing delivery services, which can earn them more than 500,000 yuan a year. Besides logistics, hotels, restaurants, and business services are also well developed. Other secondary and tertiary industries include a number of small-​scale processing factories for clothing and wooden doors, and there are construction and engineering teams. The construction and engineering teams deserve more elaboration. First, already in the 1980s, Huantai County (桓台县), where Maqiao Town is located, was well-​known nationwide for its construction industry, so that many building contractors are based here. Second, as the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_004

12 Chapter 3 two big chemical plants continued to expand, the construction projects were mostly contracted to the local construction and engineering teams. Third, Maqiao Town has been vigorously promoting urbanization, so that more than half of the population is being moved from their old houses into new two-​or three-​ story houses (nongmin shanglou 农民上楼), the construction of which has also been contracted to the local teams. In Maqiao Town, about 5% of the peasant households have annual incomes above 500,000 yuan. Except for a few white-​collar workers at the middle management level and higher in the two big chemical plants, most of them have set up factories or work in logistics and construction or run restaurants. On average, there are around 10 high-​income families in each village. These high-​ income households have typically purchased homes and live in town, drive luxury cars, and no longer do farming. They have been detached from village life for a long time and have become the economic elite class or the wealthy in Maqiao Town. In terms of employment, local peasants below the age of 50 can easily find jobs in Maqiao’s local factories. Workers in the two big chemical plants on average can take home 50,000 yuan a year. A peasant family with two grandparents, their child, and one grandchild is rather standard for a family in Maqiao. If the grandparents are not too old (50 or less) and their children are grown, three persons will be working in the factory—​the grandfather, the son or daughter, and the daughter-​or son-​in-​law—​while the grandmother works as a full-​time babysitter. A family like this can easily earn 150,000 yuan a year. The household income of an ordinary peasant family of five depends largely on the second generation when the grandparents are more than 50 years old and cannot find work in the local factory. Grandparents over 50 years old who are still physically strong can either engage in farming and agricultural production or take up various temporary jobs. There is a labor market in this town for peasants of this age group, who can easily bring in an income of 20,000 to 30,000 yuan a year. Hence, a peasant family like this can get an annual income of 100,000 yuan. It is not difficult for a family to get annual income of 50,000 to 60,000 yuan even if there is only one physically strong person working and the others just supplement that income. The annual income of 80 percent of the peasant households in the village is between 50,000 and 150,000 yuan. They can live very comfortably with this income, as the cost of living in the villages is rather low. Peasant households with very low income due to illnesses or disability, or lack of labor in the family, constitute only a small proportion—​on average, a village has only somewhat more than 10 such households. These are often

Plutocratic Village Governance in Central Shandong Province

13

covered by the minimum livelihood guarantee (mlg) system (dibao 低保). However, very few of the local peasant households have per capita income levels that fall short of the mlg standard, if strictly measured.

2

In any case, capable people abound in the prosperous villages of central Shandong. They are quick to grasp lucrative opportunities and establish plants, run businesses, or become contractors. They do not always set up factories in their own villages but may locate their factories or businesses in the town. They may live in town and drive back and forth to the village. The scope of their activities may extend to other provinces, even other countries. The well-​developed local economy has provided enormous profit-​ making opportunities that have given capable locals their main battlefield for doing business. Opportunities for profit come from various sources, the most important of which are the local government officials, village cadres, the big chemical plants’ bosses and executives, and other bosses, chiefly through interaction and networking. The position that a person occupies within this network of various kinds of local elites will determine whether and how much he or she will be able to benefit from it. Of course, just being able to enter this network is very important. Because profit opportunities are generated locally, the place itself is important. The village is “hot” precisely because it has such profit-​generating potential. The village cadres are key figures in this hot spot, indispensable members in the network, in which they can also occupy advantageous positions. To put it bluntly, village cadres (especially the village head and Party secretary) can rather easily realize their personal interests, and of course by “interests” I do not refer to money they might obtain through corruption from the village collectives, since most local collectives actually do not have much income. I refer instead to their identity as village cadres itself, which facilitates the running of factories and businesses. Hence, in the villages of central Shandong, the rich fill almost all official positions in the village, and only the rich can easily become village cadres. Virtually all of the leading village cadres are wealthy persons. Moreover, these wealthy leading cadres have no prior experience as village cadres. They did not have to work their way up but got to their positions via a village election. In Maqiao Town, the village head doubles as the village Party secretary, so a rich man holds that position, too.

14 Chapter 3 A rich person becoming a village cadre goes by a logic completely different from that of a village cadre becoming a rich person. A village cadre who becomes rich has used his or her title to gain profit. This was possible in several of the villages near the two chemical plants, since they had a lot of collective land. Since the village cadres could smooth the way for the two plants to occupy more land, the plants would return the favor. From just a single construction project, they can reap huge benefits. A rich person becoming a cadre does so not because the position will make him rich. All peasants aspire to become rich, but only those who are smart, strong, capable, and lucky can rise above the others and become rich. The marketplace will eliminate the majority of those who embark on the road to wealth, leaving those who have gone through various experiences, demonstrated their capability, and gained a certain reputation. After gaining a firm foothold in the market, these people will have the capital to run for election, and after becoming village cadres, they will have more opportunities to benefit from the local market.

3

The villages in central Shandong region in are what we call northern small kinship (xiaoqinzu 小亲族) villages. Every village has more than 10 separate small kinship groups, and most of these families are organized by blood relationships within the traditional five degrees of mourning specified in ancient ritual texts (wufu 五服). The competition and cooperation among various kinship groups have shaped the basic pattern of village governance. The small kinship groups in central Shandong, in practice, is basically a clan system. Its most important characteristic is cooperation within the group and building one’s own identity and consciousness on this basis. Cooperation within the group is shown mainly in weddings and funerals and in interactions during big events and festivals. For weddings, all the relatives within the five degrees of consanguinity must act as hosts to entertain guests, while for funerals, all five degrees of relatives must wear the five degrees of mourning garb, kowtow, and wail. During the New Year Festival, especially the Spring Festival, members of younger generations within the five degrees must kowtow to members of the elder generation and express their good wishes for the new year. The cooperation on weddings and funerals and interactions in major events and festivals reinforce members’ identification within the group, thereby building the foundation to act in concert vis-​à-​vis the outside world. These kinship groups within the five degrees of consanguinity can have as many as about 30 to 40 households, or about 150 people, as few as seven to

Plutocratic Village Governance in Central Shandong Province

15

eight households with about 30 to 40 people. However, the five degrees are not rigid, and in practice, if a kinship group gets too large, it may quickly split. Other kinship groups may be too small, so that they tend to split much later, and they may also include relatives of the sixth and seventh degrees. In rural central Shandong, administrative villages are ordinarily established on the basis of natural villages, so a natural village is an administrative village, or vice versa, and administrative villages have, on average, around 1,000 people. They generally have ten or more active kinship groups within the five degrees of consanguinity, i.e., a small kinship group. Politics within a village, especially village politics arising from villagers’ committee elections, mainly involves competition among the larger kinship groups. Small kinship groups with fewer members have difficulty becoming leading village cadres through village elections. Since none of the small kinship groups are large enough to form the majority in a village, alliances among different small kinship groups within a village is crucial. Big kinship groups will often align with the smaller ones in alliance to compete against other alliances, and usually an election becomes a struggle between two alliances. When one alliance wins the election, the other becomes the opposition, which at any time will point out the flaws in the winning side’s work, while attempting to split apart that side’s alliance in order to bring it down in the next election; the opposition may even strive to bring down the incumbent by submitting petitions to higher levels of government (shangfang 上访). Village politics are hence marked by intricate vertical and horizontal alliances premised only on lasting benefit instead of lasting friendship. Every kinship group will often have one respected individual who is a natural manager, a person who is eloquent, capable, fair, and enthusiastic about village affairs, and has good moral standing and reputation. Every family will seek his or her opinion on any major event. During weddings or funerals, he or she will always be there, making decisions. Apart from these respected individuals within the kinship groups, each group will also have some capable person who has made it big from doing business in the outside world. For their extensive contacts with the outside world, for the information they can provide, for their ability to help families in the face of economic difficulties, or to recommend them for jobs outside of the village, they naturally become the new authorities and new representatives within their kinship groups. Such capable, economically successful persons would gain the support of their kinship groups, which enables them to take part in the village election. Every small kinship group has its elite, who can represent their kinship group’s capabilities. These elites form a network, with a tacit understanding

16 Chapter 3 that may decide the pattern of village governance. Without economic success, they would stand no chance of representing their families to compete in the village election or to cooperate with other small kinship groups and form alliances. Ordinary villagers who aspire to become leading village cadres have little opportunity of becoming one. However, the rich and capable ones, who are strongly motivated to explore income avenues by vying for top village cadre positions, would be supported by their small kinship groups. Their chances of success are very high, and there is no need for them to work their way up to a leading cadre position. The catch is that after they assume office, they will be challenged by the opposition, which will strive to divide and reconstruct the village’s power structure at every opportunity. The rich-​turned-​village cadres must constantly be on high alert and play the political game well in the village political arena. Hence, the rich here have acquired a strong political and strategic awareness—​it is impossible for them to be like the peremptory wealthy cadres of Zhejiang Province, whose motto could be, “I can beat you not only in an argument but also in a fight.” The biggest difference between the wealthy people in Zhejiang and central Shandong is that the wealthy in Zhejiang Province face atomized villagers; the villages lack the kind of power structures that small kinship groups have in central Shandong Province. Factional power struggles in Zhejiang are often power struggles arising from private relationships among the wealthy, whereas those in central Shandong are backgrounded by the power of small kinship groups.

chapter 4

Vote-​Buying in Developed Areas Although I  had repeatedly encountered vote-​buying cases during previous field trips and heard news of many other cases, when I went to Nanxi Town (南溪镇) in H province, I was still quite shocked at the extent of vote-​buying I observed there. 1

A Village Cadre Worth 10 Million Yuan

Vote-​buying in Nanxi Town first emerged in 1995, but by 2005, it had become rampant. At that time, the administrative villages of Nanxi Town had yet to be merged, and there were only a few hundred people in each village, so vote-​ buying generally involved only a few tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of yuan and was limited to villagers’ committee elections. In 2008, many of the administrative villages were merged (typically two or three into one), so that now the population of each village had ballooned to more than a thousand. Since that year, large-​scale, routinized vote-​buying in villagers’ committee elections became widespread, involving as much as a million yuan. Vote-​ buying did not remain at the villagers’ committee level but spread to the village party branch level as well. By 2011, the amounts spent in vote-​buying reached unthinkable levels. In little Nanxi Town, there were actually three villages in which single villagers’ committee candidates spent more than 10 million yuan for vote-​buying. By this time, vote-​buying in the village party branch election had also become common and routinized and had spread even to the election of pc delegates, villagers’ committee leaders, and village representatives. Typical cases of vote-​buying are elaborated below: 1.1 The 2008 Villagers’ Committee Election: A Case in Luge Village In Luge Village (卢革村), Lu Jianxin (卢建新) operated a new hardware store with annual sales of 10 million yuan. He was elected as village head in 2005 and aimed to run for reelection in 2008. Lu had a younger brother who was given away at birth to a family surnamed Ye in Jiangdong village (江东村) in exchange for the latter’s daughter, so his younger brother became a member of the Ye family and was named Ye Junfa (叶均法). Ye was a shrewd boss who owned a mid-​sized factory, and like Lu, Ye also aimed to be elected as village head. However, his family was the only family surnamed Ye in the village, while

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_005

18 Chapter 4 the Zhang surname was the largest family group in Jiangdong village. To win the election, Ye called his close buddy Mr. Zhang, who was doing business in Beijing, to return and support his election. When Mr. Zhang returned to Nanxi Town and found that Lu’s competitor in the Luge village head election was a Mr. Sun, the son of his godmother (ganma 干妈), he suggested to Lu that he should withdraw from the villagers’ committee election, and as for himself, he would give his full support to Lu’s younger brother Ye Junfa for the Jiangdong village head election. Zhang’s suggestion was obviously inappropriate and a betrayal to his friend. But to support his younger brother’s election, Lu decided to withdraw anyway but posted the notice of his withdrawal only two days before the election, and he urged the villagers to support Sun. Because he had worked as the Luge Village head for the previous three years, Lu had earned a lot of credibility with the villagers, and his reelection was almost 100 percent certain. For him to withdraw now, it would seem likely that some maneuvering was going on behind the scenes, so that the villages would still vote for him as a write-​in candidate. On the night before election, to ensure that Mr. Sun would be certain to win the Luge election, Mr. Zhang gathered together Ye Junfa, Lu Jianxin, and some other friends and asked Lu to leave a 500,000 yuan deposit to guarantee Mr. Sun’s election as village head in Luge, while he would give the same guarantee for Ye’s election as village head in Jiangdong Village. Around 6 o’clock in the evening on the day before the election, however, a young man surnamed Shi (石) suddenly registered himself as candidate for the election of Luge village head, and sent people around the village to canvass for votes. They used two slogans:  “Electing Shi means electing Lu” and “Each vote worth a thousand yuan, regardless of the election result.” Sun was initially very confident that he would win the election after Lu had withdrawn. The sudden entry of Shi caught him off guard, giving him no time to react. Shi eventually won the election and became village head, at a cost of around one million yuan. In the Jiangdong Village election, Lu’s younger brother Ye successfully become the village head with Zhang’s full support. Ye had spent around 100,000 yuan to buy votes. Because Sun lost in Luge Village, Lu lost his deposit of 500,000 yuan, which had been placed with a middleman, to Zhang, but Zhang regained his own deposit, because Ye had been successfully elected. However, since it was not right for Lu to bear the cost of the forfeited deposit, Ye gave Lu Jianxin 500,000 yuan. In sum, in order for Ye to be elected village head, more than one million yuan was spent. Although the story of the 2008 villagers’ committee elections in Luge and Jiangdong Villages had many twists and turns, the vote-​buying phenomenon

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was common throughout Nanxi Town. Any candidate who won an election to become village head (Director of the Villagers’ Committee), even in the absence of an opposing candidate, had to spend hundreds of thousands of yuan to thank the villagers. Each vote was priced between 100 and 1,000 yuan. 1.2 The 2011 Villagers’ Committee Election In 2011, while the villagers’ committee elections in the administrative villages of Nanxi Town were generally reaching feverish levels, the intensity of the campaigns in the Luge and Jiangdong villages was relatively low. Even so, the cost of the village head election campaigns still exceeded a million yuan. Mr. Shi, who had won the election in 2008, was running for reelection (for face-​saving reasons—​for him, spending a million yuan or two was not a problem as his family was running a factory). One villager, who had businesses in Chengdu and had been thinking of running for the village head position, sought Lu Jianxin’s advice, and Lu told him that a million yuan was not enough to campaign for village head, and two million yuan was still iffy, but with three million yuan, it would be no problem. Why? Because Mr. Shi, the incumbent, would give each peasant 1,000 yuan for supporting him for reelection if there was no competitor. If you were to run against him, he’d raise the price for each vote, and the competitor would have to do better than match that price and offer even more. On hearing Lu’s analysis, the villager immediately saw the difficulties and withdrew. Zhujia Village (朱家村) in Nanxi Town had the most fiercely contested villagers’ committee election campaign in 2011. Mr. Xu, who campaigned for village head, and his competitor were each dead set on winning the election. When one party raised his stake, the other matched with an even higher offer. The stakes were raised from 1,000 yuan to 2,000 yuan, and finally to 5,000 yuan per vote, which forced the competitor to withdraw. Xu eventually won the election. However, since Zhujia village was a big village with 2,000 people and 1,000 voters, Xu had to fork out eight million yuan of his own money, and relatives contributed another four million, for a total of 12 million yuan to buy votes. This set a new record for villagers’ committee elections in Nanxi Town. The 2011 election was also white-​hot at Sanjiang Village (三江村), where the two campaign teams were fiercely competing neck-​to-​neck in unofficial vote counts. At dawn on election day, one team still felt unsure of winning and decided to try to buy over a few votes from its competitor’s base. They phoned one family of three and offered first 10,000 yuan per vote, then 50,000 yuan for the three votes, and finally settled on 100,000 yuan for the three votes, and in the end they won the election. For this election, more than 10 million yuan was spent.

20 Chapter 4 In Zhongli Village (中里村), the two campaign teams were afraid that they would both suffer losses if they competed too fiercely—​it would not be cost-​ effective. Thus, one side decided to give the other one million yuan to the other in return for the latter’s withdrawal. However, on election day, the villagers refused to vote because they knew that people in other villages were bagging good sums of money for casting their votes. Having no choice in the matter, the remaining candidate had to fork out another million yuan for distribution among the villagers so they would cast their votes. Because there was vote-​buying in virtually every village, always in cash, it is said that the city bank during the campaign period ran out of cash and had to seek an emergency shipment of it from the provincial capital. During the villagers’ committee election period, Zhonghua cigarettes were all sold out, because they were also used as gifts in the election besides cash. 1.3 The 2011 Village Party Branch Elections In 2011, Lu Jianxin was aiming for the village Party secretary post. There were more than 50 Party members in the Luge Village, and he spent a total of more than 500,000 yuan. He bought 30 votes by paying 20,000 yuan for each, but, in the end, he received only 26 votes and failed to get elected. He could not be elected to the village Party branch, let alone village Party secretary. Lu believed that his offer of 20,000 yuan still fell short of the competition’s offer. If he had offered 50,000 yuan, he’d probably have more hope. This suggests that the incumbent had also dished out hundreds of thousands of yuan for his 38 votes, outstripping the other two elected branch committee members, who received 32 and 28 votes respectively. The reelection of the incumbent village Party secretary may be attributed not only to money but also to the fact that many of the Party members had been cultivated by him over the years. After Lu Jianxin one morning had sent someone to deliver 40,000 yuan to one party member, that Party member sent the money back in the afternoon, explaining that he would not accept Lu’s money and would not vote for him either. Thirty villagers accepted Lu’s money, meaning that four of them did not vote even though they had received the money. However, three of them did return the money after the election. A community Party branch secretary in Nanxi Town was another person who had years of experience and a lot of credibility, so no one was competing against him. However, in 2011, candidates in all the villages were doling out money when canvassing for votes, and if he did not follow suit, it would be embarrassing. Thus, he willingly gave out hundreds of thousands of yuan to each Party member in his community, as a token.

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1.4 Village Representative Elections Vote-​buying became so well-​accepted that in the selection of village representatives, the moderator unabashedly declared that the selection of village representatives would be based on whoever could make the highest monetary offer. As a result, the three villagers who offered 20,000 yuan qualified to become the village representatives in their villagers’ committees. Vote-​buying became so widespread that local governments found it difficult to intervene, and turned a blind eye to such activities. Although in public, town government officials talked about the necessity of having open, fair, and equitable villagers’ committee elections, in small group settings their attitudes became quite clear: the towns cared only about election results, not the election process. While the town government showed no interest in curbing vote-​buying or the formation of cliques and factions in the villagers’ committee elections, they were steadfast about keeping social order on election day, deploying numerous armed police to the polling places to prevent fighting or vandalism to the ballot boxes. Those caught would be arrested for disrupting the election. There are many interesting patterns in the villagers’ committee elections in Nanxi Town. For instance, almost all elections involved competition between two factions, not three or four. The reason is simple. This meant that two candidates would emerge in the end for the village head position, and the one who had more than half the votes was elected. Although there may have been differences of opinion within each faction, and there were divisions, in the end they formed into only two opposing camps. These camps could change again completely during the following election. Because huge sums of money were involved in the elections, the campaigns’ capacity to mobilize their teams was also strong. First, each of the camps formed a large and effective campaign team that started planning a month before election day or even earlier. Second, the campaign teams analyzed all voters in the village to the last detail, including economic status, social networks, personal preferences, and interests, before setting the direction for vote-​buying. Generally speaking, in a two-​faction contest, villagers could be divided into two groups, one consisting of the assured votes in either camp, such as brothers, sisters, and other relatives and friends, and the other consisting of swing voters, i.e., those who had little or no special relationship with either camp. Election canvassing was thus directed mainly to swing voters. However, if one gave a benefit to swing voters, the same also had to be given to assured voters, because they might not have liked it if they were bypassed. The problem was gauging whether the assured votes could be bought as well. If one side thought up a way to buy the other sides’ assured votes, without balking at the

22 Chapter 4 high price, it would significantly affect the balance of the power in the election. An election reached a feverish pitch if one camp managed to buy the other’s assured votes. Judging from the villagers’ committee elections of 2011, each campaign team could generally anticipate their votes down to the single digits. Third, due to the heavy capital investments by the campaigning camps, their extensive mobilization, and the prosperous local economy, the election campaign thoroughly revived all kinds of connections (guanxi 关系)—​those of consanguinity, ancestry, kinship, friendship, schooling, business, shared interests, and so on—​through the efforts of mobilized campaign staff. All of these connections were tested by the lure of huge bribes. This huge mobilization power during elections could be seriously destructive. When each and every election put all kinds of relationships to the test, they were destroyed. After an election, the villages became wastelands of human feeling. Once a candidate became a village cadre, he or she naturally believed there was no obligation to serve the people, considering that the position had been paid for. In fact, because of the vote-​buying, he or she would be looking at recovering the money spent on the election using their new position, but even if that were to fail, it would not matter much, since he or she was rich to begin with, and spending money on the election was a matter of prestige. Of course, given that village cadres were elected through vote-​buying, no one believed the myth anymore that becoming a village cadre was so grand and glorious. After all, they were still human beings and had to look after their interests; they could not do everything according to principles from above. Therefore, when they discussed issues and made decisions during the meetings of the villagers’ committee and village party branch committee (i.e., the two villagers’ committees, or cun liangwei 村两委), they could no longer do as they had in the past, when decisions were made according to the directives of people higher up, or based on their vision for village development, or guided by the ideal of serving the people—​and no one was making appeals in the name of justice or fairness any more. Instead, all of the decisions were made by the village party secretary and village head, based on the principle that whoever spends the most money in the election has the greatest voice. There is a side-​effect to a fiercely contested election—​a power struggle between two factions. The Zhujia village head who had spent more than 10 million yuan to win the election naturally wanted to dominate the decision-​ making in village affairs, but the village Party secretary would not let him. In the conflict between the two sides, the government could not remove the village head from office, so it removed the village Party secretary. However, even with the appointment of a new village Party secretary, the same conflict arose, leading to the removal of this new village Party secretary. Even after the third

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change of village Party secretary, the matter remained unresolved. While the town government could do nothing to remove the village head, the opposition could petition higher levels of government, alleging that the village head had an illegally built residence, and so on. Upon investigation, the village head’s residence, worth millions of yuan, was demolished. Over in Liugao Village (刘皋村), another village head suffered the same fate when his three-​million-​ yuan residence was torn down. In other cases, constant conflicts in village affairs even led to the collapse of the factories of elected village heads. 2

The Motivation for Vote-​Buying

Why was vote-​buying so common in Nanxi Town and in almost all of the villages in H province? The thousands of large and small enterprises in Nanxi Town is an indication of the economic density of this place, and it is reflected in five areas: (1) personal wealth, (2) rising local land and real estate prices as a result of the developed economy, (3) a high degree of connectivity among economic entities, (4) significant production, which is attached to economic density, and (5) the link between economic density and government departments. Simply put, a highly developed economy will have its value attached in each of these areas, and in all likelihood the emergence of vote-​buying has a certain relationship to each. 2.1 Nanxi Town has a developed economy and a large number of factories that developed from family workshops. Even today, the vast majority of them are still family workshops. They start when a peasant buys a machine and begins manufacturing at home. As the scale of production expands, they gradually build a factory on their rural homestead (zhaijidi 宅基地 [roughly equivalent to the “footprint” of the peasant’s house and sheds—​trans.]). The expansion of a factory on a homestead can reach preposterous levels. Because the economy is thriving, and there are plenty of migrant workers coming in, a peasant can profit even without running a factory by leasing out their houses. Thus, in Nanxi Town, homesteads have become scarce resources, and villagers put strong demands on homestead planning indicators. However, the distribution of these homestead planning indicators is basically up to the village cadres. Economic development brings a demand for non-​agricultural land, which can generate great profits. Whether this demand is met through land expropriation or by illegal construction on agricultural land, village cadres have a role to play.

24 Chapter 4 Hence, one of the most important motivating factors for vote-​buying was the ability to profit from managing the allocation of land resources. The most serious cases of vote-​buying in 2011 took place in Zhujia and Sanjiang Villages—​which were precisely the ones that were quickest to expropriate agricultural land. Land expropriation by the government needs the active cooperation of village cadres, and generally there is a tacit understanding that the government will reward the cadres—​most often with a specially authorized plot of construction land that may be worth as much as a million yuan. Furthermore, since both land use and land ownership are changed in the process of land expropriation, many interests are involved, so that the village cadres, who specifically control the work of expropriating land, have plenty of room to make a profit. In other words, vote-​buying was related first of all to the opportunity for village cadres to make a profit. The more resources belonged to village collectives, the fuzzier property rights became, and in turn, the more that village cadres could derive private gains, and the more severe vote-​buying in the villages became. Village collective resources mainly mean capital, resources, and assets, called the “three capitals (sanzi 三资).” In view of the chaos in the management of the “three capitals,” H province began to pay more attention to cleaning up and managing it. Both village and town officials in Nanxi Town claimed that the standard of management of the “three capitals” was greatly elevated, which lowered the probability of village cadres gaining profit by exploiting the ambiguities of collective property rights. This implied that the opportunities of rent-​seeking by village cadres had decreased. Because of this, officials at both the town and village levels believed that the village elections in 2014 would not involve the kind of vote-​buying as had occurred in 2011, when more than ten million yuan could be spent in a single election. In fact, H province adopted a zero-​tolerance policy toward vote-​buying, and indeed, no vote-​buying was apparent in the 2014 village elections of Nanxi Town. Whether the “three capitals” are well-​managed or not, economic development cannot dispense with the expropriation of rural collective farmland for conversion into state-​owned construction land, the process of land expropriation requires the assistance of village cadres, and there is a tacit agreement that village cadres who render that assistance will be compensated in other ways. In other words, vote-​buying is more severe in villages where more land is being expropriated. The foregoing may be summed up in two points. Vote-​buying becomes more severe (1) when the management of village collective resources is more

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ill-​defined, and (2) when there are more opportunities for turning collective resources into cash. 2.2 There are many other reasons for vote-​buying apart from the profits, otherwise it cannot be satisfactorily explained. In Nanxi Town, virtually none of the village cadres who won their positions through vote-​buying recouped their investments (this does not at all affect the conclusion above, that the more money village cadres can gain, the more severe the vote-​buying). However, virtually all of them wanted to run for re-​election, and continued to spend their money for the purpose. The second rationale for vote-​buying is that only the wealthy, the moneyed, and the entrepreneurs have the capacity to buy votes in order to become village cadres, and by becoming a cadre, there is much to be gained for their enterprises. In other words, even though they could not recover the money spent in the election, their identity as village cadres would open up other channels for them to recoup their investments. Since most enterprises in Nanxi Town started as family workshops, most do not adhere to standards—​a tendency that is visible in two respects. First, most enterprises were built on land before approval was granted, i.e., they were illegally constructed. Second, tax evasion is ubiquitous. By becoming a village cadre, one has more opportunity to establish rapport with various government departments, thus reducing the possibility of being investigated. Our field research has verified the existence of such phenomena. However, counterexamples do exist. For instance, the village heads of Zhujia and Liugao Villages, who obtained their positions through vote-​buying, offended a number of villagers, who then reported them to the government. These village heads suffered economic losses amounting to several million yuan, while all the other unelected entrepreneurs escaped unscathed. That is, in Nanxi Town, at least, entrepreneurs’ worries about being investigated for illegal construction or tax evasion had not reached the point that they felt they had to buy an election in order to defend themselves. Just imagine how high-​profile it is to use more than 10 million yuan to buy votes! Consequently, the third reason for vote-​buying was that, in Nanxi Town, where there is high economic density, high industrial correlation, and infinite business opportunities, those who bought votes to become village cadres would gain more political capital and social reputation than ordinary entrepreneurs, and this would give their business an arm up on the competition.

26 Chapter 4 This may be the most important reason, because a village cadre’s range of activities and contact base is much broader. In a place like Nanxi Town, where entrepreneurs are concentrated, ordinary entrepreneurs are often ignored, but if an entrepreneur has the title of a village cadre, his or her reputation is enhanced, easily surpassing that of ordinary entrepreneurs, and he or she gains more business opportunities. Consider, for example, the Nanxi Village Party secretary. As soon as he was elected, he handed over the management of his enterprise to his wife, who had only a grade school education but could manage the enterprise well. Why could she handle it so well? Of course, “women can hold up half the sky (funü neng ding banbian tian 妇女能顶半边天),” but there was also the great public appeal and popularity of her husband as a village Party secretary. His appeal could be seen in their son’s wedding banquet, where more than 200 tables were needed to accommodate all of their friends or business associates. Since the complementarity of enterprises in Nanxi Town is quite high, it became quite easy for his company to get processing orders from other, larger companies in Nanxi Town. 2.3 Besides economic gain, there were other reasons for vote-​buying in Nanxi Town. Nanxi Town has a prosperous economy and many wealthy people. In a place like this where the rich gather, money alone is not enough for someone who wants to have a good reputation, a meaningful life, “face,” and an interesting experience. Becoming a village cadre can be considered a kind of self-​ realization that differentiates one from the ordinary rich. One is more or less empowered, one can show up on public occasions, and become a part of the core Nanxi Town celebrity circle where the political and economic realms are one and where government officials and businessmen meet. The more money one has, using it to achieve a meaningful life and show one’s unique value is no longer difficult. Therefore, running in an election is a means of seeking new thrills and a more colorful life. For instance, Lu Jianxin in Luge Village maintained his hardware store and had no wish to expand it, though it was already of such a scale that it was easy to keep it going, and a stable annual profit of several million yuan seemed enough. Lu claimed that even if he were making more money, there would be no one to inherit it, because he had two daughters. He was not perturbed by the loss of hundreds of thousands of yuan when campaigning for the 2011 election. He said that 800,000 to a million yuan or so was an affordable loss, and that of course he did not plan to recover that amount if elected village cadre. His aim was to prove his influence and popularity and to realize values in life that went beyond what money could buy.

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In this sense, excluding the consideration of all other interests, the wealthy in the more economically developed areas are more inclined to assert their existence and value by competing for village cadre positions. Value density produces significance density, and significance density can be expressed via competition for a scarce resource, such as, for example, participating for a village cadre position. There are fierce competitions besides those for village cadre positions. In 2011, Nanxi Town had an online “healthy baby” contest, with votes collected online. It turned out that the 200 participating parents fully mobilized their relatives and friends to vote, and some parents even engaged experts to organize voting from Internet cafés. In the end, so many votes were cast that the voting system crashed. For the same reason, other cultural and entertainment activities have seen huge rates of participation. Therefore, vote-​buying in Nanxi Town, or for that matter in villages throughout the country, cannot be attributed solely to the pursuit of economic interest, let alone corrupt gains. 3

A Consensus on Plutocratic Village Governance

How do local governments and villagers view vote-​buying? Nanxi Town’s economic density is inevitably manifested in a multitude of happenings—​in the way that various political and village affairs, clashes of interest, and all kinds of economic, social, political, and cultural events are always concentrated. In a place like Nanxi Town, which has a lot of economic vitality, the local government cannot be passive, for the villagers’ interests are constantly under adjustment. In this sense, it would be hard to be a passive, do-​nothing village cadre, but someone without working skills would simply not become a cadre. For instance, with rapid economic development, the government has to do a lot of planning and construction work, which entails land expropriation, demolition, and resettlement, and in turn, huge adjustments and redistributions of interests and profits. Nail households are certain to emerge. Without the cooperation of capable village cadres, all the government’s work would come to a standstill. For this reason, the government demands that powerful, capable people become village cadres. Meanwhile, villagers want to grab every opportunity to profit from a robust economy. They try all kinds of things, and that leads to various conflicts among them. The resolution of such conflicts requires the assistance of powerful village cadres.

28 Chapter 4 Which people can become this kind of powerful village cadre? In Nanxi Town, only the rich qualify. The greatest difference between them and government departments is that the latter have law enforcement power backed by national might. Government departments do not need to have deep pockets—​ they have the state monopoly on the legal use of violence. By contrast, village cadres are not backed by state violence, and the scope of their job is small, trivial, not very normative, and poorly defined. As a result, where village cadres have difficulty defining the zone where violence can be used, they have to rely on the power of non-​state sources to show their strength. Before the abolition of agricultural taxes, in order to collect agricultural taxes and enforce family planning, one method that cadres in the central and western regions of China would resort to was physical violence. This was how gangs and thugs were brought into the cadres’ teams. Nowadays Nanxi Town can dispense with these thugs because the rich can do the job with their wealth. Armed with wealth and brains, they can say to an unreasonable nail household, “We can win over you not only in an argument but also in a fight.” This “fight” does not mean physical violence, but to the pressure that can be exerted on nail households through the village cadres’ massive personal networks. They can even coerce the relatives of a nail household who are working in their factories to break off ties with the nail household. The vast resources that wealthy village cadres have are not only capability but also power. It is these resources that enable them to accomplish difficult things. Thus, in prosperous Nanxi Town, what the government needs are capable and powerful village cadres, and the rich fit the bill. As far as the villagers are concerned, they welcome the rich who serve as village cadres because they have the capability to deal with various conflicts they themselves might encounter, and are strong and capable enough to overpower nail households, build public facilities and services, and maintain order in the village. In this way, those who are not rich could never dream of becoming village cadres. Since the cadres must be rich, ordinary villagers wonder what could be wrong with vote-​buying if they can get a bit of money out of it. The two outcomes from all of this was that plutocratic village governance became irreversible, and in the villages, politics became non-​existent. 4

Villages Dominated by Wealth and Power

If all of the village cadres are rich, will there be situations in which they show ruthlessness in their pursuit of wealth, or in which they are in opposition to the government?

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Our field trips to Nanxi Town showed that wealthy village cadres were highly unlikely to oppose the government. The government has welcomed them as village cadres and closed an eye on vote-​buying. It has been many years since they replaced the traditional village cadres. Many of the current village Party branch secretaries had become village heads previously via vote-​buying, then joined the Party before competing for the position of village Party branch secretary. Furthermore, most of the wealthy village cadres even feared the town Party branch secretary (zhenwei shuji 镇委书记). For instance, when the village head of Zhujia Village—​the one who had spent over 10 million yuan to buy votes—​met the town Party branch secretary, he was so nervous that he could not utter a single word. Why are wealthy village cadres so afraid of the government? Because virtually all of the rich run their own businesses, which are highly dependent on the government, which holds the highest authority. Moreover, these enterprises, virtually all of them, are engaged in some illegality—​illegal occupation of land, tax evasion, environmental pollution, and so on—​and any investigation by the government would be disastrous for them. In a sense, the government is still the most capable force for controlling wealthy village cadres. As a result, in an economically developed area such as Nanxi Town, a strong alignment has emerged between a powerful wealthy class and a powerful local government. One outcome of this phenomenon is the exclusion of ordinary villagers, who comprise the largest group in Nanxi Town. The systems for villagers’ autonomy of governance and village elections took their own paths, quite at variance from what we had in the past usually imagined they would be.

chapter 5

How the Village Cadres of Southern Jiangsu Province Became Mobile

1

During summer vacation of 2016, when I did field research in Wangting Town, Suzhou City (苏州市望亭镇), I found an interesting phenomenon. Village cadres, who should have come from their own villages, had become “mobile officials,” who were deployed throughout the town. Interestingly, this was not an individual case, but a general phenomenon. Why had Suzhou’s village cadres become mobile? It is a question worth discussing. According to regulations, China implements village autonomy at the village level, and the villagers’ committee is formed and elected by villagers who have the qualifications to vote. Candidates for the villagers’ committee should also be qualified voters. Therefore, village cadres should be selected from among villagers in their own village. However, village Party branch secretaries can be appointed or dismissed by the higher-​level Party branch, so there is the practice of having the first Party branch secretary assigned by the higher level. The arrangements for village cadres in Wangting Town makes full use of the system that allows the upper-​level Party branch to appoint and dismiss village Party branch secretaries. In 2003, the 18 villages in Wangting Town were merged into seven villages, resulting in a surplus of capable village cadres. To appease them, the town government arranged for some of the younger and more capable leading village cadres to work in other villages. For example, arrangements were made for Xu Chunxing (许春兴), the village head of Xinhang Village (新杭村), to work as the Deputy Secretary of Siwang Village (四旺村). In 2009, he was transferred to the position of Director-​cum-​Secretary of Hexi Community (鹤溪社区), and in 2014, he was transferred back to Hejiajiao Village (何家角村) as village Party branch secretary. We say “transferred back” to Hejiajiao Village because he had been Director of Yuhang Village (余杭村) when it merged with Hejiajiao. After the town government had set a precedent by arranging and transferring village cadres in 2003, it soon became a routinized practice. Village cadres were not only transferred between villages, but also between towns and villages. My field trip coincided with the village cadres’ transfers in Wangting

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_006

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Town, mainly the transfers of village Party branch secretaries, followed shortly by the village head election. Thus the Hejiajiao Village head was transferred to Yinghu Village (迎湖村) to become the village Party branch secretary; the Hexi Community secretary was sent to Xianglu Village (项路村) to become its secretary; the director of the Town Civil Affairs Office was deployed as village Party branch secretary in Zhaiji Village (宅基村); the Xianglu village head became the director of the Town Comprehensive Management Office; the official for the university student village in the Town Office of Party and Government Affairs became the village Party branch deputy secretary in Yinghu Village; and a cadre in the Town’s Labor Management Office was transferred to work as a Zhaiji Village Party branch committee member (zhiwei weiyuan 支委委员). Almost every village had village cadres coming from the town government or stations as an exchange. In Zhaiji Village, there were a total of nine village cadres, and among them, there were seven on the village Party branch committee, seven on the villagers’ committee, and five had alternating appointments, i.e., they were on both the village Party branch committee and villagers’ committee. In addition to village cadres on the two committees, there were “line cadres” (tiaoxian ganbu 条线干部), appointed by upper-​level government through vertical lines of authority (tiao), based on functional divisions such as education and environment. Most line cadre positions were also filled by the village cadres from the two committees, as a part-​time responsibility. In recent years, the recruitment of line cadres in villages has been unified and mainly conducted by the town government, which basically has full control of the appointment of village cadres, an exact replica of the practice in Shanghai. According to the rules of Wangting Town, the leading village cadres should not be re-​elected after they reach 58  years old. Some of them are placed in honorary positions (xuzhi 虚职), and others may be transferred to take charge of town stations or enterprises. Upon hitting 60 years of age, they retire and enjoy the same retirement benefits as the town-​recruited cadres. The 58-​year-​old village Party branch secretary in Xingeng Village (新梗村) was thus transferred to become Secretary of the agricultural industrial park, and when he retired two years later, he received a salary equivalent to that of town Party secretaries. In other words, judging from the field study in Wangting Town, the village-​ level cadres in Suzhou City had already changed from being local to mobile, and their appointments, dismissals, and deployment were entirely in the control of the town and township governments. The villagers’ committee elections were no more than going through the motions (zou ge guochang 走个过场), a procedure deemed legal. But why did the Suzhou village cadres become mobile?

32 Chapter 5

2

One major factor was that peasants in Suzhou City were gradually cutting their connections to the land. In China’s land system, rural land was collectively owned, and “means of production and products of labor were owned by three levels of collective organizations—​communes, production brigades, and production teams (sanji suoyou 三级所有),” with “the production team as the basic unit for everyday production and management (duiwei jichu 队为基础).” Nowadays the production team is the villagers’ group (cunmin xiaozu 村民小组). Suzhou City is an economically developed area. When township enterprises developed rapidly in the 1980s, peasants gradually became detached from the farmland as they left the fields for local factory work. In time, the village collectives gradually integrated this farmland. Entering the present century, development reached a point where Suzhou’s peasants were no longer farming, and for a time they were even called “landless peasants (shidi nongmin 失地农民).” Peasants who reached the age of 60 receive 810 yuan of “urban insurance (chengbao 城保)” per month, which was far higher than the benefits from the “new rural social endowment insurance (xinnongbao 新农保).” In other words, peasants exchanged their farmland for “urban insurance” when they returned their land contract management rights to the village collective. Although the current collective income gap between different villages is great, on closer examination the difference is related to how much village land has been leased out for building factories, housing, and enterprises, or to how much rural collective construction land a village has. Before the state implemented strict land use controls in 2008, all of the villages in Suzhou had been vigorously attracting commerce and investment, and as long as someone came with a project, the village would lease out the land, let it go into operation, and collect rental income from it. This kind of income had nothing to do with the input of labor from peasants and little to do with village cadres’ abilities. It was considered a kind of non-​real estate asset (fucai 浮财), something for which peasants usually showed little concern. This is why virtually none of the peasants objected to the integration of villages in Wangting Town in 2003. The town government, following the proximity principle (xianglin yuanze 相邻原则) and the fat-​lean pairing principle (feishou dapei yuanze 肥瘦搭配原则), intentionally integrated villages with less land rental income (i.e., those with less collective operational construction land but more arable land) with those with more land rental income (i.e., those with less arable land). Moreover, in the past, village collectives’ rental income was virtually never distributed in the form of dividends, even though the towns demanded in the past few years that village collectives pay out dividends of no more than a

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mere 5 percent from this rental income to their members (which would have amounted to only 100 to 200 yuan per person). Village collective income is used legally only when done according to the regulations stipulated by higher levels of government, so virtually all of it is used for various upgrading projects as designated by the higher levels. Although these upgrading projects have greatly improved the conditions of the peasants’ production and living environment, in reality the peasants have difficulty relating these improvements to their own personal interests, let alone relate them to the collective income of their village. Moreover, the higher levels of government channel various special funds to subsidize villages with too little collective income, but villages with a lot of income are required to use their own financial resources. The town government is fully aware of the financial situation of every village collective as it is in custody of the money and its manager. Villagers have no objection to this arrangement since controlling the income and expenditure of a village is complicated and the amounts are very large, and they lack the ability and training to control it. The strict institutional rules and managerial regulations of the higher levels are enough to deter misbehavior by village cadres. It is precisely the weak link between villagers and land as well as the collective income on that land that has given the village governments within Suzhou City the power to transfer village cadres, turning them gradually into mobile cadres. Meanwhile, as peasants in Suzhou are gradually becoming alienated from their villages, they directly face the state’s political authority at the grassroots level, including government-​paid line cadres sent to villages to deal with various village affairs for the peasants, while the village cadres are gradually becoming more like urban community social workers. Therefore, villagers are not particularly concerned about who the village cadres are, but of course, township and town governments must also manage village cadres effectively within the institutional framework.

3

The fact that village cadres have become mobile has also triggered a change in the current logic of village autonomous governance, toward a logic of administration. In Suzhou City, the change from autonomous governance to administrative governance is consistent with the urban-​rural integration and rural integration emphasized by the city government. Simply put, in the process of Suzhou’s economic development, the local governments gradually provided full coverage of infrastructure facilities and public services for both urban

34 Chapter 5 and rural areas. In the past, they did not use the collective income from village collective land ownership and collective operational construction land to exacerbate the differences in the dividends infrastructure facilities among different villages, but to make the necessary supplement of funding toward building Suzhou into a beautiful city. In this way, the earlier village collective ownership of land did not function as a bulwark against grassroots-​level political authority—​it was instead used by grassroots-​level political authority as an existing resource, to be adjusted and used for economic development.

4

In the current urbanization process, peasants in the eastern coastal developed areas are no longer engaged in agriculture, and villages are now fully industrialized. Suzhou City had also proposed urban-​rural integration long ago. Hence, to continue to emphasize stimulating the enthusiasm and initiative of peasants to achieve village autonomy through self-​education, self-​management, self-​supervision, and self-​service, and to go on using a primarily democratic approach wherein villagers express their preferences for public goods, and village resources are then mobilized to satisfy those demands for public goods—​ such an approach has clearly become inconsistent with the reality of areas like Suzhou City. On the other hand, if peasants were to raise various interest appeals based on their collective land ownership and form rentier groups (shili jituan 食利集团), this would give rise to the formation of various hardened interest groups (tuweizi 土围子, literally “fortified villages”), which would affect urban-​rural integration and political social development. Such hardened interest groups are commonly found in urban villages (chengzhong cun 城中村) and villages in the Pearl River Delta region. In this sense, the emergence of mobile village cadres in Suzhou and the transformation of village governance from autonomous to administrative governance have a great heuristic meaning in the developed areas for village governance and even regional governance, and these developments are in the right direction. Suzhou’s collective economy has not been transformed into the collectives’ ability to act autonomously. It has not formed the villages’ subjectivity and independence, nor has it formed any opposition or force against grassroots political authority, and as a result, it has not produced any local tyrants (tu huangdi 土皇帝) or hardened interest groups. These developments are related to the relative alienation of peasants from their land and the strategy of the

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grassroots government to integrate village governance and make it more administrative, and to make village cadres mobile. As for the land system, rural land in southern Jiangsu is under collective ownership, so no peasant regards collective land resources as their own, unlike peasants in the Pearl River Delta Region, who have gradually come to believe that collective land is quantifiable as private land. There, recent practices, particularly the joint stock cooperative system, the quantification of equity, and the separation of politics from economy—​which had first been discussed by various theorists—​gave peasants in the Pearl River Delta Region the mistaken notion that land is privately owned, and this in turn gave rise to various hardened interest groups. Southern Jiangsu is now nominally working with a joint stock cooperative system, but the land is still under public ownership and collective ownership, and this is the institutional basis that enables the grassroots authorities in Suzhou City to make village cadres mobile.

chapter 6

Plutocratic Village Governance in Mei County, Shaanxi Province

1

In May 2016, during a short-​term field trip to Hengqu Township, Mei County (眉县横渠镇), Shaanxi, I successively interviewed the village Party branch secretaries of six villages in Hengqu Town. The relationship between the economic income of the village Party branch secretaries and village governance deserves discussion. Hengqu Town, located at the foot of the Qin Mountains (秦岭) and on the south bank of the Wei River (渭河), has very good water conservancy conditions and a relatively moist climate, which is suitable for seedling growth. Currently, the main industry of Hengqu Town is growing kiwis and cultivating seedlings. It has 24 villages, 58,000 people and 86,000 mu of farmland, two-​ thirds of which is used for growing kiwi; more than 10,000 mu of land is used to grow seedlings. Although kiwis and seedlings are both considered cash crops, the investment is rather high, and likewise the risk, especially when the market price fluctuates dramatically. However, the average profit is far higher than growing grain. Per capita arable land is 1.5 mu in Hengqu Township. Since most of the arable land is used to grow cash crops, the local peasants earn more than most grain-​growers. Mei County is still a typical central-​western agricultural area with relatively few opportunities for jobs and profit in secondary and tertiary industries. However, kiwis and seedlings have comparatively high value-​added and comparatively high initial investment and high post-​sale, so that there are profit-​ making opportunities surrounding their production. This has given rise to the formation of a group of wealthy people who earn rather high incomes from their villages. There are generally five types of peasants with different levels of income in the villages of Mei County. The first type consists of the very rich who run enterprises, big or small, outside the village. Their income mainly comes from outside the village, outside the county, or even the province. Their family annual income can vary between several hundred thousand yuan and even more than 10 million yuan. There are

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not many rich households like these—​only about seven, eight, or more than 10 households per village. The second type consists of peasants who run enterprises inside the village. They might provide pre-​or post-​agricultural production services to peasants, or they might be large kiwi or seedling producers, or perhaps proprietors of afforestation companies. The number of peasant households in this category is also limited, accounting for approximately five percent of the total households. Their annual income ranges between several hundred thousand and more than a million yuan. The third type includes half-​industrial labor, half-​farming (bangong bangeng 半工半耕) households. These are households with young adults who work as migrant workers or do business in the cities, while their elderly parents stay in the home village to grow cash crops. Since the profit from cash crops is good and the income from working as migrant workers in the cities can also be good, their annual family income can easily reach 70,000 or 80,000 yuan. These account for 70 percent of the households in the village, making them the majority. The fourth type includes households that depend on income only from either working as migrant workers or farming. These account for about 15 percent of the total households in the village. Their annual family income is around 50,000 yuan. The fifth type includes households that lack a labor force and do not earn enough income as migrant workers or peasants. Their annual family income is only 20,000 to 30,000 yuan or even as little as 10,000 to 20,000 yuan. The main reason for their low income is that the primary labor force in the family is sick and unable to work. These constitute only five percent of the total households in the village—​a small percentage—​and most receive poverty alleviation assistance.

2

I interviewed six village Party branch secretaries, five of whom have their own businesses: The Gujiabao Village (古家堡村) Party Branch Secretary 2.1 Born in 1961, he has an annual income of about 500,000 yuan. He operates five refrigerated warehouses for kiwi with an investment of 130,000 yuan for each. Each refrigerated warehouse generates approximately 100,000-​yuan gross income per year. He is also a shareholder in several other refrigerated

38 Chapter 6 warehouses. He once ran a materials factory in Qinghai Province. His family is one of the richest households in the village, with family savings of several million yuan. He became the village Party branch secretary in 2008, and became a state cadre in a government-​affiliated institution (guojia ganbu [shiyebian] 国家干部 [事业编], i.e., a cadre on the state payroll) in 2014 while retaining his village Party branch secretary position. The Gucheng Village (古城村) Party Branch Secretary 2.2 Born in 1962, he became a village cadre in 2006 and village Party branch secretary in 2014. He began seedling cultivation in 1994 and is now a contractor for 55 mu of seedlings, generating annual revenue in excess of 200,000 yuan. He said that of the 24 village Party branch secretaries throughout the town, virtually none has an annual income less than 100,000 yuan. Village Party branch secretaries who are poor simply cannot command villagers’ respect. 2.3 The Hengqu Village Party Branch Secretary Born in 1960, he became a village cadre in 1997 and village Party branch secretary in 2012. He cultivates 4 mu of black plums and two mu of kiwi. He also has a storefront in town that retails agricultural materials. Annual income is 100,000 yuan. 2.4 The Fengchi Village (凤池村) Party Branch Secretary Born in 1957, he runs a small sealing company that employs three to five workers. However, operating the company has become more and more difficult. The family’s annual income was around 100,000 yuan. 2.5 The Sunjiayuan Village (孙家园村) Party Branch Secretary He cultivates ten mu of seedlings, seven of kiwi and seven of plums, and he has an afforestation team, but its annual income has been unstable. In 2015, this team churned out a net income of between 500,000 and 600,000 yuan. He has been an afforestation contractor since 2009, but now he has let his son take charge of most of the team’s business. 2.6 The Shimali Village (石马李村) Party Branch Secretary Born in 1970, he became village cadre in 2001 and village Party branch secretary in 2011. Before 2004, his main crop was chili peppers, but starting in 2008, he went into seedling cultivation. He now has 13 mu of seedlings, which gave him an annual income of between 80,000 and 100,000 yuan. Obviously, the income of these six village Party branch secretaries exceeds the average income of the local population, and in some cases far surpass the

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average income of the local peasants. It is entirely reasonable to categorize them as rich. Of course, compared to their counterparts in the coastal developed areas, the rich village cadres in Mei County may be described as only slightly richer than ordinary peasants. In the coastal developed areas, village cadres generally have businesses with a sizable workforce, and their annual income is often several million yuan or even more than ten million yuan. There are also peasants from Mei county who left their villages to run businesses and became big bosses. However, the peasants who become big bosses generally never return to the village to become village cadres.

3

Why do the rich become village cadres? There are two reasons. First, they can afford it, and second, only rich village cadres are able to voice their opinions, settle issues, and handle people with firmness. In 2015, Mei county further increased the salary of the main village cadres from 16,000 yuan to 26,000 yuan per year, or 2,200 yuan per month, while it increased the salary of deputy village cadres from 13,000 yuan to 15,000 yuan per year. The rationale for the increase was that Mei County, like everywhere else in the country, emphasized that village cadres must be in the office every day, observe office hours (zuoban 坐班), and be professionalized. In earlier years, the annual salary of only 16,000 yuan, or slightly more than 1,000 yuan per month, was too far below the income that one could obtain by leaving the village to work in a factory or run a business. The village cadres were generally capable people from the village, while the incomes of those who ventured out would definitely not be any lower than that of the average villager. Before village cadres were strictly required to be on duty in the office, they would continue to run their own businesses at the same time and gain from both sides. Now that they had to be in the office, the job of village cadre was no longer part-​time. Theoretically, they would no longer be able to go to the city to do business or get the opportunity to derive various forms of income within their own villages. Therefore, the village cadres say that even the increased salary of 26,000 yuan is still too low, since they could easily earn 30,00 to 40,000 yuan if they were to leave the village to work or do business. Thus, the first reason why the rich become village cadres is that only the rich can afford to do so. The village cadres must be young, capable people who have extra income beyond what they earn as village cadres, and their salaries cannot be lower than what the local peasants are earning by working

40 Chapter 6 or running businesses outside of the village, or else they would be the lowest income earners in the village. Capable villagers are willing to become village cadres and keep tabs on profit-​earning opportunities in the village only if those opportunities can bring them higher returns than working outside of the village. The six interviews above showed that almost without exception the party secretaries had opportunities within their villages of gaining profit, and that these opportunities gave them far higher returns than if they were simply to cultivate their own contracted land. Moreover, they had higher marketability, scale, and industry presence. Since village cadres are part-​timers who continue to run their own businesses, they can better manage profit-​gaining opportunities from their positions. More importantly, the profits they gain in the village are compatible with their village cadre positions, and perhaps as village cadres they can better grasp those opportunities. Whether they are engaged in large-​scale planting or secondary or tertiary industry, once their businesses are on the right track, they can hand over the management to their wives or sons, while they use their broad social networks to look for new markets, find new business, and smooth relationships in order to improve their profits from within the village. Precisely because being a village cadre and obtaining profit from the village are mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive, the job is inevitably taken up by those who can afford it and who can see the benefits accruing to the position (I am not referring to corrupt means). As a result, a selective affinity relationship has been established between village cadres and the wealthy who have businesses and profit-​gaining opportunities in the village. The wealthy, capable people who can gain profit from the village and willingly become village cadres will also be better able to solve problems in the village. The Gucheng Village Party branch secretary said, “Whoever becomes a village Party secretary or village head is a capable person who will do what he says. The ordinary masses do not want to offend village cadres, but they are also very snobbish—​if a Party secretary is incapable or poor, doing the work of the masses, then no one would listen to him.” Thus, to become a village cadre, one must have other chances within the village of gaining profit; one cannot depend solely on the salary to support oneself and one’s family. Without other sources of income in the village, one cannot become a village cadre. Those who are not wealthy cannot become a village Party branch secretary. As a result, only the rich can be village Party secretaries, and only rich party Secretaries can voice their opinions, settle issues, and handle people with firmness.

Plutocratic Village Governance in Mei County



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4

A “rich village cadre” refers mainly to a rich person who becomes a main village cadre, like village Party branch secretary and village head. In my field trip to central Shandong in May 2016, I  found that the main village cadres were also wealthy. Of course, so were most of the main village cadres in Zhejiang Province. Both central Shandong and Zhejiang are developed areas in the east where there are plenty of opportunities for making a fortune. Villages in Zhejiang have developed private economies that have provided the sources of income for their village cadres, while villages in Maqiao Town in central Shandong have tons of profit-​gaining opportunities in secondary and tertiary industries. The wealthy who have benefited from these secondary and tertiary industries have relatively high incomes, even an order of magnitude higher than those of village cadres in Mei County. These wealthier people rarely need to work their way up from ordinary village cadres to leading village cadres. Usually, after they have made their fortunes from secondary and tertiary industries, the rich here are directly elected by ordinary villagers (who may be described as wealthy and elite) as leading village cadres. In Mei County, however, the leading village cadres are generally promoted from among the ordinary village cadres, and the village Party secretaries have generally served a longer stint as ordinary village cadres. This is related to the fact that the village cadres in Mei County are not big bosses—​just capable people with comparatively better economic conditions in the village, people who have found profit-​making opportunities there. Mei County’s prosperity, based on cash crops, provides the village cadres all kinds of profit-​making opportunities from the sale of agricultural materials, cold storage services, production link services, transportation of fruits and seedlings, and so on. In central Shandong, the leading village cadres are generally rich people who have little experience as ordinary village cadres. They are not concerned about their cadre salaries, but want to use their village cadre positions to augment their own businesses’ opportunities for making profits. Because village cadres’ salaries are so low, ordinary villagers with few other sources of income are unwilling and unable to seek the position, though a few elderly villagers or villagers who can still see to their own businesses may still be elected as general village cadres. In Xishi Village (西史村), Maqiao Town, the office is manned by the Village Clerk (cunwenshu 村文书) and Director of Women’s Affairs (funü zhuren 妇女主任). The former is rather advanced in age and no longer the main source of labor in his family, and the latter is a village doctor who, by the nature of her work, originally had to remain at her clinic, so if she

42 Chapter 6 now does office hours as the Director of Women’s Affairs, it will not conflict with her being at the clinic every day. In Mei County, the leading village cadres are also rich people, but the ordinary village cadres may be ordinary peasants who farm their own contracted land. Only those ordinary village cadres who have found more profit-​making chances in the village and who have a higher family income than the average have the possibility of being promoted to one of the leading village cadre positions. The other ordinary village cadres still plant their own contracted land while doing their part-​time work as village cadres, earning an average income. These general village cadres are usually not young, because young peasants can earn far higher income by working in the cities than by earning a monthly salary as village cadres. The current requirement for village cadres to stay in their offices deprives them of other earning opportunities, so that young peasants are even more unlikely to become village cadres. More and more of the village cadres are selected from among peasants who either have no working opportunities in the cities or have withdrawn from agricultural production.

5

Most agricultural areas in China’s central and western regions that focus on grain production not only lack the profit-​making opportunities in secondary and tertiary industries found in the coastal developed areas, but also lack the kind of opportunities found in Mei County, where there is a host of opportunities in industries serving the cultivation of cash crops. Villages in those central and western agricultural areas thus lack the profit-​making opportunities that keep the rich in the villages, and those who have made a fortune by working or doing business in the cities will not return to their homes to become village cadres. In the central and western agricultural areas that focus on producing agricultural products, especially grain, for the masses, capable people who become village cadres are mainly those who can find profit-​making opportunities in the village—​the “middle peasants (zhongnong 中农),” who may, for example, use their land to engage in moderately large-​scale production or gain profit by providing agricultural machinery services. Although middle peasants do not have high incomes and are far from wealthy, the profit they gain from within the village might not be lower than the income of those working in cities. These young, capable middle peasants who gain economically and have social networks in their villages become the best choices for village cadres. However, if it is very difficult for these middle peasants to get away from their productive activities once they become village cadres, and if they must sit in the cadres’

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offices, they will not serve as cadres. Their pay as cadres can hardly be any greater than if they were to work somewhere in the cities.

6

The thriving cultivation of cash crops (such as kiwi, seedlings, and prunes) in Mei County, Shaanxi Province and the various related opportunities that have arisen to serve that industry have led to the formation of a group of people who have grown wealthy in their home villages. The members of this group of wealthy people become the ideal candidates for village cadres. As a result, Mei County has formed a special local pattern of plutocratic village governance. Beginning in the second half of 2014, Mei County has become increasingly stringent on the requirements of village cadres staffing the office during working hours and working on a full-​time basis. In 2015, the county also recognized the inadequacy of village cadres’ salaries and has raised it from 16,000 yuan to 26,000 yuan per year for the leading village cadres. However, the increase still is not enough to offset the losses that the village cadres would suffer by giving up their profit-​gaining opportunities. The strict requirement that village cadres remain in their offices deters rich village cadres from continuing in their positions, while ordinary village cadres are unable to support their families on a cadre’s salary. If this strict system continues, there are only two possible outcomes. First, because of the low salary, the village cadres’ position will be filled by a marginal labor force. Second, if a higher salary were offered in order to attract capable people to fill the full-​time village cadres’ positions, this would lead to questions about its affordability to the government, and whether it would even be necessary.

chapter 7

The Income of Village Cadres in Southern Jiangxi Province

1

When I was doing field research in L Town, in the south of Jiangxi Province, I met the 60-​year-​old head of the local agriculture machinery station, who was about to retire. He said he was the most highly paid cadre in town, with a gross annual income of nearly 50,000 yuan, or around 4,000 yuan per month, which surpassed the salary of the town Party secretary and the town head. Ordinary township and town cadres have monthly salaries of between 2,000 and 3,000 yuan, village Party secretaries are paid 1,300 yuan per month plus a performance bonus of 500 yuan, and ordinary village cadres are paid 200 yuan less than village Party brand secretaries, i.e., around 1,600 yuan per month. Clearly, compared to the 2,000–​3,000 yuan monthly salaries of town and township cadres, the 1,800-​yuan monthly salary of village cadres cannot be considered too low. But unlike the town and township cadres, village cadres are most concerned not about the low salary but about their lack of an old-​age security system. Town and township cadres are covered by “five social insurances and one housing fund (wuxian yijin 五险一金; i.e., endowment insurance, medical insurance, unemployment insurance, employment injury insurance, maternity insurance, and the Housing Provident Fund),” and after they retire, they can draw a pension, but village cadres have neither the “five social insurances and one housing fund” nor the pension. Moreover, in southern Jiangxi, township cadres’ salaries are indeed too low—​even lower than the wages of peasants who go to work in the cities. Generally speaking, village cadres are generally the elites of their respective villages. This is true especially for village Party secretaries, who must be powerful and well-​respected people. Under the current conditions of the market economy, village cadres must receive remuneration consistent with their input in village affairs. In the past, village cadres could not be disengaged from production. That is, they continued to work in agricultural production or family operations while performing their village cadre duties on a part-​time basis, so they received compensation for the lost work hours on the farm. In the vast majority of rural areas across China, the main income of peasants comes from working and doing business in the cities. Meanwhile, village cadres’ income

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from agricultural production is limited, and the compensation for lost work on their farms even more so, so they have to explore new ways to supplement their existing income. Because it is impossible for village cadres to leave their villages to work in the cities, their main channel for gaining extra income is to take advantage of every opportunity to make money from within the village. Or to put it another way, only those who can find opportunities in their own villages to gain profit can become village cadres.

2

I visited four villages in southern Jiangxi during the field trip. The income situations of the four village Party secretaries with whom I talked were very typical: The 52-​year-​old village Party secretary of Y village began his career as a village cadre in 1984 and has been village Party secretary since 1995. He was the most experienced village Party secretary interviewed during this field trip. His income came from leasing out a 50 mu navel orange orchard for 70,000 yuan per year; acting as a cement distributor for over 20 years, which earns him an annual income of 100,000 yuan; partnering with his brother-​in-​law in the trucking business, chiefly to transport cement, which gives him an annual income of several tens of thousands of yuan; co-​investing with another partner in the purchase of three excavators, from which he earns an annual bonus of more than 10,000 yuan; and operating a small brick factory. He also has a small supermarket, run by his wife, that draws an annual net income of 20,000 yuan; a print and film developing shop operated by his daughter-​in-​law; and an online store based in Hangzhou operated by his son. In total, his annual income is close to 500,000 yuan. The village Party secretary in L village, born in 1981, was a village cadre for 10 years before becoming the village Party secretary two years ago. The previous village Party secretary was removed due to strong opposition from villagers. The current village Party secretary has many income streams: he earns 7,000 to 8,000 yuan from cultivating two mu of white lotus (another one mu of rice he grows for his own use); 50,000 and 60,000 yuan per year from his co-​ investment with a partner on the purchase of an excavator; and several tens of thousands of yuan in annual dividends from his 300,000-​yuan co-​investment with a partner in a molding tool factory in Guangdong Province. From his pig farm, which he had for more than ten years, he has income from selling about

46 Chapter 7 100 pigs per year; his snake farm, however, had to close after losing money for a year, and his fish farm still has not earned anything after one year. He also runs an incense factory and helps his uncle with the distribution and sale of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Added together, the total income from his various ventures should exceed 200,000 yuan. Most of these ventures, especially the raising of pigs, are labor-​intensive. After becoming village Party secretary, he had to close his pig farm, since he was too squeezed for time to take care of the business. The P village Party secretary, born in 1964, became a village cadre in 1987 and village Party secretary in 1996. He was the second most experienced village Party secretary in the town. His main income comes from growing navel oranges, which alone gives him an annual income of over 500,000 yuan. His nearly 100 mu navel orange orchard makes him the largest navel orange grower in the village, even the whole town. He purchased four excavators with a few partners, but sold one of them in 2016 due to lack of business. His reinforced concrete business brings him more than 100,000 yuan in annual income. His wife runs a small shop, while his two sons live in the county seat, where one runs a shop selling mining machinery and accessories while the other is has a vehicle maintenance and repair business, together earning an annual income of more than 300,000 yuan. Discounting his two sons’ income, the village Party secretary in P village earns an annual income close to one million yuan. He is regarded as the richest person in his village. The village Party secretary in S village, who was born in 1985, was once a soldier. He started working in the villagers’ committee in 2010 and became village Party secretary in 2015. He worked as an insurance agent after his discharge from the army, but he quit after one year for lack of income. Then he opened a mobile communication shop in town. At first, the business was quite lucrative, giving him an income of almost 100,000 yuan a year, but it soon became unprofitable due to fierce competition. Eventually, in 2015, he had to sell it off at a low price. The returns from his contracted farmland, which is farmed mainly by his parents, are only enough to buy their daily necessities. His wife has no income and his son is about to enter school. He has hoped his son could receive better education but with little income, his family could not live a decent life. In 2010, he jointly purchased a plot of land with a friend to build a house in a suburb of Ganzhou City (赣州市), Jiangxi Province, at a total cost of 500,000 yuan; he is still paying off a loan of 330,000 yuan. Obviously, he can barely get by on a monthly income of only 1,800 yuan. He is frustrated by the fact that based on his young age and capability, he could easily be employed in government-​affiliated institutions

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via exams, and yet his family has to depend on loans for a basic living. In any case, his career as the village Party secretary will be a difficult one if he cannot find a better chance of earning income.

3

These four village Party secretaries’ experiences can be summarized as follows: First, village Party secretaries are usually local elites, and if they do not have enough income, they cannot continue as a Party secretary. Among the 16 villages I visited in my field trip, 13 of the village Party secretaries had a car. They said that without a car, they would simply be too embarrassed to serve as village Party secretary—​and these were villages in the mountainous areas of southern Jiangxi. Second, a village Party secretary without outside income has great difficulty keeping his position unless his child(ren) are already working and receiving an income, and he has already half-​retired from being his family’s main bread-​winner. Third, village Party secretaries’ income can only come from their own villages, since they cannot work or do business in cities. They use their spare time to engage in various kinds of business and do their best to find every possible chance of gaining profit. Fourth, village cadres who have found stable income opportunities in their villages not only can manage to do their jobs but also do it well, given their better economic conditions and resource advantages compared with those of ordinary villagers. Villagers will look down on poor village cadres. Fifth, village cadres who have made a fortune in their villages will be able to do a good job as village cadres. Meanwhile, the position can generate even more profit-​gaining opportunities within the village. For instance, since southern Jiangxi is an old center of revolutionary activity, and since many of these areas have made large investments in construction in recent years, most of the village Party secretaries saw opportunities in operating excavators. These village Party secretaries then always use their extensive personal networks and resources to find various construction projects requiring the use of excavators. In recent years, the adobe houses in southern Jiangxi’s old districts are being replaced with multi-​story residences, so the prospective profits for people in the concrete and rebar business are considerable. With their wide personal

48 Chapter 7 networks, village Party secretaries in the reinforced concrete business can connect with suppliers upstream while linking up with peasants downstream to make a profit. Sixth, some rural elites or middle peasants are able to capture money-​making opportunities within their villages without having to become migrant workers in cities. It is this group of people who make the best village cadre candidates. To put it in another way, the only village cadres competent enough to remain on the job are economic elites who have succeeded through their own hard work within their villages. Seventh, in recent years, village cadres’ work requirements have become more standardized, and they have become more professional. Recently, L town has started to require village cadres to stay in the office from Monday to Saturday; the county discipline inspection department conducts frequent random inspections and to a certain extent has implemented a one-​vote veto system. This has deterred village cadres from having other sources of income for lack of time, energy, and space. For example, L village’s Party secretary had to close his pig farm since he had to stay in the office. The strict working hours have deprived village cadres of outside profit-​making opportunities. Eighth, the imposition of standardized work requirements on village cadres has resulted in the withdrawal of the rural economic elite. The earlier close relationship between village cadres and “middle peasants” has ended. Ninth, the imposition of standardized work requirements on village cadres has led to more semi-​retired persons becoming village cadres. For instance, villagers who cannot work in cities or are physically (not intellectually) disabled are becoming village cadres. Alternatively, young people who have graduated but are for the time being unwilling to find work in the cities return home and take up the position of village cadre as a career transition. Such developments are not beneficial for village governance. Tenth, another approach would be to raise the salary levels of village cadres to those of township cadres, but even so, the village cadres would still have no old-​age pension guarantees. On the other hand, it would be unrealistic to include village cadres in the state cadre system, since the state cannot add so many persons to the state cadre system all at once. At the same time, the non-​professional nature of village cadres is directly related to their intermediary position between the state and the peasants: they provide a buffer zone between the two. The flexible selection

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and dismissal processes for village cadres is set to become an important institutional foundation in China for a long time to come. The single purpose of the discussion above is to demonstrate the importance of maintaining the semi-​standardized nature of village governance. Attempts to raise village cadres’ salaries and promote their professionalization at the same time are misguided.

chapter 8

The Salary and Professionalization of Village Cadres

1

During a summer vacation field trip to Keqiao District, Shaoxing City (绍兴柯桥区), Zhejiang Province, I was surprised to find that the salary of the leading village cadres there had reached as high as 80,000 yuan per year. Note here that I speak of village cadres’ salary, not their compensation for work-​loss. Keqiao District is currently promoting the formalization and professionalization of village administration and requires village cadres to stay in their office and show up and leave on time. Unlike their counterparts in Keqiao, however, the village cadres in other places in Shaoxing City, such as Zhuji (诸暨), Shengzhou (嵊州), and Xinchang (新昌), are still receiving a monthly work-​ loss compensation of slightly more than 1,000 yuan. Earlier, when I had done field research in Ninghai County, Ningpo City (宁波宁海县), I found that the village cadres there, especially those that had not yet become leading cadres, and including those who had been elected to their positions, received work-​ loss compensation of only around 2,000 and 3000 yuan per year, calculated on the basis of their receiving 100 yuan per item of delayed work. For village cadres in Taoyuan Subdistrict (桃源街道) in Ninghai County, the highest work-​loss compensation, plus bonus received from the Subdistrict for work completed, amounted to somewhat more than 20,000 yuan per year. In Diankou Town (店口镇), the most prosperous township in Zhuji City, village cadres’ salaries are higher than those in other places. Usually, the village Party branch secretary and village head there can earn as much as 30,000 yuan per year. However, Diankou Town does not require village Party branch secretaries and village heads to disengage from production. It does require the village clerk to do so and stay in the office; he receives work-​loss compensation of approximately 30,000 yuan per year. Historically, village cadres had never been professionalized or required to leave their work in production. We need not speak of the traditional, pre-​1949 period. After 1949, under the People’s Commune (renmin gongshe 人民公社) system, villages followed the three-​level system of collective ownership of the means of production in the commune, with ownership by production team (shengchan dui 生产队) as the basic unit; the next-​higher level was the production brigade (shengchan dadui 生产大队), which was a level equivalent to that of the administrative village (xingzheng cun 行政村) today. None of the cadres

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_009

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in production brigades and teams were removed from productive labor. Their income came from work points, like what the other members of the people’s communes were receiving. After the dissolution of the people’s commune system, village Party branch committees and villagers’ committees were established in the administrative villages; all of the members of the village Party branch committee and villagers’ committee are generally called village cadres. In some places there were also village-​level economic cooperative organizations (the village economic associations or cunjing lianshe 村经联社), but in the vast majority of places, village cadres mainly included the members of village Party branch committee and villagers’ committee, and the village Party secretary or village head concurrently served as the director of the village economic association. Village cadres worked part-​time, were allocated farmland for which they were responsible (i.e., contracted land or zeren tian 责任田), and were compensated for work-​loss on their farms, based on the demands of their jobs. Generally, the work-​loss compensation for village cadres was far less than the income they derived from farming their contracted land. In ordinary agricultural areas, before the great exodus of job-​or business-​seeking peasants to the cities, the main income of peasant households came from farming their contracted land; village cadres’ households had income from farming, plus compensation for work-​loss for serving as village cadres, so their household income ranked in the upper middle level within their villages. These village cadres were people who could speak up and get things done. In the 1990s, with China’s rapid economic development, a vast amount of agricultural labor transferred to secondary and tertiary industries. In the developed coastal areas, the villages themselves typically industrialized, so that local agricultural labor went into the local industrial and commercial sectors, and some of these peasants struck it rich when they became entrepreneurs within their villages. In China’s vast central and western regions, young adults who in large numbers went out from their villages to work in the cities or become entrepreneurs earned much higher incomes than those who continued to farm at home. Thus differences arose in village cadres’ work, depending on whether they lived in the developed coastal areas or in the central and western rural areas.

2

In the central and western rural areas, because young adults could obtain much higher incomes by working as migrant workers or businessmen in cities, while their aging parents continued to farm on their contracted farmlands, it

52 Chapter 8 became possible for peasant households to receive two income streams, one from farming, and one from working in the cities, which outstripped what they would earn if they were all to continue to farm. However, village cadres in the central and western regions cannot go out to work in the cities, so their income continues to come only from farming plus the work-​loss compensation, and generally, the compensation is far less than what migrant workers can bring home. Hence, ordinary peasant households with members working in the cities have higher incomes than village cadres’ households. Since the income of ordinary peasant households has become higher than that of village cadres’ households, they have become the poor families of their villages. The village cadres, as members of poor families, no longer can speak out and get things done, when villagers capable of the job from the beginning must be precisely the young elites who can speak out and get things done. However, these young elites pay a penalty for not working in the cities, so their families become the poor families of their village. This situation is obviously unsustainable. Changes are hence expected. There are two patterns of change. In the first, village cadres do their utmost to find other sources of income in their villages. For instance, they might use the contracted farmland of peasants who have gone to the cities to expand the scale of their own operations, or do specialized planting and cultivation, retail agricultural material and equipment, work as insurance agents, or operate transport businesses for both travelers and goods, etc. They will vie for whatever profit-​making opportunity exists in the village. While serving as village cadres, they will farm their contracted land well and absorb other income streams in the village to put themselves on par with those who venture out of the village, so they can afford to become and succeed as village cadres. If these highly capable young adults fail to find other income sources in the village, they will find it to be very difficult to continue serving as village cadres. Their positions would naturally go to the capable young adults who can find those other income sources. In August 2014, while conducting a survey in Luotian County (罗田县), Hubei Province, I took the opportunity to investigate the issue of village cadres’ income. We investigated Dahe’an Town (大河岸镇), Luotian County, which is economically underdeveloped and located in the area of the Dabie Mountains (大别山). The current annual pay for the main village cadres, like village Party secretaries and village heads, is about 10,000 yuan, while ordinary village cadres receive around 8,000 yuan. On average, the remuneration of village cadres, including all bonuses, is less than 1,000 yuan per month, which is far less than

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the 3,000 yuan received by local civil servants and 2,000 yuan of university student village cadres. The low income makes it necessary for village cadres to look for other income from production or business operation. First, though village cadres generally have their contracted farmland, which they cultivate themselves, their land is small, so the income is limited, but it is indeed a supplementary income. Since village cadres are usually young, strong authority figures in the village, they can transfer contracted farmlands at a low cost from those who have become migrant workers in cities in order to expand the scale of their own operations to moderate size. Second, as village elites, village cadres have good social relations within the village, which they can put to good use to become distribution agents for agricultural materials, workshop owners, shop owners, agricultural technology and social service providers, agricultural machinery operators, agricultural insurance or financing agents, and sellers of agricultural products. In sum, they can obtain income by providing various social services to peasants. Third, they may also profit from other channels such as raising fish in contracted collective reservoirs or fishponds, using contracted mountainous land or forest land to plant fruit trees, and developing livestock breeding operations, etc. Village cadres can also make good use of top-​down resource transfers (zhuanyi ziyuan 转移资源) by acting as rural science and technology demonstration households, thus gaining income by promoting new agricultural technology. For instance, Chen Changming (陈长明) has been the village Party secretary of Shigangshan Village (石缸山村), Dahe’an Town, Luotian County for 30  years. In recent years, he has also done the following things. First, in his village he pioneered going into tea cultivation, which gives him an annual income of around 20,000 yuan. Second, he was also the first in his village to raise sheep. At present his 36 sheep bring him an annual income of around 20,000 yuan. Third, he ventured into tree farming on a hillside. Normally, tree-​farming will fail if not managed well in the initial stages, since the seedlings could be quickly destroyed by weeds. However, Mr. Chen took pains with his seedlings, and they have grown well. His more than 10 mu of self-​reserved hillside soon became a lush forest. Fourth, Mr. Chen was also a life insurance agent in his village. He has driven tractors, run a pig farm, even engaged in passenger transport. Since Shigangshan Village is a mountain village, Mr. Chen has taken full advantage of mountain resources to obtain income far higher than his salary as a village Party secretary, and also higher than most migrant workers in the cities.

54 Chapter 8 Mr. Xu (许), the village Party secretary of Yueshanmiao Village (月山庙村), Dahe’an Town, Luotian County, cultivates his own contracted farmland, specializes in raising pigs, and runs a cement products factory. Zhang Yaguo (张亚国), the village Party secretary of Wangjiaju Village (汪家咀村), farms, grows chestnuts, raises pigs, operates harvesters, and so on, to supplement his income as a village cadre. He said that village cadres must have some business on the side, otherwise one cannot get by on the village cadre’s annual salary of 10,000 yuan. These old stalwart village cadres have worked in their positions for more than 10 years or even several decades. When they first became village cadres, most villagers still had not gone to work or do business in the cities. Their remuneration as village cadres plus the work-​loss compensation they received amounted to more than what ordinary peasant households obtained from agricultural production. Their incomes were thus relatively high in their villages, and they tended to have broad social networks, and as village cadres they had a certain political status, “face,” and prestige. But after large numbers of rural workers went to the cities to work or do business and brought home large sums of cash that could be used to build new houses and elevate their social standing, these old village cadres would suddenly join the ranks of the village poor—​unless their children had grown up and found good jobs (usually, the children of village cadres have a higher chance of entering the universities and find regular jobs in the cities) and unless they had some business on the side. Village cadres have to redeem themselves by looking for all kinds of profit-​making opportunities, and thus they must reap all the possible benefits they can before all rural industries are fully capitalized and integrated. If they cannot grasp these profit points, they will likely not become or remain village cadres. There is also another group of young, energetic peasants, often called “mainstay peasants (zhongjian nongmin 中坚农民),” who have found other avenues of gaining profit besides cultivating their own contracted farmlands, such as renting farmland from others to attain a moderate scale of operation, livestock breeding at a certain scale, doing handicrafts, driving tractors, retailing agricultural materials, and working as insurance agents and dealers. This group of mainstay peasants, who remain in their villages, earn income not less than what migrant workers in cities are earning, and enjoy a complete family life, provide the best reserve candidates for becoming village cadres. Since they stay within their villages and enjoy stable incomes, they are of course willing to become village cadres in order to expand their social networks, obtain political resources, and receive work-​loss compensation.

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In any case, in today’s villages, the village cadres and mainstay peasants have formed close relations. The mainstay peasants, including the village cadres, have become the backbone of village governance; they are key to the maintenance of rural order. Nourishing the strong, healthy, mainstay peasants are the opportunities that still exist in today’s villages. Once capital completes the vertical integration of the agricultural industry, these money-​making opportunities may disappear, along with the space that sustains the mainstay peasants and finally the rural elite.

3

In the developed coastal areas, peasants within villages generally are divided into three groups. The first group is the bosses, running their factories and businesses. Their assets can often reach millions or even tens of millions of yuan. Although their numbers are few, this group is very powerful. The second group is the migrant workers, who work in factories and also do middle management jobs or skilled work. Their annual family income is around 100,000 yuan. The third group is a small number of families that lack labor or have physically or mentally disabled members. With an annual family income of less than 50,000 yuan, they can barely make ends meet. The work of village cadres in the developed coastal areas is not necessarily complicated but being village cadres makes it more difficult for them to work in factories that stick to eight-​hour shifts. If they can only get work-​loss compensation, their annual income would amount to a mere 10,000 to 20,000 yuan and being village cadres would not give them enough time to work in a factory. Since the work-​loss compensation is so low, ordinary young and vigorous peasants in the coastal areas cannot become village cadres. By contrast, for the rich villagers who have set up factories and have close connections with people outside the village, becoming village cadres confers upon them a political identity with which they can interact with people outside, which can boost their businesses. One village Party secretary in Keqiao District, Shaoxing City said, “My annual salary is only 88,000 yuan, but my face value (as a village Party secretary) is worth more than 880,000 yuan outside of the village.” The title of village Party secretary greatly benefits him as he runs factories and does business and deals with the outside world (higher-​level government, the business world). Thus, when the rich become village cadres, they are not at all concerned with the amount of the work-​loss compensation but with how they can use their political identity to work to the advantage of their businesses.

56 Chapter 8 In this sense, the rich are the only option for village cadres in the developed coastal villages. These wealthy village cadres not only aim to benefit their businesses but also seek advantage in landing construction projects. Because of economic development in the coastal region, the collective land there has strong property attributes as more and more nationally-​funded infrastructure construction projects, based on the “three connections and one leveling” (santong yiping 三通一平, namely, the connection of roads, water, and electricity and the leveling of sites in preparation for building) policy, are being undertaken in villages. One earthmoving project in connection with these endeavors might yield profits amounting in the hundreds of thousands of yuan. Such profits can stimulate ruthlessly ambitious peasants who might not be bosses but have various links with secret societies to vie for village cadre positions. They will try to buy votes to get elected and then recover their money, and more besides, by using their positions to become the subcontractors who do the earthmoving work for these construction projects. In other words, in the villages of the developed coastal region, the maximum work-​loss allowance of only 10,000 to 20,000 yuan for village cadres deters young and energetic peasants from becoming village cadres, unless the village does not interfere with their “working,” “doing business,” or “running factories,” or provides convenience for their endeavors. Thus the position of village cadre has become hotly contested by wealthy bosses who want ease of doing business, or well-​to-​do contractors who want to make money from construction projects. Ordinary peasants cannot afford or even have the opportunity to become village cadres, because they lack the time and financial resources for the election (i.e., for the vote-​buying). Therefore, plutocratic village governance in the coastal region has become irreversible. Nevertheless, village cadres in the developed coastal region can still be divided into two levels. The first level would include the village Party secretaries and village heads, who are the main village cadres with political status and decision-​making power. These are coveted positions among the rich. The second level would include the non-​principal village cadres, like the village clerks who manage village daily affairs. These cadres are usually much older or have other sources of income. With annual work-​loss compensation of only 10,000 to 20,000 yuan, young and energetic peasants would have difficulty taking these positions, in which they would have to deal mainly with miscellaneous affairs. Keqiao District, Shaoxing City provides its village cadres a wage that differs from the work-​loss compensation. Generally, it is equivalent to a little more than half of the salaries of township and town civil servants, and more than the

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income of ordinary migrant workers. It should be said that this wage level is effective in attracting young and energetic peasants to become non-​principal village cadres, and it makes the professionalization of village cadres possible. Even so, in Keqiao District, most of the village Party secretaries and village heads positions are rich bosses who go for the political benefits, while the ordinary village elites who become leading village cadres go for the high salary. Originally, according to the requirements of Keqiao District, all of the village cadres must observe working hours and act professionally, as in other jobs. However, in reality, some of the bosses who became village Party secretaries cannot leave their work in their factories and stay in the village to work every day, so they use the salary to hire substitutes or let trusted individuals serve as deputy secretaries to take over the daily work. In other words, although Keqiao District has been generous with its pay for village cadres in order to attract ordinary peasants to come forward as village cadres, most village cadre positions are still taken by the rich via competition, leaving ordinary peasants with little opportunity to become leading village cadres. In developed coastal regions, where the level of rural economic development is high and village affairs relatively complicated, there are often demands for the standardization of villagers’ committees and the professionalization of village cadres. Villages in this region have gradually formed professionalized full-​time cadre teams comprised of the non-​principal village cadres who provide daily services for villagers. The local governments also provide them with an income commensurate with their profession. As the economy develops and village affairs increase in complexity, it seems likely that this will lead to the formation of standardized, professionalized full-​time cadre teams. Perhaps these professional teams can change the seemingly irreversible trend toward plutocratic village governance in the developed coastal region. The kind of professionalization and standardization that one typically finds in the villages of Shanghai and southern Jiangsu has already reached such a high level that the villages in Zhejiang Province simply can no longer compare.

4

In the vast central and western regions, where villages are hollowing out and collective economies have become empty shells from constant outward migration, neither the finances of local governments nor village collective resources can support so many standardized, professionalized teams of village cadres. Village affairs there are never so complicated that they can only be handled by specialized full-​time village cadres. Currently, village cadres here generally

58 Chapter 8 receive 5,000 to 10,000 yuan in work-​loss compensation, and in some districts, they may even receive more than 10,000 thousand yuan. Such amounts cannot compare with the 30,000 or 50,000 yuan that migrant workers receive. Thus village cadres and local government officials alike in the central and western regions consider this remuneration as too low and think it should be increased to give the village cadres better security and to stimulate their enthusiasm for working. However, even if their remuneration is doubled to 20,000 yuan, it is still lower than the income of migrant workers. If the pay raise is conditional on their simultaneous professionalization, they would still be dissatisfied. The village Party branch secretary of Jiyukou Village, Qianjiang City (潜江市积玉口村), Hubei Province commented, “If the upper-​level government gives me a 20,000 or 30,000-​yuan salary to let me work as a full-​time cadre, I’d reject it, because it isn’t enough to support a family.” He also said, “The most important thing for a village cadre is to have a sideline.” Another village Party branch secretary of Huangxiekou Village, Jianli County (监利县黄歇口村), Hubei Province said, “Village cadres should have a sideline, otherwise, what would they eat?” He added, “A village Party branch secretary must have an annual income of 50,000 yuan. Otherwise, if he can’t afford the costs of maintaining personal relationships in the village, how could he be a village Party branch secretary?”

5

The professionalization of village cadres, or even, as some have suggested, the transformation of village cadres into civil servants, would take their jobs, which were originally quite mobile, and fix them in one place. This sort of immobilization not only runs contrary to villagers’ self-​governance but also causes village governance to lose its flexibility. As agents of the state, village cadres are supposed to govern villages, but as the peasants’ representatives to the state, they are managers. This flexibility of village cadres to connect with the state at the top and peasants at the bottom has been a great advantage for villagers’ committees. The standardization of the village cadre team is historically unprecedented and will not be the direction of grassroots development for a very long time to come. As far as the current situation of villages is concerned, it makes sense that village cadres in the developed coastal regions should become professionalized. However, on a nationwide basis, it would make sense in the long term for villages, especially in the central and western regions, to continue having village cadres who are not full-​time and who receive work-​loss compensation.

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This situation should by no means be hastily changed. As for those who feel that they cannot afford to become village cadres and demand higher pay, one of the reasons lies with the village cadres themselves—​from the start they lack the prerequisites for becoming a village cadre. They have not actively and creatively made efforts to seek out other income streams during their spare time. It would be impossible for village cadres to maintain a middle-​or upper-​class lifestyle depending only on work-​loss compensation. Village cadres should be able to create other chances of gaining income, otherwise they should let the young, vigorous people who have already found such chances to become village cadres on a part-​time basis. What the state should do is to preserve the various profit-​making opportunities that exist in the villages. It should by no means support the flow of capital to the countryside (ziben xiaxiang 资本下乡) or promote the vertical integration of industry there, since that would concentrate all the profit-​making opportunities among a small number of industrial and commercial capital-​ owners and deprive the “mainstay peasants” of the soil and space for growth.

chapter 9

Village Doctors, Village Teachers, and Village Governance

1

A field trip to Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (恩施土家族苗族 自治州), Hubei Province in 2014 was an enlightening experience on grassroots governance. The practices of “peasants getting things done without leaving the village (nongmin banshi buchucun 农民办事不出村)” and “village doctors and teachers as members of the two villagers’ committees (cunyi cunjiao jinbanzi 村医村教进班子)” were especially impressive. Enshi Prefecture is a typical mountainous region with few inhabitants and little transportation infrastructure. As in other rural areas in China, a large number of young, strong villagers have gone to the cities to work, leaving behind mostly the old, weak, sick, and disabled, which makes good grassroots governance difficult to maintain. Peasants who need to visit a government office to get something done often feel alienated and inconvenienced by what they describe as “uninviting doors, unapproachable faces, and undoable tasks (men nanjin, lian nankan, shi nanban 门难进、脸难看、事难办).” Sometimes, to get a single thing done, they have to make repeated visits to upper-​level government departments, which is extremely inconvenient. To address this issue, Enshi Prefecture put modern information technology to good use. It built an information network platform and set up e-​counters in the village affairs hall inside each of the Party members’ mass service centers. It launched an online office to directly deal with villagers’ production and life issues as well as provide them with useful information. The online service information platform enables “peasants to get things done without leaving the village” and is vertically connected to the administrative examination and approval network platform (xingzheng shenpi pingtai 行政审批网络平台) at the township and town level, and horizontally connected to the county and municipality departments, thus forming a triad, a county-​township-​village administrative approval network. The network allows villagers’ committees to approve 76 administrative items selected from 22 livelihood-​related departments including public security, civil affairs, land, and resources. Peasants need only to submit materials and fill forms at the convenient service room (bianmin fuwushi 便民服务室) in the Party members’ mass service center in

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each village. The staff stationed there do preliminary reviews and upload the relevant documents to the township before the township or town and county government service centers review the applications step by step and settle the issues based on administrative rules and priorities. The outcomes are then relayed to the villages via the government information network. Finally, village cadres will inform applicants of the outcomes and issue the relevant official documents to them. At present, 623 villages and communities in Enshi Prefecture have adopted this mode of getting things done for peasants without their having to travel to a government office. In Badong County (巴东县) alone, this mode was adopted in 125 villages. A total of 10,100 items have been administratively processed, of which 9,418 were settled—​a 94% settlement rate. There were 47,000 withdrawals of guarantees or insurance benefits by low-​income households and the elderly, 26,400 instances of withdrawal and transfer of money, and 24,800 bill payments for electricity and telephone services. Doing things online has enabled information technology to benefit the people, has improved the relationship between the Party and the masses, and has strengthened the cohesiveness of village-​level organizations.

2

Throughout the lives of peasants, from birth to death, they must deal with government departments on many things, and many of these need to be done only once in a lifetime. Now that so many peasants have gone out as migrant workers, leaving behind their wives, elderly parents, and children, the problem faced by those left behind when they have to deal with various government departments is not merely one of “uninviting doors, unapproachable faces, and undoable tasks,” but a problem of simply not knowing how to do these things. Enshi Prefecture’s practice of “peasants getting things done without leaving the village” has meant providing for village-​level agents to make it easier for villagers to handle these things. This arrangement not only saves peasants’ traveling time, but also allows them to settle mundane matters easily, because, in their small villages, they already know the agents quite well; they feel free to seek their advice, and as a result, they are more relaxed when they have things done. At present, this practice in Enshi Prefecture has been adopted not only with items requiring application and administrative review and approval, but also with various business affairs. It has brought convenience to peasants and strengthened the connection between grassroots organizations and peasants.

62 Chapter 9 Enshi Prefecture’s practice was based on its experience developing grassroots organizations creatively, in response to peasants’ needs. At the core of “peasants getting things done without leaving the village” is providing services for them using the convenience of the information era, and through this process, the problem of building grassroots service organizations has been solved. Enshi’s online service system, in which “the peasants speak, the data moves, and cadres run (nongmin dongzui, shuju paolu, ganbu paotui 农民动嘴、数据跑路、干部跑腿)” facilitates things for the peasants and has established close connections between them and grassroots organizations. The use of modern technology to provide convenience for people while consolidating the connection between peasants and grassroots organizations should be promoted.

3

Village doctors and village teachers (cunyi cunjiao 村医村教) is the generic name given to all medical staff in village clinics and all teachers in village primary schools. They are “brought into the team” (jin banzi 进班子), i.e., they are considered reserve cadres at the village level, and those who are well-​suited for dealing with the masses are selected to join the “two committees (liangwei 两委),” or the village Party branch committee or villagers’ committee. While fulfilling their professional duties and responsibilities as medical personnel and teachers, they capitalize on their professionalism, reach out to the masses, and earn a high level of trust among the villagers in order to carry out the work of the villages. In Enshi Prefecture, village doctors and teachers enter the two committees via the “four threes (sige san 四个三)” system. The first trio is the selection of candidates based on three principles: voluntarism and identification with the masses, job prerequisites and business engagement, and business ability and managerial skills. Second is a three-​step process for gaining committee membership: a two-​way (mutual applicant-​committee) selection by various means of recommendations (such as self-​recommendation, mass recommendation, or Party organization recommendation), preliminary selection of candidates jointly by the county and township governments, and going through the election process and getting elected in accordance with law. Third is the development of governance capacity via three ways: undergoing intensive on-​the-​ job training, regularly distributing learning materials, and mentoring cadres by passing on experience. Fourth is the implementation of three-​measure management, namely, distributing work according to the people-​position

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compatibility principle (rengang xiangshi yuanze 人岗相适原则), establishing a target responsibility system to evaluate work, and awarding excellent staff with a professional title in an annual evaluation, and setting village cadres’ remuneration according to their positions and allocating 3,000 yuan of work subsidy annually per person from the government budget. So far, 974 village doctors and 282 village teachers (1,256 persons in all) in Enshi Prefecture have been “brought into the team” of the “two committees,” and they participate in the management of village affairs. Among them, on a part-​ time basis, 56 have become village Party branch secretaries, 41 have become village heads, 333 members of the “two committees,” and 826 village clerks, assistants of village heads, or village affair coordinators.

4

The outflow of human resources and property from rural areas is the inevitable outcome of urbanization. Particularly in the past 10 or more years, large numbers of young and strong rural workers have left for the cities to work or do business, which has led to the aging and hollowing-​out of villages. Before the exodus of rural workers, the main income of peasant households came from agriculture, while the income of village cadres came from agriculture plus the work-​loss compensation, so that their income would at least not be lower than those of ordinary peasant households. Thus, capable villagers were all willing to serve as village cadres. However, now the income of young people who work in the cities is much higher than those who stay in villages to work on farms and higher than village cadres. The latter are tied down to the village, and their main income comes from farming and the work-​loss compensation, so their income is far lower in comparison with those who have left. Hence, the position of village cadre can hardly attract village elites. To work as a village cadre, an ordinary, young, strong peasant would have to forgo work in the cities, and his or her family would be poorer than other ordinary peasant households, so this kind of cadre, of course, cannot stay long on the job. To solve the retention problem, one major approach besides increasing village cadres’ remuneration is expanding the scope of their selection and employment. In general, there are still many knowledgeable, capable people who mainly work in the countryside and are familiar with their village’s situation and have all kinds of connections among the peasants. The village doctors and teachers are typical examples. Other capable people who have not left for the cities are electricians, veterinarians, family farm operators, small workshop

64 Chapter 9 owners, retailers, agricultural supplies agents, agricultural machinery operators, and so on. They also earn comparatively decent, stable incomes, which naturally makes them high-​quality candidates for the village’s two committees. When they are “brought onto the team” of the two committees and have a stable income and work-​loss compensation, their work as village cadres does not conflict with their other jobs, and in fact has a complementary effect. In this way, these capable people in villages act as a comparatively reliable source of cadres in the building of grassroots organizations. Enshi Prefecture’s recruitment of village doctors and teachers into the “two committees” was facilitated by its exploration of a new mechanism for expanding the scope of cadres’ selection and employment in line with new circumstances. Its example provides ideas and directions for building grassroots organizations in the new era.

chapter 10

People with Few Family Obligations Become the Mainstay of Village Governance in the Central and Western Regions

1

During a field trip to Sheyang County (射阳县), Jiangsu Province, I found that almost all those below the age of 55, i.e., the young and middle-​aged, and even many 60-​year-​olds, have left the villages to work or do business, simply because job opportunities in villages are rare. Those who work on their contracted farmland earn less than one-​third of what they can get by working in cities. With too little income, it becomes impossible to give gifts on social occasions or even provide the basic conditions that would enable their children to get married. However, not all under-​55s have left. Some have expanded their farming operations to moderate scale with the farmland of neighbors who have left, or they provide agricultural machinery services, become agents, transform into professional households, or operate small workshops within the village. They have become the “middle peasants” group who bring home an income equivalent to those working outside of the villages; besides receiving income within the village, they cultivate social relationships and enjoy complete family lives there. Among those who leave, however, their decision to leave is prompted not by any unwillingness to do farm work, but by the size of their farmland, which is too small for them to earn a decent income. But as soon as an opportunity for obtaining income inside the village does arise, the young and strong will stay to realize those opportunities. Of course, those opportunities are few, and they are being further squeezed by state-​supported industrial and commercial capital and by e-​commerce. Virtually all middle-​aged and young people are strongly motivated to earn money because of familial responsibility. Typically, they have aged parents and young children and other expenses to take care of. Hence, they need to earn not just to keep themselves fed and warm. Other families have income from working in cities, about 40,000 to 50,000 yuan a year, which is much more than the income of 10,000 to 20,000 yuan they would get by working their contracted lands. Households whose members work outside of the village can build new houses for their families, give more expensive gifts for weddings and funerals, speak out and get things done in the village, and even their sons can

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_011

66 Chapter 10 marry more easily. If they were to depend only on the income from farming the contracted lands, they would not have enough money to exchange gifts, let  alone find women willing to marry their sons. Thus, rural young people must go out to earn money, unless they can use the contracted fields of relatives, friends, and neighbors to achieve a moderate scale farming operation or find income from a sideline. Those who do stay in the village to farm their small plot of farmland are despised as idlers and become marginalized figures due to their low income and low social status.

2

However, it is usually difficult for peasants over 55 and especially over 60 years old to find jobs in cities. By this age, their parents are either very old or deceased and their children are probably married. Their children, once they marry, will face pressure from having to maintain relationships with gift-​giving, but those in their 60s can escape from the huge pressure of earning money to handle various burdens in life and maintain gift-​giving relationships. The age of 60 is just right for farming on one’s contracted lands, but a bit too old to find work in cities. The current small-​scale farming operation follows the principle of “everyone gets an average one mu and three fen of farmland, and every household on average gets less than 10 mu (renjun yimu sanfen di, hujun buguo shimu 人均一亩三分、户均不过十亩).” This is an extremely small operating scale, and with mechanization, agricultural production no longer involves heavy manual work, so the aged can still handle it. Agricultural production is seasonal, and real farming time is limited to only one or two months in a year, so the rest of the time is mainly either idle time or used for field management, which the elderly can handle well, along with other similar work. Therefore, low-​paid agriculture has become a job for the elderly who no longer have employment opportunities in the cities. For the aged, farming a bit of land and planting a few vegetables is a matter of self-​sufficiency. Although their agricultural income may be low, so is their expenditure, and their life quality is not low at all. In a sense, the village makes a good retreat for the elderly because there is land to farm and a roof over their heads. In fact, throughout the country, especially the rural areas in the central and western regions, approximately 70  percent of peasant households have the “half-​working and half-​farming” structure based on the “intergenerational division of labor (daiji fengong 代际分工).” In this structure, young adults go to the cities to work while their elderly parents farm. With the lower living costs in the villages, peasant households can maximize their family interests.

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Although generally the intensity of agricultural labor is not high, not all elderly people can farm. For those in their 60s and even 70s, farming on small plots is equivalent to a form of exercise, but as their age further increases, farming becomes more difficult, though they may be in good health, and even risky. Although I encountered examples of people in their eighties still working their farms when I did my field trip, generally speaking, the main labor force in farming is between 55 and 75 years old. Those over 75 years old can plant vegetables in their own garden instead of farming in contracted fields, since remaining idle is itself a problem. When the elderly in the countryside grow vegetables in their own gardens, it is like the elderly in the cities growing flowers. People between 55 and 75 years old may be considered the “young elderly (diling laonianren 低龄老年人),” while those over 75 years old may be considered the “old elderly (gaoling laonianren 高龄老年人).”

3

Although the young elderly do not receive much in return for farming their own contracted farmland, it does not matter, since they have accomplished their most important tasks in life: holding funerals for their parents, building a house, marrying off their children, and taking care of grandchildren. By the time the grandchildren enter school, their married children will have taken over the task of maintaining social gift-​exchange relations within the village. The young elderly become their children’s agents in the village for presenting gifts in weddings, funerals, and so on, but the children’s names appear in the name lists of gift-​presenters, and after their sons are married, these sons become the heads of household. Without the pressure to either spend or earn, farming the family plot becomes relaxing. The low income is not an issue as it is enough to fulfill their daily needs. There is ample free time to play mahjong or chat. They also have the time and inclination to participate in various affairs in the village’s acquaintance society. Being invited to serve as a host in a wedding or funeral is an honor that they would be keen to do to their best ability. There are all kinds of non-​profit-​making things that they can do now, since time is no longer a concern for these young elderly as they have little family burden and plenty of free time. These young elderly who farm small fields, are physically fit, and need not worry about making a lot of money are “people with few family burdens (fudan buzhong de ren 负担不重的人).” They are in their happiest, most casual, enjoyable, and comfortable golden time in their lives. No longer needing to worry about their children, it is enough just to support themselves. This is a rare chance for them to live like the spirit immortals of old. As long

68 Chapter 10 as they have completed all the major tasks in life, such as looking after their parents when they are alive, giving them proper burial after death, and getting their children married, the young elderly are no longer pressured to earn money. They will live happy lives as long as they are still healthy and can continue farming and taking care of themselves. Once the young elderly become the old elderly and farming becomes difficult, the reduced agricultural income and declining health spell the end of their golden days. In particular, if they can no longer take care of themselves and their children are still busy struggling for their own children, they can become a burden on the family. Then they will often blame themselves if their children quit their jobs to take care of them. In general, as long as the elderly can take care of themselves, their lives in the village will be carefree and satisfying, but once they cannot, life can become miserable. Generally, once the old elderly can no longer take care of themselves, they usually live only one to three years before they pass away.

4

These young elderly people, whom we have described as “people with few family burdens”—​those who can engage in agricultural production and have completed the main tasks of life—​are quite important, since they have a very key role in social governance. They deserve careful discussion. The young elderly are no longer under great pressure to earn and have no need to exhaust themselves working in the cities or looking for profit-​making opportunities. There are more things to do in life than earning money—​many other aspects of life to be developed. The small plot of contracted responsibility farmland should be farmed because it is easy work with only a short busy period and a source of income and food. They might have a sideline or plant a few vegetables as a kind of leisure activity. They need not worry about the vegetables’ quality. Besides, they can send fresh vegetables, even fresh eggs and pork, all pure and natural, to their children in the cities. How to spend all that free time is a big question. Dropping in for chats and playing mahjong are inevitable routines but playing mahjong every day becomes boring. Some take charge of receptions at weddings or funerals, which is good, because it at least indicates that one has respect, capability, and status. One can also act as a mediator in neighborhood disputes, as long as it does not induce criticism or rile neighbors. If there is a wedding or funeral ceremony, one should watch to see just how they are being done, and if they include theatrical performances, then one should definitely go. Another good idea is to

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participate in the Lantern Festival, hanging lanterns and doing dragon dances. If someone offers to teach square dancing, the young elderly are willing to overcome a bit of shyness and dance. If someone wants to start organizing groups to clean up the village environment, they will also volunteer, though of course they would be happier if they can get paid for doing so. They will often gather to discuss village issues. All in all, these semi-​retired young elderly who have few family burdens need a broader social arena. They have the energy, time, enthusiasm, and interest to play a role in this arena, since they want to enjoy themselves and do something meaningful; they no longer do things only for money. The senior citizens’ associations (laonianren xiehui 老年人协会) that I established in four villages in Hubei Province have been running well for more than a decade. Such associations, which originally aimed to bring happiness to the elderly, have turned out to have a positive impact on village governance. The people who have played a leadership role in them have been, precisely, “people with few family burdens.” Zigui County (秭归县), Hubei Province is building a Happy Village (Xingfu cunluo 幸福村落), for which it has established a village council comprising two chairmen and eight members at the villagers’ committee level. Sure enough, the villagers almost unanimously elected young elderly candidates “with few family burdens” who had been hosting weddings or funerals. The “two chairmen and eight members (erzhang bayuan 二长八员)” include the chairman of the village council (cunluo lishizhang 村落理事长), the Party group leader, and the members in charge of economy, planning, mediation, management, and so on. Most of them have alternating, concurrent roles within the council. A village council usually has three or four people with few family burdens who are very enthusiastic about taking part in the village’s public affairs under the name of the village council. They have lived up to their role in the building of the Happy Village, not for their own interests or rewards, but because they are keen about their work. They have been elected by their fellow villagers, which implies that they are respected and considered to have the standing and ability to do useful things. These young elderly with few family burdens have plenty of time and energy for collective affairs. What they had lacked was only a title, so by giving them the title of chairman or deputy chairman of the senior citizens’ association, director of the village council, or mediator, they gained a channel through which they could apply their excess energy and realize their value. In this way, they have become a strong supporting force for rural grassroots governance. We must pay special attention to this group of young elderly with few family burdens and mobilize them to participate in rural grassroots governance today.

70 Chapter 10 The key to the success of the building of the Happy Village in Zigui County was finding such a group and stimulating their enthusiasm for participation.

5

Not all young elderly have few family burdens. Some are already past 60 but not yet finished with their lives’ main tasks—​still supporting (especially unmarried) children while caring for aged parents—​so they must still head to the cities to earn money to relieve income pressure and cope with the expenses of maintaining human relations. In some families with married children who are struggling economically, the young elderly have to find ways to increase their income to help support their children. They have to work in the cities instead of farming casually and playing mahjong. In short, only those who have been released from economic pressure and have few family burdens can become the most active force in rural grassroots governance. There are also young elderly whose university-​graduated children, running businesses or pursuing well-​salaried careers in the cities, treat them well, but they are still unwilling to be bound up living with their children. They stay where they are, where they enjoy respect. Many if their fellow villagers look up to them precisely because their children have been successful.

6

In the discussions above, we have focused on those villagers who look for profit-​making opportunities in their own villages by, for example, expanding the scale of their farming operations, doing specialized breeding, providing agricultural machinery services, marketing agricultural materials, acting as distribution agents, and opening up shops and workshops—​the “middle peasants” in their prime, below the age of 55, who earn incomes comparable with those working in the cities. One of their main characteristics is that their incomes and social relationships are all from inside their villages, and they maintain complete family lives; they might never have gone out to work elsewhere. These middle peasants are usually the main source of the village cadres who form the backbone of rural social order, so we have called them “mainstay peasants.” These “mainstay peasants” are an extremely important group in rural grassroots governance. Without understanding them, one cannot get a true idea of current rural grassroots governance in China or find ways to improve it.

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Here we have tried to introduce the idea of a young elderly group that has “few family burdens” and to discuss their essential role in rural grassroots governance. This group of young elderly has become the most fundamental force at the rural grassroots level today and is the source of the vitality of grassroots governance. In general, rural grassroots governance involves mostly small, miscellaneous matters, and the way to solve such matters is not to emphasize formalizing grassroots organizations, nor bringing in the strength of local talented and educated persons, but to mobilize the enthusiasm of people with few family burdens, since these comprise the most basic group and source of strength in rural grassroots governance today. It is by making use of these people that China’s rural grassroots can achieve flexible and efficient governance at low cost. Thus the focus of modernizing rural grassroots governance is not on formal bureaucratization, nor on bringing in the local talented and educated people, but on following the mass line (zou qunzhong luxian 走群众路线), stimulating the enthusiasm of energetic, passionate people with few family burdens into participating in grassroots governance. With this, China’s grassroots governance will be not only flexible and effective, but also infinitely powerful. We must attach great importance to the role of people with few family burdens, but of course, we should firstly seriously study this group.

chapter 11

The Evolution of Village Cadres in Agricultural Areas

1

At present, China’s rural areas show obvious regional economic differentiation. The main differences are between the developed eastern coastal regions and the vast, agricultural central and western regions. Generally, people, property, and resources have been flowing out of rural villages of the central and western regions to the cities, so that the villages are hollowing out and going into decline, and most peasant families follow a half-​working, half-​farming pattern based on the intergenerational division of labor, wherein the younger generation goes to work or does business in the cities and the middle-​aged and elderly parents remain in the villages to farm. As people, property, and resources flow to the cities, rural resources become comparatively scarce and interests too diffuse—​but such central and western villages account for the vast majority of China’s villages. The diffuse interests in the agricultural villages of central and western China contrast with the concentrated interests in the villages of the eastern coastal region. Below, I shall discuss the issue of the replacement of village cadres in these agricultural areas.

2

An important time point for the replacement of village cadres in most agricultural villages occurred before or after the division of fields among households (fentian daohu 分田到户). According to Professor Xu Yong (徐勇), during the People’s Commune era, the main tasks of the production brigade and production team cadres, the so-​called Maoist cadres (Maoshi ganbu 毛式干部), were to arrange the production activities and the productive lifestyle for the team and brigade, based on the spirit of the directives of higher-​ups. Under the People’s Commune system, there were three levels of ownership shared among the three levels of commune, brigade, and production team, with the production team forming the basic unit of everyday production and management. The integration of government administration with commune management (zhengshe heyi 政社合一) left the cadres of production brigade and production

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teams little autonomy, particularly when the appointment and dismissal of cadres were mainly top-​down procedures. Cadres of the production brigade and the production team were not released from production work, so they had to participate in the production team’s manual labor and record work points (gongfen 工分). A cadre’s work points were roughly similar to those of a strong worker in the production team. Shortly after the division of fields among households, the People’s Communes were dissolved; the production brigade cadres became villagers’ committees and production teams the villagers’ committees. Now the village cadres no longer arranged agricultural production activity, since peasants had autonomy in carrying out agricultural production, but the village collectives still provided peasants with common production services, especially unified irrigation. While peasant households could arrange agricultural production on their own, they still had to “pay enough to the state and leave enough for the collective (jiaogou guojiade, liuzu jitide 交够国家的、留足集体的)” before keeping the remainder for themselves. Since agricultural taxes to the state were not substantial and the peasants had a strong awareness of the need to pay their state taxes, payment of agricultural taxes posed no problem to the government. However, “leaving enough for the collective” was more complicated, since collective fees included three deductions (santi 三提) and five charges (wutong 五统), as well as various agricultural joint production fees and possibly various fundraisers. The result was that the burden on peasants got heavier and heavier, which strained the relationship between village cadres and peasants. Besides collecting agricultural taxes and fees, village cadres had to provide agricultural production services, such as unified irrigation, and respond to various problems that peasants encountered in their productive work and everyday lives. For village cadres, both collecting agricultural taxes and fees and providing services to peasant were difficult tasks, which dampened their enthusiasm at work. County and township governments generally linked the task of collecting agricultural taxes and fees with the village cadres’ remuneration, in order to stimulate their enthusiasm. In particular, village cadres were paid a commission for every agricultural tax and fee collected, so the monetary returns incentivized them to work harder on this task. In some areas, especially Hubei, Hunan, and Anhui Provinces in central China, peasants were so heavily taxed that they were unwilling to pay, while village cadres, either under pressure by their superiors or driven to benefit themselves, forced the collection. Extreme tension between village cadres and peasants resulted.

74 Chapter 11 The tense, even confrontational relationship between village cadres and peasants had many serious consequences, one of which was that the good, old village cadres in service since the distribution of farmlands to peasant households quit because they did not want to offend their fellow villagers, and because they simply could not collect the taxes. Strong, powerful, and ruthless village cadres brought gangs and thugs onto their teams, which further aggravated the conflict and resulted in frequent violence during tax collection. The frequent violence prompted the central government around the start of the present century to begin reforming agricultural taxes and fees, which included standardizing and reducing agricultural taxes, and soon, in 2006, it completely abolished the agricultural taxes and various fees levied exclusively on peasants. Even the fees for common production services were banned, meaning basically that village cadres’ involvement in agricultural production was withdrawn. Since village cadres no longer had to collect taxes and fees, there was nothing to demand from the peasants anymore, so, at the same time, they lost any enthusiasm for responding to peasants’ demands relating to agricultural production and everyday needs. They became increasingly idle and accomplished nothing. To sum up thus far, from the People’s Commune period to the distribution of contracted farmland to peasant households, peasants’ income increased and agriculture thrived. By the 1990s, however, as the peasants’ tax burden became heavier, peasant-​village cadre tensions built up, until the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees. Hence, there have been at least four distinct periods in the peasant-​village cadre relationship, corresponding to periods in the background peasant-​state relationship. During the People’s Commune period, cadres were the typically Mao-​style cadres whose every action was on the instructions of higher-​us and had few special interests. When farmland was contracted out to peasant households, most of the village cadres were holdover production brigade and production team cadres from the People’s Commune period. They continued to provide peasant households with regular public services such as collective irrigation facilities, and maintained cordial relations with peasants. However, in the period around the 1990s, the relationship became tense, and after the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees in the new century, the village cadres and peasants became more separated and alienated from each other. As for the village cadres’ income, during the People’s Commune period, the main income for cadres of production brigades and production teams was based on work points. They were also involved in production and their incomes were comparable to those of strong workers in the production team. After the allocation of contracted farmland to peasant households, village cadres also received their farmland and continued to engage in production. When

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they were involved in village affairs, the work-​loss on the farm was recorded, and they would receive work-​loss compensation each year. Compensation was low, but the work handling the few public affairs in the villages was not difficult. Around the year 1990, however, the “most difficult job in the world (tianxia diyi nanshi 天下第一难事)” was the collection of agricultural taxes and fees. There was a mismatch between low work-​loss compensation and the difficulty of collecting agricultural taxes and fees, so village cadres lost their motivation. To provide them an incentive, counties and townships tacitly provided village cadres commissions on collecting the various taxes and fees. While old and upright village cadres who lacked the ability to collect the taxes and fees or the courage to make the job profitable eventually withdrew from the village cadre teams, more ruthless people with triad backgrounds took over as village cadres—​and gained far more from gray income (huise shouru 灰色收入) than work-​loss compensation. Once the taxes and fees were abolished, their space for collecting grey income disappeared, while the difficulty of the job decreased sharply, so these village cadres lost interest and withdrew. This paved the way for the old and upright village cadres to make a comeback. Village affairs continued as usual: village cadres were still involved in production and received work-​loss compensation, paid to them by the state. The low remuneration and light workload gave stability to the composition of the village cadres’ team.

3

Around the period of the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, another extremely important change took place in China’s countryside. More and more young and middle-​aged peasants were going to the cities to work or do businesses. While the proportion of agricultural income in peasants’ family income dwindled, the income from working or doing businesses in cities rose sharply. Before the wave of migration took place, peasants’ income in the central and western agricultural areas came mostly from agriculture. When the farmland was contracted out to peasants, the village cadres received their plots based on the number of people in their family, like any other ordinary peasant household; their income was thus similar to that of ordinary peasants, with just one difference: the small work-​loss compensation. Therefore, their family income at least was not any lower than that of ordinary peasants. If they did a good job collecting agricultural taxes and fees for the county and township governments, there would also be additional income from commissions. In other words, before the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the job of village cadre was quite attractive and sustainable, providing income enough

76 Chapter 11 for them to lead a comparatively decent life, since it put them at least in the middle or upper levels of village income. The problem was, as more and more peasants went to cities to work or do business and no longer derived most of their income from agriculture, village cadres’ income, even with the minimal work-​loss compensation, started to lag far behind that of the migrants. They were still involved in farming but could not leave the village to work in the cities. Now, almost all the young and middle-​ aged peasants in the villages of the central and western regions have gone to the cities to work or do businesses, while their parents continue to work on their farmlands. Now, the income of peasant households is no longer wholly agriculturally based, but also includes income deriving from working in cities, and village cadres’ household income is far lower. Currently, in the central and western rural areas, the work-​loss compensation for most village cadres is less than 10,000 yuan per year, while the annual income of peasants who work or do businesses in the cities is generally between 30,000 and 50,000 yuan—​even though village cadres are always selected from the more competent elites in a village. However, when their family incomes are far less than that of ordinary peasant households, they can no longer afford to speak up and get things done. For this reason, most people believe that the income of village cadres has to be increased, otherwise, nobody will be willing to do the job. Hubei Province, combining the ideas of remuneration increase, regularizing the work of cadres, and building service-​oriented villagers’ committees, has instituted a policy of treating the leading village cadres on a par with deputy cadres on the township and county level. In other words, the job of village cadre is gradually becoming a full-​time non-​farming vocation, instead of a part-​time job in which one comes and goes as he or she pleases and collects work-​loss compensation. The problem, however, lies with the light workload of a front-​line village cadre. Historically, village cadres have never left farming and are not part of the formal administrative system. Villages have been granted autonomy in governance, and village cadres are elected to their positions. Once their positions become regularized and they become disengaged from production, however, more serious problems result.

4

Currently in central and western villages, there are really two types of village cadres who are still engaged in production and receiving work-​loss compensation. The first are the village cadres who have no other earnings save for the income from farming their own contracted farmlands. Their family income

The Evolution of Village Cadres in Agricultural Areas

77

is far less than that of other families—​in fact, it is at the lowest income level in the entire country. These village cadres have usually been on the job for a long time, probably because they have no alternative job opportunities or places to go. Second are the village cadres who have income sources in addition to farming their own contracted farmlands—​from running stores, selling agricultural materials, running agricultural machinery rental businesses, farming larger parcels of farmland, running small workshops, and so on. This side income may even match what those working or doing business in cities are earning, so that their income from farming their own contracted farmlands, the side income, and the work-​loss compensation together places them at the medium to above average range in the village. Meanwhile, they stay in the village and enjoy full family lives; since they are young, strong, smart, and capable, they often have authority and influence over peasants in the village. Today, these “middle peasants” are the best source for village cadres in the central and western regions. Once they become village cadres, the rather low work-​loss compensation does not pose much of a problem to them. The old village cadres of the past, who depended only on the compensation to get by, could not continue in their posts. They either resigned to work in the cities or sought sideline opportunities within the village. If the current village cadres find new income opportunities in the village, they can continue in their present position, otherwise they have to resign and let other “middle peasants” with side income take over. In a sense, the current village cadres are naturally completing a new round of the replacement process, which keeps village cadres engaged in farming and their work-​loss compensation intact. In this way, current efforts in the central and western regions either to raise village cadres’ remuneration or even formalize their positions, disengaging them from agricultural production, and pay them wages are misguided and should be avoided.

pa rt 2 Village Politics and Peasant Participation



chapter 12

Uncivil People

1

In his book Changes in Private Life (Siren shenghuo de biange 《私人生活的变 革》), Yan Yunxiang (阎云祥) used the term “uncivil people (wu gongde de ren 无公德的个人)” to describe villagers who talk only about rights and not about

responsibilities and obligations. These “uncivil people” appear to be struggling for personal rights and have qualities akin to citizens of modern society, but what they are actually fighting for is an abnormal form of excessively utilitarian individualism. Yan Yunxiang argued that “uncivil people” appeared as a result of “complete freedom in personal life and strict constraints in public life.” Why Yan Yunxiang’s “uncivil people” appeared may be discussed further, but they are indeed quite common in China’s countryside. Other words besides “uncivil” may apply, such as “unconstrained,” “unbowed,” “unscrupulous,” “irresponsible,” “uncommitted,” and “non-​collectivist.” All such terms refer broadly to a common type of villager whose notions of rights, responsibilities, and obligations mismatch. They talk only about rights and personal interests, but not about civility and responsibilities, and they are unwilling to shoulder obligations; they may even have lost the basic awe of societal constraints (hence unbowed) and the moral bottom line (hence unscrupulous). In the current rapid decline of the power of village social structures, this excessively utilitarian individualism has led to social disintegration. The emergence of “uncivil people” is not just a personal issue, but also one that relates to village structural power and village politics.

2

Since males outnumber females in China’s rural villages today, it is difficult for a family with two or more sons to find daughters-​in-​law, because families with one son usually have more savings and are younger, meaning that they will have more surplus energy to help the young married couple. The difficulty of finding spouses for sons from multi-​son families is common in rural northern China. The parents of such families usually prefer first to pay for more expensive gifts and build larger houses to ensure that the eldest son can get married.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_013

82 Chapter 12 This leaves any younger son without much for his marriage; he will not be able to afford getting married. Even if he does get married, the younger son and his wife will be resentful because his parents will have paid out more for the marriage of the eldest son. To even out the score, the parents might do their utmost to help out at the younger son’s house, but this will make the older son and his wife dissatisfied. In sum, no matter what the parents do, the two sons (not to mention three or more) and their wives will be dissatisfied—​nothing the parents do will be right. As long as the parents are still young and relatively healthy, the problems will not be too great, but once they get frail with age, neither the sons nor the daughters-​in-​law will be willing to shoulder the responsibility of taking care of them, so the parents who worked hard through their lives may anticipate a miserable old age. Such a scenario often occurs in rural northern China among multi-​son families, for three reasons. The first is the weakening of village structures—​no one is speaking for or maintaining the rights of the increasingly isolated elderly. The second is that some individuals speak only of their rights but not of their responsibilities, and only calculate how much benefit their parents should give them. Any benefit they think should be theirs but fail to get then becomes reason enough to treat their parents callously—​but they do not speak of responsibilities. They even lack a basic sense of indebtedness. The third is the fierce competition among villagers. It has caused them to forget the innate, love-​ based sentiments—​the intimate emotions—​that exist between generations.

3

In villages throughout China, even more “uncivil individuals” appear in the public sphere. I have experienced this firsthand. In 2003, for example, I managed to get outside funding to have a well drilled for irrigation purposes in my home village. Because the well could only cover a maximum of 200 mu (around 32.9 acres) for irrigation, not enough for the whole village, the drilling location was very important. Sure enough, after the well produced water, one of the peasants in the village used the fact that his fields were not benefiting from the well as an excuse for burying it. The more than 10,000 yuan it cost to drill the well were thus wasted. Even more common are the various state-​funded rural infrastructure -​ building projects intended to facilitate agricultural production and peasants’ lives. Inevitably with such projects, a number of peasants must be dealt with, for instance, when acquiring land, damaging young crops, felling trees, demolishing cowsheds and pigsties, and so on. Of course, roadways must also be used

Uncivil People

83

for transport, and some land for storing construction materials. While it would seem that peasants would be grateful for state funds coming into their village, any infrastructure-​building project will harm the individual interests of some. For these peasants, there is still nothing wrong in demanding compensation. The problem now, however, is that peasants throughout China, not in single locations, are demanding high levels of compensation for such projects. For instance, if a tree needs to be cut down for a project, a peasant may ask for compensation of 800 yuan when the actual value of the tree is only around 200 yuan, refuse to budge if his demands are not met, and stall the entire project. The peasant who demands high compensation even does so with a righteous air, because the money he is demanding comes from the state, from a contractor from outside, not from the other peasants in his village. Throughout the process, the other peasants will only stand by and watch, because it does not concern themselves, but if the state or contractor does give him high compensation, he becomes an instant hero, someone with ability. The others quickly emulate him, demanding high levels of compensation, as in the case of “nail households.” In this way, the government soon discovered that improving the lives of peasants would not be easy. The more it carried out such projects to improve people’s lives, the more the peasants became “trouble-​makers (diaomin 刁民).” Instead of winning people’s hearts, the projects touched off all sorts of problems. The probability of encountering “nail households” in a village is high if it is the state that directly conducts the bidding for a state-​funded project. One “nail household” can easily mushroom into a group of “nail households,” or even the entire local population, which multiplies the difficulties of the project while nullifying its effectiveness. The reason why nail households have come to represent peasants, and peasants have become nail households, is clearly not that individual peasants have personality defects or character flaws, but that there are more important structural issues. In any society, there will always be a minority of people—​call them “nail households” or trouble-​makers—​who are bold enough to emphasize their personal interests. However, in a normal society, they will be strongly suppressed by structural power and remain marginalized. Simply put, the small number of people who receive undeserved gains must remain socially marginalized in society for social order to be maintained, otherwise everyone will want to gain what they do not deserve, and in such a society, basic order cannot be maintained. The problem now is that when state resources go into the countryside, the nail households’ demands on those state resources do not harm the interests of their fellow villagers. It is entirely normal for nail households to appear, entirely normal for them to demand high compensation, and entirely normal for

84 Chapter 12 the other villagers to stand by and watch. But as soon as one nail household succeeds, the whole village follows suit, and once that happens, the implementation of the state project is beset with difficulty.

4

If, instead of national funding going directly to a project in the countryside, the resources were to be sent to the village, then the villagers would discuss how to use them. If the state were to offer job opportunities instead of sheer relief (yigong daizhen 以工代赈), adopt a people-​run, publicly assisted (minban gongzhu 民办公助) model, and implement the “one project, one discussion (yishi yiyi 一事一议)” system—​only then, when the peasants’ labor and input have created the basic conditions for the projects’ completion, state resources would go to the village. By making the process of state resources going into the villages into a competitive process, this would stimulate localities (villages) to organize themselves in order to obtain those resources. These local organizations must fully mobilize villagers and unify villagers’ individual interests with the collective interests of the village community, in order to form a strong common or public will in the village, which will act as a constraint on each person’s behavior. Even if a nail household appears in defiance of the public will, the villagers as a whole will still have their own ways of making the nail household pay a price in terms of reputation and so on. In other words, it would prevent the emulation of nail households. The nail households would no longer represent the villagers, and the villagers would no longer all become nail households. In this way, the village politics produced through the mobilization of the villagers provide the basic conditions for state funds to be put to use in the village.

5

The question now is how much it is possible to mobilize villagers to get involved in village politics amid rapid social change, when the villages are being rapidly hollowed out of people, capital, and resources—​all drawn to the cities. Without village politics, good things are hard to accomplish. To build up the political strength of villages by allocating state resources to them, while at the same time letting the peasants organize on the use of those resources, would be the right way to go. As for how specifically this should be done, there is still a lot of uncertainty.

chapter 13

Why Are There Trouble-​Makers?

1

During the 2016 summer break, when I went to do field research in Wangting Town, located on the shore of Taihu Lake, in Suzhou City, it so happened that the village officials were busy with flood control work. Floodwater was threatening the house of one old woman, whose children were all working outside of the village, so the village cadres brought her to a nearby hotel, and simple fast food was provided to her by the village. This aroused dissatisfaction among other villagers, who thought since the old woman was being housed in a hotel and eating fast food at the collective’s expense, they wanted the same. They also asked for instant noodles, even though the noodles were eventually not consumed but thrown away. For several days and nights, the village cadres kept vigil to guard the village against the threats of rising flood levels, making regular rounds. One young man whose house was flooded sought the village cadres to help him drain the flood water from his house. While the village cadres were working hard draining away the water, the young man went out to walk his dog. When he returned and saw the profusely sweating cadres still toiling at water removal, he did not serve them tea or water and thank them for their efforts, but instead upbraided them for taking so long. The village cadre commented: “We help them solve their difficulties, but they just stand around and watch and chew us out. It’s as if we were the dog he was walking—​it’s quite chilling.” There was one house with a blocked sewer pipe, an easy-​to-​fix problem, but the peasant living there called the hotline number 12345, which was routed to the village, which in turn sent a team leader to take a look: the peasant told him he had no tools. This should have been a very simple task that he could solve on his own. The village cadres remarked that nowadays the villagers were reporting all kinds of problems, big and small, to the government. The government’s one-​sided sloganeering emphasis on serving the people has unwittingly cultivated a large group of trouble-​makers. Another person I interviewed, a village Party secretary in southern Jiangxi, told me this “story.” The secretary of the county Party committee, visiting impoverished households during the New Year’s Festival, was giving each household a regulation 700 yuan, in the form of 600 yuan cash and 100 yuan worth of two bottles of oil and a bag of rice. After presenting the gifts, the villagers, instead of expressing their gratitude towards the Party and government, openly

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_014

86 Chapter 13 came out with, “Why so little? Did your staff eat the rest?” The village Party secretary also related a local joke. Two old men were quarreling, and one was so angry that he declared, “You think I’m prone to be bullied like the government!” The secretary could not fathom why villagers in the 1990s could be so submissive as to dutifully contribute their income to the government without any qualms, while villagers now will not listen even when the government gives them money; they express dissatisfaction and say all kinds of strange things. There are many more such stories on the Internet. I am attaching two on-​ line articles that have recently gone viral to the end of this article.

2

From what I have heard said during my field research or what I have seen or read in the media, I came to a basic realization that the ordinary people of today are no longer the ordinary people of a decade ago. At least one can say that a large number of trouble-​makers have appeared among them. Why is it, now that the state has not only stopped collecting money from the peasants but has been giving them more and more money instead, that these trouble-​makers have appeared? The problem lies in the paradox of the current “people’s government (renmin zhengfu 人民政府).” In modern political science, government should be a limited government, one that uses taxpayer money to run but shoulders limited responsibilities. It cannot be a government that tries to manage everything, because it is impossible to manage everything well. A modern government should respond to the needs of taxpayers or voters, and cannot be held hostage by nail households or specific interest groups or false public opinion. Governmental decisions should be public choices and not run counter to the public interest. Chinese politics currently adopt a “pro-​people (qinmin 亲民)” approach and abide by the general principle of “governance by virtue (dezhi 德治),” which shapes and molds the government into an unlimited thing that can do everything everywhere; it is typically embodied by the term, “the people’s government.” As the term suggests, the people’s government is there to serve the people, so of course if people have any problem or difficulty, they can turn to their government. For example, “Zhangzhou 110” (i.e., the Directly-​managed Division of the Patrol Police Detachment of the Zhangzhou City Public Security Bureau 漳州市公安局巡特警支队直属大队) promotes the “four musts (sibi 四必),” that is, the police “must be sent out where there is an alarm, help people in distress, rescue those in danger, and respond when there is a demand.”

Why Are There Trouble-makers?

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Having promoted this, however, the public security organs must allocate a lot of resources to resolve all kinds of demands that people are now raising, whether or not those demands concern the police or are reasonable. The more the public security organs are “pro-​people,” and the more actively they resolve ordinary people’s problems, the more the people raise demands, and increasingly unreasonable ones. Since it is the people’s government, the people can reflect on the situation: they can speak loudly, lose their temper, pound the table, slap the bench, throw their teacups, shout profanities, push and pull cadres, or even give them a few slaps on the face. Women or elderly persons doing it will feel all the more self-​righteous, because they are “letting the people vent their frustrations.” The peasants once sued their local cadres on 25 counts, and when the higher-​ups went to investigate, they found that none had any basis, but they could not describe it as false accusation, only as the people’s “supervision” of the cadres. When street vendors have a conflict with urban management officers, the urban management officers can only say nice things, otherwise they are accused of brutal law enforcement. When a petitioner goes to government offices to create a scene every week, government officials can only attend to the petitioner or avoid him or her altogether, whether or not the petition is reasonable or legal, or whether or not the petitioner is really paranoiac. In the past, when the country’s economy was in relative difficulty and agriculture was the pillar of the economy, the government needed to collect agricultural taxes and fees from peasants in order to finance the economy, and peasants also had to invest capital or labor to improve their production or living standard. When the agricultural tax was abolished, the peasants commented that “agricultural taxes were used to support the military, and submitting rice and taxes to the state is inevitable,” which shows that they were quite aware of the situation. It was quite natural for them to improve their production and living conditions through investment and labor. In the present century, however, China has changed from an agriculture-​ based country to an urban industry-​and-​commerce-​based country, and agriculture accounts for only a little over 10% of gdp. The country abolished agricultural taxes, began the large-​scale transfer of payments (zhuanyi zhifu 转移支付) to rural areas, and all of the funds being transferred were made in the absence of any corresponding compulsory requirements from the receiving local governments. For example, the comprehensive agricultural subsidies (nongye zonghe butie 农业综合补贴) were originally used to subsidize peasants to grow grain, but now many of them continued to receive the subsidies even though they were not growing any grain at all. The minimum living standard allowance (dibaohu butie 低保户补贴) is given unconditionally to any household with income below the minimum subsistence level, and there is

88 Chapter 13 no requirement on the recipients, for instance, that they must be in compliance with laws and regulations. The New Rural Social Endowment Insurance System (xinxing nongye yanglao baoxian 新型农业养老保险) also provides every rural resident over 60 years of age a benefit of 70 yuan per month, unconditionally. Around 2004, when the reform of rural taxes and fees began, upper-​level government demanded that villages everywhere halt their practice of forcing villagers to “clear their debts,” since some of the poorest households were in such arrears on their taxes that it was impossible for them to ever pay them. It made sense to stop the “clearing of debts.” The problem is that there were many cunning people in the villages who had the money but had always deliberately delayed or evaded payment, or stopped paying off their debts altogether. When the debt on those unpaid taxes were waived, the honest and pro-​ active people who had supported the state and collectives by always paying their taxes on time were the ones who ate the big loss—​the cunning people were given the advantage. In rural areas today, to maintain “harmony,” local governments tend to “solve internal conflicts among the people with renminbi,” “resolve problems only when there is a ruckus and ignore them when there is none,” and “let honest people eat the loss when nail households claim the advantage.” Because the poor households enjoy policy support, some peasants strive to qualify as poor households and devise means of getting disability certificates. Members of households receiving the low-​income family supplement can also claim high deductions on their medical expenses, so peasants suffering from serious medical conditions demand to be included in the program, to increase their medical deduction rates. But now, in villages throughout the country, it has become a practice to bring seriously ill peasants into the program, regardless of what their family income may be. Central government policies have emphasized the goal of helping peasants become rich. Some powerful leaders and departments directly use state funds to help a select few peasants become rich, while the majority do not receive any benefit. As long as the funds are spent on rural folk, the practice can stand, because there is no political problem with it—​of course it satisfies the principle of “governing for the people (zhizheng weimin 执政为民).” However, they forget that China has now established a market economy system that is open to all people. This modern, market-​based system provides everyone room to profit from the market, and of course everyone deserves to compete equally in this market. The state’s public resources should not be used to help a certain group, especially since such assistance functions as a kind of private charity in which the state’s public funds are spent as personal favors. The consequences

Why Are There Trouble-makers?

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of such practices would be the collapse of the public character of the state and weakening the power of the local governments as representatives of the state. In other words, current public policy in China lacks a balance between interests and responsibilities, rights and obligations, and benefits and principles. The government has become increasingly particular about being “pro-​people,” to the point that it uses public resources as a charity for buying off cunning people, nail households, and petitioners. If this continues, the cunning will benefit, honest people will lose out and get marginalized, and everyone will emulate the cunning and become trouble-​makers. It is precisely the downward transfer of large amounts of state resources in the form of charitable funds, without principles and bottom lines, that has created a pitfall in the basic shared, public nature of the system. During this process, peasants have not grown into citizens with balanced interests and responsibilities and balanced rights and obligations, but have instead turned into one batch after another of trouble-​makers who talk only about rights and interests and not obligations and responsibilities. This has led to many of the paradoxes and dilemmas in current grassroots governance.

3

That such a dilemma would appear in current grassroots governance has to do not only with institutional philosophy but also with the perceptions of society in general. Today’s information society is completely unlike traditional society, and any local incident can go viral and become a public focus in an instant, which has a great impact on national policy and grassroots governance. The most typical example of this occurs when crowds of people stand around to watch urban management officers enforce the law on street vendors. As soon as the videos are posted online, there is a flood of condemnations. How urban management officers can enforce the law in a more humane manner can certainly be discussed, but the question is, no one cares whether or not the street vendors were breaking the urban management laws. Many people have now grown accustomed to showing their conscience by criticizing the government, or practicing charity and accumulating merit by demanding that the state disburse money in order to take care of disadvantaged groups. If everyone thinks they can be good people doing good deeds by using the government’s money, and that they can display their own kindness and mercy by capitalizing on basic social principles, then their words and actions will tend to get focused through the Internet and produce a dramatic effect:  society loses its basic

90 Chapter 13 principles, so that as long as one appears vulnerable in the public sphere, one can do whatever one wants. Furthermore, some online opinion leaders have also fueled this process by practicing the “two evers” (liangge fanshi 两个凡是):  “Whatever the government is doing is bad, and whoever confronts the government is good.” For anything that happens, one can basically forego the analysis and conclude that the government is oppressing a disadvantaged group. In this sense, the current problem in grassroots governance is that national governance has already entered the twenty-​first century, but the conceptual ideas on good national governance systems are still stuck in the twentieth. On the one hand, we demand the practice of limited government, based on modern political thinking, and on the other hand, we demand that the government assume unlimited responsibilities and obligations. This basic paradox seems intrinsic to the concept of the “people’s government.” Clearly, a “people’s government” is one that serves the people and assumes unlimited responsibilities. However, the term “the people” is a political term with specific meaning, not a vague, general one—​it does not even refer to citizens. One important aspect of “the people” is the term’s intentionality, i.e., the people can make mistakes, but they must have good intentions, not bad ones. Therefore, the meaning of “the people” must be analyzed. The politically well-​intentioned masses are the people; politically ill-​intentioned people might not be. If those who undermine the basic good order of society can go beyond the realm of internal conflicts among the people and turn them into the “us-​versus-​the-​enemy” conflicts of a dictatorship, then the methods used to handle them can undergo a similar shift, which would give the people’s government acquire strong governance capability, and not cause it to fall into its current predicament, in which it gets blamed for everything that happens. In other words, a traditional unlimited government must have the corresponding institutional arrangements, like the “differentiation and transformation of the two essentially different types of conflict” described above that match the concept of “the people’s government,” as a default assumption of unlimited government and trouble-​makers in traditional society. In the present century, China has been comprehensively implementing a modern government ruled by law, and under its laws, it is no longer possible to implement the kind of “people’s democratic dictatorship” that existed under Mao, nor is it possible to make assumptions about trouble-​makers. The government thus has to face the huge challenge of dealing with a society that lacks “the people,” as already manifested in the predicaments of grassroots governance in various regions throughout the country.

Why Are There Trouble-makers?



91

4

The greatest paradox in China’s current governance lies with the lingering influence of the pro-​people or even charitable political ideologies of the twentieth century as China enters a new period of limited government based on the rule of law. Their influence lingers in all of the people in China (and are perhaps decisive), among whom the most typical representatives are online bystanders. Appendix

What Has Become of Our People?

In 1998, massive flooding drove people from their hometowns in Fuxing (复兴), Batou (坝头), Huikou (汇口), and Zhoutou (洲头) to the homes of their relatives and friends elsewhere. The Su-​Fu Highway (宿复线), more than 100 kilometers long, was packed with flood victims. The main tasks of the traffic police and government officials were facilitating the flow of traffic and protecting the dikes and big markets. Policemen or soldiers who helped people by moving their belongings or carrying an elder on their backs or giving a car seat to a child were so appreciated that some people wept with gratitude. It showed the close relationship between the armed forces, police, and ordinary folks. Eighteen years later, when a similar flood threatened in Fuxing, Yikou (隘口), Zhifeng (趾凤), and Liangting (凉亭), and government officials went door-​to-​door to notify residents to evacuate, they were met with responses like, “Then you’ll have to round up the pigs and ducks and carry me piggyback!” If the officials looked a bit discomfited and did not leave, they would blurt out, “If I die, see which one of you damn officials escapes responsibility!” as if to use their own lives as a means of threatening officials—​Chinese-​style humor of the most ridiculous stripe. Nowadays, evacuees do not need to go to their relatives’ home or rely on their friends, but are gathered somewhere where they are given food, drink, toilets, and money. It would be reasonable to suppose they would be thankful to the government and the Party, or help in the fight against the flood on the front line, but the chilling reality is that they just fold their arms and watch from the side. I’ve heard that in Zhifeng (趾凤), when a government official carrying a sandbag on his back tripped and fell, people watching from the side burst into laughter. When word got out that the government was distributing food, drink, and money, those who had already gone to their children’s or relatives’ homes came back in droves to use the government’s aid. Even more ridiculously, some people who were not even flood

92 Chapter 13 victims demanded the use of the emergency shelter to enjoy the victims’ benefits. It was as if everyone felt that they should not be left of out of such privileges, and they would be at least mollified only if they got a share. Are these ordinary people to blame? Or are there other factors? I can’t figure this out, even after repeated analyses. There was another emergency shelter in Jinlong Primary School in Wuli (五里), where the teachers of the school took turns as volunteers taking care of the flood victims, but the people still often threw temper tantrums. The school took in 200 people, meaning that 600 meals per day had to be prepared. Some of the people used the bottled mineral water to wash their feet, and when female teachers were moving rice bags, water bottles, and other heavy things, the young adults among the victims just played cards. In the face of a disaster, what has become of our people? (Author: an editor of Urban Network; article cited from news on the Urban Network of Susong County, Anhui Province, www.ds0556.com, dated 11 July 2016)



Lament of a Flood-​fighting Cadre: While We Work, People Watch the Boat Capsize

A friend of mine in Guangxi says that when Peng Qinghua (彭清华), the Party Secretary of their Autonomous Region, initiated a drive to showcase “beautiful Guangxi,” all the government officials were sent out to villages throughout the Region to tidy them up and clean the environment. However, the country folks only pointed and criticized them, saying you missed cleaning this spot here, or you need to shovel there. This year (2016), a huge flood swept the whole eastern part of Hubei Province, and likewise my hometown of Xishui (浠水). While village cadres and soldiers were busy carrying sandbags and building dikes to stem the rising waters of Wangtian Lake (望天湖), the country folks swarmed about using electricity to catch fish. Many idlers would rather sit by as the waters rose than exert themselves to protect their hometown. It was really regrettable. We can’t blame this on people’s ignorance, since grassroots governance in the villages today has gotten very bad. Without authority and without checks and balances, all of rural society has become a jungle: ordinary people do not fear officials, but they are afraid of hooligans; they believe in interests, not morals. In such circumstances, they swarm in wherever gains can be had and go into hiding if a problem occurs. If you try to reason with them, they come back at you with a heap of fallacious arguments, but if you’re a country hooligan willing to commit any crime—​murder, arson, pulling down houses, unearthing tombs, and so on—​they dare not say a word. People now focus on their own interests, teams have grown difficult to lead, and as the Party and government’s abilities to mobilize the people have gradually weakened,

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ordinary people have reverted to their former condition, wherein they look after only their own interests and their society is comparable to a plateful of loose sand. I sincerely hope that the government can pay more attention to rural governance and get over its fear of the positive energy and social organizations that the people initiate on their own. When people do things that the government should have done, the government should not feel that it has lost face. It should not feel that they are covert rebels and bandits, or be afraid that they are organizing ordinary people, or that they might at any time be hatching unspeakable underground conspiracies. Leaders, we do share your concerns!



Where Has the Party Leadership of the Masses Gone?

The flood situation has stabilized, people are back in their homes and jobs, and everything has returned to peace. As one of the writers appointed by higher-​ups to conduct a field trip to summarize and reflect on the whole flood-​prevention process, I raised a question, but everyone kept their silence, unwilling to say anything. During flood prevention, the Party members and cadres were truly amazing. The leaders of various teams from various agencies were sleeping on the dikes, and there was a group of village cadres who kept vigil all day and night, never taking a step away from the dikes. This may have been, first, because they had not forgotten their original enthusiasm after all; they kept the overall situation in mind and were showing responsibility. Second, they may have feared being held accountable under the new normal. The young soldiers involved in the rescue efforts were the most endearing—​they accomplished many moving deeds! Having experienced both the 1998 flood and this year’s flood, I compared the two and framed a question: What about the peasants, our parents, brothers, and sisters? What were they doing? In 1998, they carried people on their backs, carried earth and stones on their shoulders, ate cold steamed buns, and drank river water without complaint or regret. As soon as the water receded, they went back home to take care of their homes, drain their farmlands, and do drought prevention work, too. And in this year’s flood? On the Internet it was reported that during the emergency, when soldiers were busy day and night fighting the flood, one woman wielding a kitchen knife threatened to kill anyone who touched a tree by her house without compensating her for it. How similar this is to something that those of us who normally do water conservancy projects once encountered! More than ten earth-​movers were waiting to start work when out comes a man wanting to block everything if he was not compensated 100 yuan per spring onion. We felt completely helpless, and the town cadres were helpless. Every step we take for progress ends in wrangling the whole way,

94 Chapter 13 or they petition higher authorities, in which case the result is that we have to handle it ourselves. In two words: pay up!



The Masses Have Become Uninvolved Onlookers

I was personally involved in rescue activities this time in the lake district. To ensure the safety of people and property, government officials did their utmost to relocate or evacuate people and distribute dried food and drinks. All the victims asked was, “Is there any assistance for us besides food? How much per day is it? Give us the money first.” A young man, surnamed Xu, who had just started work in the Civil Affairs Bureau, had been working all day without food or drink. When he asked for water, no one gave him any, because they were busy playing mahjong! The government grants a considerable Improved Varieties Subsidy (liangzhong butie 良种补贴) to promote the production of superior strains of crops, while flood prevention is done to protect the loss of those crops, but in fact, about 40% of the land is left fallow. During the flood-​prevention period, the peasants sat by their doorways chatting about the situation in the South China Sea and speaking loudly of boycotting Japanese products, but no one was willing to extend a helping hand or boil water for those busy with flood control. Instead, some drove off in Japanese cars to catch fish, watch the flood, and take photos with their iPhones to post them to friends on WeChat … One young peasant, completely drunk, shamelessly bragged that he was not afraid of the flood because when the petition reached the higher authorities later in the year the problem would definitely be solved. The flood-​fighters present said in private that if not for the fear of being accused of abusing peasants, they would have given him a good face-​slapping. There was a woman whose husband worked in the city. She considered herself to be very fashionable and played mahjong all day every day. She complained about some water that had collected in the plaza on the edge of town: “Some of you haven’t done much. Why don’t you speed up the drainage work—​it’s been affecting our dance sessions for days now!”



The Peasants Are the Same Ignorant People of a Century Ago

On the dike were village cadres who were staying in temporary tents, taking turns to stand watch. When we asked why they did not mobilize peasants for this, they told us with a wry smile, “The peasants from the first demanded 130 yuan per day in cash,

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which we couldn’t afford. Then again, we didn’t dare press them, for fear we’d be accused of adding to the peasants’ burdens and arbitrarily requisitioning donations. How futile!” Article One of the Flood Control Law (《防洪法》) stipulates the obligation of any citizen to participate in flood control and emergency relief (fangxun qiangxian 防汛抢险). However, this is pure rhetoric and cannot be implemented. This might be individual imagination only, and the reasons are complex, but they’re not worth thinking about too much. We used to shout about loving the country and defending sovereignty every day, but in fact, if there comes a day when the country really needs people, the scene described by Lu Xun (鲁迅) in his short story “Medicine” (《药》) might not be too far from the mark. By this point in our meeting, no one said a thing, except, “On this question—​on this question, let’s take a step back and consult the leadership’s opinions on whether we need to research it.” We really can ponder this question—​what have our country and people lost? (Author: Deng Wenming [邓文明], a cadre of the Municipal Bureau of Civil Affairs, Yingcheng City [应城市], Hubei Province, dated 24 July 2016)

chapter 14

Being Reasonable and Being Ruthless

1

In the summer of 2013, I  did field research in Fuchuan County (富川县), Guangxi Autonomous Region and then in Shaonan Town (绍南镇), Zhejiang Province. Fuchuan County is one of the most poverty-​stricken counties in the country, while Shaonan Town is one of the most prosperous. Despite the differences in these rural areas’ appearance, they have many points of similarity in terms of village governance. Shenpo Village (深坡村) in Fuchuan County has an 800-​years history and has many ancient buildings, so it applied to the Autonomous Region government for inclusion in its village conservation program and was accepted. Starting in 2012, Shenpo Village took the opportunity provided by the higher-​level government’s investment in repaving roads in the village to improving the village’s sanitation and environment. The main task was to clear the village’s trash, which had been left unattended for a long time. This also coincided with the 2013 rural cleanup campaign throughout Guangxi Autonomous Region and as a result, Shenpo Village became a clean-​up campaign model village for the entire county, and even the entire city. Regardless of whether it is an old village or model village for the clean-​up campaign, the ramshackle sheds that peasants built next to their own houses were not only eyesores, but also usually occupied public space, affecting pedestrian safety. The Village thus planned to demolish these sheds throughout the village. After doing a survey, they identified 80 sheds, involving 60 households, for demolition. Since demolition always impacts people’s interests and incurs wrath, the village head, Mr. Jiang (蒋), said that in any demolition, one must speak reasonably and start out slowly, and if this did not work, then they would be more ruthless about it. To effectively demolish the sheds, Mr. Jiang convened several sessions of the village congress to explain repeatedly the importance of demolishing the sheds and making the village a model for the clean-​up program. Then he had the sheds slated for demolition marked with the large character chai (拆) or “demolish,” and he visited door-​to-​door to explain the rationale to the house owners. On demolition day, Mr. Jiang led a group of young male supporters in carrying out the demolition, house-​by-​ house. The young men were needed when house owners refused to comply, and conflicts arose.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_015

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The soft and hard approaches together achieved success in Shenpo Village. The county and town governments have praised the speed and thoroughness of the demolition work. For having shown such effective village governance, in the future, Shenpo village will receive more funds from the higher levels of government, and those funds will play their role. Mr. Jiang for a long time had worked as a driver for a long-​distance transport business and had once run a honey date processing plant, but that failed, and he had no farmland. However, through his extensive experience in transport and factory management, he had a lot of contact with the outside world, as well as a few triad connections. Mr. Jiang returned to Shenpo Village in 2011 to run for election as village head; he managed to garner the support of middle-​ aged and young people in the village and won. After becoming village head, he sought more funding from higher levels of government while putting into practice his ideas on being reasonable and being ruthless in village governance. In this way, he was able to use the funds that came down to the village effectively, and in the span of a little more than two years the appearance of Shenpo Village had changed dramatically. When talking about village governance, Shaonan Community Party Secretary Cheng Fang (程方) in Shaonan Town (绍南镇), Zhejiang Province, said that he believed both the soft and hard approaches must be used at the appropriate times and circumstances for village governance to be effective. When dealing with some people, you have to dare to pound the table. You have to win them not only in arguments but also in fights. Mr. Cheng used to be a soldier and was a big fellow, 1.8 meters in height, and very imposing. When he pounds the table, it is so powerful that the opponent usually gives up without a fight. However, what Mr. Cheng meant by “winning fights” was not getting into fisticuffs or pounding the table, but rather mobilizing all his connections throughout the village to isolate or marginalize people who are being unreasonable. Mr. Cheng owns a factory that generates tens of million yuan of annual output value and an annual income of millions of yuan, and though it is not as big as others in town, he has extensive personal connections. What he says has money behind it. If an ordinary villager’s relationship with him goes sour, he may find himself isolated and pressured, and then he will have a difficult time. Because Mr. Cheng wins both arguments and fights, he becomes more effective in the governance of Shaonan Community, and as a result, it is a more orderly place. Shaonan Town has mature, well-​developed industries and five listed companies. Its prosperity, inevitably, has given rise to a large wealthy class and with it, serious social differentiation and stratification. Due to the economic connections within the wealthy stratum, network among themselves and form strong,

98 Chapter 14 powerful alliances through social relationships and marriages. Someone like Mr. Cheng, who owns such a profitable factory and is the Party secretary of the largest community in town, may be described as someone with both economic and political connections, so he exudes the confidence of one who “wins fights.” As a result, he can settle all kinds of issues in the community, which benefits village governance and enables him to complete tasks as assigned by higher levels of government. In a highly developed area like Shaonan Town, if a Party secretary lacks economic resources and social connections, he or she will not be able to win arguments or fights, so that any attempt to handle something in the village devolves into a tangled mess; nothing is done well, and no one is satisfied. For this reason, the trend toward plutocratic village governance in economically developed areas cannot be reversed. One may argue that the rich do not necessarily govern villages well, but hardly anyone would disagree that the poor would govern poorly. In the 23 villages in Shaonan Town, virtually all of the village heads and Party secretaries are big bosses and multimillionaires. Moreover, virtually all of the current Party secretaries in Shaonan Town were first elected as village heads in the villagers’ committee elections before joining the Party to become Party secretaries. Already several years ago, Shaonan Town completed the process of replacing the traditional village cadres with rich ones. The widespread vote-​buying that started in the villagers’ committee elections in 2005 accelerated the process.

2

Before the abolition of agricultural taxes, the main task of rural cadres throughout China was to collect various taxes and fees from each household in person. When peasants were unwilling to pay taxes and fees, government officials at the county and town levels would use it against the village cadres when evaluating their performance, as it was the main consideration. This was particularly so in villages where the collection of agricultural taxes and fees had been most difficult. The harder it was to collect taxes, the fewer taxes and fees were collected, so village cadres who were weak or unwilling to offend the peasants were eventually ousted or replaced, and those who were strong and bold enough to face unyielding peasants would fill their spots. In extremely tough cases, even strength and boldness would not be enough; the village cadres would have to draw on their background connections, their brothers, and the triads. However, such village cadres became officials for the purpose of personal gain. They replaced the good old village cadres and often used force to

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collect agricultural taxes and fees from peasants while seeking to further their gain from the effort. As a result, village governance quickly worsened. One of the results was the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees in 2006. In other words, in the decade or so before the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the collection of agricultural taxes and fees in the country had come to such a head that the traditional, good old village cadres had to be replaced by physically strong, aggressive people who were prone to violence. After the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, there was another wave of official replacements; without tax collection, the aggressive village officials saw no profit in continuing with the work and were eventually replaced by the good old village elite. This is still the general situation in most villages in China’s central and western regions. With these good old village elites, however, three unsatisfactory situations arose. First, public affairs or public projects that impacted peasants’ private interests could not be implemented because of obstruction from individual nail households, to the point that everyone’s interests were harmed. Second, no one dared to stop village trouble-​makers who harmed collective interests, which led to a chain effect as others emulated them. Third, funds transferred from higher levels of government could not be fairly allocated, since privileged groups would take most of it at the expense of disadvantaged groups. As more state resources were being transferred to the countryside, if a village cadre, particularly a village head, appeared who could effectively solve these three problems, he or she would more easily get funding from above. Basically, state funding to the countryside is based on the effectiveness of village governance, without which no transferred funds will be allocated. It was on this basis that Mr. Jiang, the head of Shenpo Village, was chosen. He has a broad view of the world, close relations with both the legitimate business circles and the underworld, and is not physically engaged in farming, which leaves him with the time to govern the village reasonably and ruthlessly. Mr. Jiang also believed that he was the only eligible person for the position of Shenpo village head or Party secretary. He said that if a village Party secretary were to spend all of his time looking for abandoned farmland to hoe, he would have little time or desire to govern village affairs. Now that funds are being transferred down to the villages, the previous passive governance mode, in which a village cadre tries not to offend anyone’s personal interests, is obviously unsustainable. To effectively use the allocated funds, the kind of cadre that is needed is someone who is bold enough to lead the village, has time enough to reason and argue with peasants, cultivate social networks within and outside the village, and is able to act both reasonably and ruthlessly. No longer is there wriggle-​room—​things must get done. Meanwhile, the top-​down allocation of

100 Chapter 14 transferred funds has greatly increased the village cadres’ prestige and the possibility of benefiting themselves. Since Shaonan Town is comparatively rich, the economic elites have great personal power, and because village cadres could devise means of accruing considerable gains for themselves (through construction land deals, connections with government agencies, using the ties between officialdom and business), the economic elites coveted their positions. Once they became village cadres, they could take their existing power and readily convert it into the ability to “win arguments and fights,” thus maintaining order in village governance. Hence the process of rich cadres replacing the traditional ones was inevitable and already completed in Shaonan Town many years ago.

3

For economically developed areas like Shaonan Town, the rich elite inevitably replace the traditional, good old village cadres, because economic resources are at the basis of all other resources. For villages like Shenpo Village in Fuchuan County, which depend heavily on external funds, replacement by the elites is also inevitable, because passive governance cannot really digest the resources being transferred from above. As for the vast number of rural villages in middle and western China that have average levels of economic development, if they do not receive large resource inputs, passive governance will continue to prevail, and village cadres will continue to be the traditional good, old, but passive persons. Being reasonable and ruthless at the same time is necessary to deal with nail households and to make village governance active. However, in China’s grassroots governance today, a major outstanding issue is finding the impersonal power for dealing with nail households.

chapter 15

Conflicts Unavoidable in Maintaining Stability

1

Currently, there is a nationwide trial to confirm the rights of collectively owned land in the countryside. One of the main goals is to bar village or grassroots organizations from reallocating farmland in order to reduce their infringements on peasants’ land contractual management rights. When I went to Shandong Province to do field research during the summer holiday of 2014, I discovered that farmland reallocation is still done frequently in many Shandong villages. Most interestingly, virtually all of the villages that continue this practice performed better in terms of village governance. Their village cadre-​peasant relationships were also better, despite the unavoidable conflicts from the farmland reallocation process, which in some cases, even resulted in peasants petitioning higher-​level authorities, accusing the village cadres of violating the national land contract policy. By contrast, in villages where the practice has been discontinued, although the petitions on land reallocations had disappeared, peasants’ contacts with village collectives were very weak and their relationships with cadres almost non-​existent. This was due to the fact that the village collectives never responded to strong demands by the vast majority of peasants for farmland reallocation or provided them with effective agricultural production services. Village governance in those villages was poor. In Laiwu City (莱芜市), Shandong province, about 40 percent of the villages firmly maintained the practice of farmland reallocation, and most of these were governed well. It was precisely because of good governance that they could reallocate land. Conversely, it was precisely because of bad governance that the other villages could not reallocate land. Qihe County, Shandong was just like Laiwu City in terms of the interrelationship between land reallocation and village governance. What accounts for the above correlations in the relationship between farmland reallocation and village governance? One of the reasons was that when farmland was allocated to each household (fentian daohu 分田到户), it was generally divided into several grades in order to ensure fairness, and each grade of land was further distributed per capita, so that it became difficult for peasants to manage such finely divided and scattered parcels. Ostensibly, farmland is reallocated in response to population changes, but in actuality the goal is to get the peasants to facilitate production by combining their small parcels into

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_016

102 Chapter 15 large ones and forming chain operations (lianpian jingying 连片经营). When the village collectives have the ability to violate policy and ignore opposition or even petitions to higher-​level governments from individual households, and instead reallocate farmland on the basis of population changes, then they also have the ability to respond to the various difficulties the peasants may encounter in agricultural production and thereby facilitate the peasants’ productive activities and lives. When the village collectives are willing and able to respond to peasants’ difficulties, they gain a certain standing with the peasants. Individual peasants may oppose them or file petitions, but the village collectives will remain calm, because they have support (public opinion). Their willingness and ability to respond to peasants’ production and living needs in land reallocation further heightens their status and ability, and as a result, they are better able to do the job of village governance. In turn, village governance, done well, also strengthens the village collectives’ ability to respond to most peasants’ demands, reallocate farmland, and deal with conflicts without fear. If the village collective is not willing or able to respond to the difficulties that peasants encounter production and life, it loses the peasants’ support, and without that support, they cannot remain calm when a minority opposes them in land reallocation—​they will not have the courage or ability to face conflicts. Thus, the less well-​governed a village is, the less it can respond to most peasants’ demands and the less able it is to reallocate farmland. Conversely, the inability to reallocate farmland or respond to peasants’ demands in agricultural production and in life will cause a village’s governance to get worse and worse. In reality, conflicts in grassroots governance, such as minority-​versus-​ majority conflicts, are inevitable. Complete unanimity with zero dissent or conflict does not occur. Effective grassroots governance should be able to adjust the will of the majority, while the minority defers to the majority, so that it can respond to majority demands and solve problems. A serious problem that has emerged in grassroots governance today is that it lacks the courage and ability to face any conflict directly. Policy likewise aims at preventing conflicts. For example, one of the reasons for disallowing land readjustment in the first place was to prevent the conflicts that arise from land readjustment.

2

Before the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the most important and difficult job of grassroots cadres was the collection of agricultural taxes and fees from peasants, because they had to confront huge numbers of people, widely scattered, and seldom with any surplus. Added to that was the variety

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of circumstances among peasant households. More than a few were affected by natural or man-​made disasters, some were genuinely impoverished and could ill afford to pay taxes and fees, while others were nail households that refused to pay regardless of their situation. Under pressure from higher levels of government to fulfill their duty and collect the taxes and fees, grassroots cadres resorted to violence during tax collection, which led to riots. Because the collection of taxes and fees was becoming increasingly difficult, leading to an endless stream of violent incidents, the relationship between cadres and peasants in villages was very tense. The impression that “no village cadre is a good person” became common throughout China. In the end, reform of agricultural taxes and fees began in 2001, and in 2006, the taxes and fees were abolished completely. The abolition of agricultural taxes and fees left the infamous grassroots cadres with no work to do. At the heart of the comprehensive village system reform that followed the tax reform was the weakening of village cadres’ authority in order to prevent their abuse of power and use of violence. The state greatly streamlined villagers’ committees and reduced the number of village officials, and at the same time it switched to direct remittance via bankcard of the various top-​down transfer payments to which peasants were entitled, in order to prevent as much as possible the various levels of villagers’ committees from skimming the funds. Before the abolition, village cadres had to go door to door to collect agricultural taxes and fees, and at the same time deal with the various difficulties or problems encountered by peasants in production and in everyday life. In this sense, the pre-​abolition village cadres had been “well integrated with” the peasants as they were well conversant with peasants’ demands and had to respond to them, whether they wanted to or not. Post-​ abolition, since they no longer had to collect the taxes and fees and had lost the state’s trust, they preferred to be idle. Not needing anything from the peasants, whatever problems the peasants may have had were no longer any concern of theirs. They lost their motivation; the fewer issues to handle, the better. After the state implemented the policy disallowing farmland reallocation, even though 99 percent of the peasants had strong demands for land reallocation, which would greatly facilitate cultivation, the grassroots cadres ignored them, since the reallocation process would incur a lot of trouble and conflict, even petitions to higher-​level authorities, and in any case, policy did not permit it. The grassroots cadres only addressed peasants’ needs with speeches on state policy. China has about 600,000 administrative villages, and each village’s situation differs from the next in terms of the peasants’ troubles, problems, and conflicts. In any case, the state is powerless to answer the needs of all those

104 Chapter 15 villages, with their more than 200 million peasant households, and it cannot directly provide just the right services to each one. Without strong grassroots organizations, it cannot solve the peasants’ problems simply by transferring to them a lot of money. By contrast, within the scope of their own villages, the grassroots organizations that deal directly with the peasants are extremely clear about the peasants’ demands. The problem is that the state now no longer trusts them, and the grassroots cadres have no incentive to respond to those demands. This is particularly so when village cadres incur blame for anything they do. They fear any trouble or incident, and they are especially fearful of petitions. Why would they want to do anything and get in trouble for it? It is in this context that in a few of Shandong’s administrative villages, many village cadres are still engaged in farmland reallocation in order to adapt to the progress of agricultural technology, keep pace with the reality of people leaving the land, and respond to the strong production-​related demands of the vast majority of peasants in their communities. Of course, this is the kind of villagers’ committee that has a good fighting spirit, these are the kind of grassroots village cadres who take responsibility, and this kind of village governance is good governance.

3

China still has over 600  million peasants living in the countryside, and the more than 200 million peasants working as migrant workers in cities still have various kinds of connections with the villages. Since the living and production conditions for each peasant still in the villages vary, so that there are vast differences in their demands and preferences, it is obviously impossible for the state to directly respond to and solve the problems of each one. It can only rely on grassroots villagers’ committees. Because peasants’ problems for the large part are concentrated at the village and community level, that is precisely the level that has the ability and motivation to solve their various problems and respond to their needs. Grassroots villagers’ committees are important because a large number of peasant households have matters related to agricultural production and everyday life that are “hard to do well, impossible to do, and not worth doing” on their own, so they need the villagers’ committees to handle them. It is by no means easy for the villagers’ committees to handle such matters, because the latter will certainly involve the adjustment of conflicting interests, the integration of differing preferences, persuading the minority to follow the majority, and building consensus. Such things require not only that villagers’

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committees be willing, capable, and resolute in their work but also have work resources and policy support. Policy support means each level of government from the top down giving support to villagers’ committees to enable them to respond actively to peasants’ demands and solve the problems that cannot be handled by individual households. Active support should be given to the work of grassroots villagers’ committees. The process by which villagers’ groups respond to peasants’ needs is one in which they directly confront rural conflicts and, of course, solve them. By doing so, they can enhance their prestige, their fighting power, and experience. It is thus a positive process. The process may make some persons dissatisfied, but at the same time, it will motivate the majority of peasants and stimulate their enthusiasm for participation, because they will realize that such participation can solve their own problems, has practical significance, and concerns their own interests. Policy support means that when higher levels of government set policy, they should encourage grassroots villagers’ groups to respond to peasants’ demands and actively deal with peasants’ issues, so that peasants are mobilized to participate in village affairs. It means that, policy-​wise, villagers’ groups should be given a certain level of discretionary power (ziyou cailiangquan 自由裁量权), and villagers should be allowed to exercise their autonomy. It should not mean formulating state policies to restrict or hollow out their land ownership rights to the point that they have no land ownership rights. We must keep in mind that collective land ownership is the economic basis of villagers’ autonomy; when top-​down funds are transferred to villagers’ groups, it should be up to them to allocate. Resource allocation through villagers’ groups is the process by which different public goods are supplied to the more than 600,000 administrative villages; it fully mobilizes the peasants’ participation. It would not make sense for those resources to go to the countryside if they do not mobilize the peasants’ participation and thus improve their organizational abilities. Currently, the general direction of rural policy is to avoid incidents and conflicts and to deal with any incident “harmoniously.” It is considered best to have no one object, and no one file a petition. Avoidance of conflict, of course, cannot resolve the conflicts present in the countryside from the beginning, and the result is that the conflicts accumulate until they erupt more violently in other forms. At present, the rural policy of avoiding incidents and conflicts has already led to the accumulation of a large number of serious problems. This policy must be changed. The ability and willingness of villagers’ groups to respond to peasants’ demands must be strengthened; one must directly confront conflicts in order to solve them. Although problems and conflicts will arise in the

106 Chapter 15 process, including possibly corruption among village cadres as the villagers’ groups hold national funds, these issues are not insurmountable and can be resolved as they arise. It is precisely via this problem-​solving process that grassroots villagers’ groups’ capability can be strengthened and peasants fully motivated to participate. In this way, grassroots villagers’ groups will be able to provide a dedicated and responsive system, a system that can effectively cater to the immediate needs of the 900 million peasants who still depend on farming for a living. After the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the allocation of state funds and resources to the countryside must be linked with strengthening grassroots organizations’ capability to directly address conflict.

chapter 16

Farmland Reallocation and Good Village Governance in Central Shandong Province

1

In the interviews I  conducted during my field trip to Maqiao Town in central Shandong, almost all of the village cadres and villagers objected to having to confirm their land use rights on collectively owned land (tudi quequan 土地确权) as well as the farmland policy of “maintaining current land allocation regardless of increases or decreases in household membership (zengren bu zengdi, jianren bu jiandi 增人不增地、减人不减地).” They argued that the policy was unfair: if they were not allotted more land for newborns, what would they eat? And it really made no sense that the living were competing against the dead for land. Thus, in practice about one-​fourth of the villages in Maqiao Town have still been reallocating farmland based on the number of people in each household. In some villages where the reallocation of farmland was fraught with difficulty, the village, after consensus with peasants, adopted the method of “adjusting fees without reallocating the farmland (dongzhang bu dongdi 动账不动地).” That is, households that have experienced a reduction in the number of members pay a farmland transfer fee, based on the local market price, for the area of land corresponding to the decrease in the number of household members, instead of returning that farmland to the collective. For instance, if that area of farmland is 1 mu, and the market price for the farmland transfer fee is 600 yuan per mu per year, then that household needs to pay 600 yuan per mu every year in land contracting fees to the village collective. Conversely, when there is an increase (as with a newborn), the household would be compensated 600 yuan per mu from the village collective. This policy in reality violates the central government’s policy on land reallocation, but the cadres in these villages justify it based on the overwhelmingly strong demand from peasants and on the principle of autonomous governance, which allows decision based on collective discussion among peasants. To the peasants, land readjustment is justifiable because farmland belongs to the village collective. If the farmland is readjusted after they have fully discussed it in the collectives, what can be wrong? Even so, the cadres clearly feel increasing pressure, because some peasants have already petitioned higher levels of government, insisting that they do not agree with reducing their land when the numbers of

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_017

108 Chapter 16 members in their household decrease. Furthermore, if the number of family members increases, then the collective must have land to allocate to them, but some villages do not have any more land to allocate. In such cases, the collectives can only release funds transferred to them from higher levels of government as compensation for having no contracted land. In practice, adjusting land allocation based on household membership changes (zengren zengdi, jianren jiandi 增人增地、减人减地) is an extremely troublesome task. Since farmland reallocation affects peasants’ personal interests, they inevitably fight for every inch of farmland. When farmland was being reallocated, village cadres had no peace of mind, accounting for why almost no village cadre was willing to do the job. However, when faced with peasants’ strong demands for land readjustment and pleas for fairness, village officials realized that if they do not reallocate the farmland, they would find it difficult to get anything done in the future. In fact, in approximately one-​third of Shandong’s villages, the collectives can still reallocate farmland, and generally, these villages are well governed, and their cadres have prestige. Cadres without prestige mean poor village governance, in which case land reallocation is impossible. There is a positive correlation between land readjustment and good village governance. In this sense, land reallocation in these villages is not a case of village cadres looking for trouble. Instead, whether the village cadres are able to reallocate land, and whether they can use land reallocation to solve the various problems existing in the villages, determines whether they lay a good foundation for good governance.

2

The farmland system of central Shandong, like the rest of the country, is based on the one used during the People’s Commune era, in which the “means of production and products of labor were owned by the three levels of collective organizations:  communes, production brigades, and production teams, with the production team as the basic unit for everyday production and management (sanji suoyou, duiwei jichu).” The village communes had the ownership of agricultural land. Later, after the farmland was contracted out to peasant households by the village collectives, the peasants in central Shandong, like their counterparts elsewhere in the country, had the use rights to land, but at the same time, they had to “pay taxes to the state, retain enough for the collective, and keep the remainder for themselves.” By the 1990s, as the “remainder” kept getting smaller and the taxes and fees burden kept increasing, peasants were generally reluctant to request land. At the time, Shandong’s

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economy was enjoying a boom, with the secondary and tertiary industries providing peasants with employment and far higher income than what agriculture could provide. As a result, in some areas in Shandong, farmland lay abandoned. In 1994, some areas of Shandong adopted a “two-​track land-​use system (liangtianzhi 两田制),” which required the return of all farmland contracted to peasants to the villagers’ committees; the villagers’ committees then divided all of the farmland into “grain ration fields (kouliang tian 口粮田)” and “contract land (chengbao tian 承包田),” which grew rationed grains or was used for other contractual purposes. The former was allocated on a per person basis in the village, so, for instance, each peasant would be allocated 0.7 mu, leaving the rest for the cultivation of contracted foodstuffs. Peasants did not have to pay taxes and fees on “grain ration fields,” but “contract land” was given to the highest-​bidding peasant households at a contractual fee and was subject to other taxes and fees. The implementation of a “two-​track land-​use system” had significant consequences on the ownership of farmland since then, because the ownership of the land that formerly belonged to the villagers’ groups rose to administrative villages. Once the administrative villages held the ownership of village collective farmland, they had greater power to make use of the land for village governance. The implementation of the “two-​track land-​use system” in some areas of Shandong Province was soon criticized by the central government as a violation of peasants’ land contractual management rights, so it demanded that the village collectives reserve no more than five percent of farmland for flexible purposes (jidong di 机动地) and to evenly allocate all “grain ration fields” among peasant households. However, since the “grain ration fields” in many Shandong villages had already been contracted out, the villagers’ committees could not take the land back until the contracts expired. In 1998, the state implemented the second round of land contracting, with the period of contract extended to 30 years, without change. Heavily burdened, peasants’ demands for land contractual management rights were not so strong at the time, so in Shandong they just went through the motions on the second round of land contracting. However, in the 2000s, as the state gradually abolished agricultural taxes and fees and interests in land became stronger, the peasants’ demands for land contracting management rights intensified. In response, most of the farmland in Shandong was reallocated on or around 2004, which dramatically reduced the fields retained for flexible purposes. Thus, each administrative village divided farmland on a per capita basis after it had set aside some land for flexible purposes, but some collective land that had been contracted out to large households was still under valid contract, so it could not be taken back yet. Of course, as these households’ members

110 Chapter 16 had increased, they inevitably demanded that the village collective had to increase the land allocated to them. Therefore, the village collective demanded that households whose members declined would be allocated less farmland. However, if those households objected, on the basis of the national policy on not changing the allotment, the only thing the village collective could do was to mobilize the villagers to discuss each case, form a binding consensus, and reallocate the land accordingly. Some villages that did not reallocate land had no land for flexible purposes that they could reallocate to the expanded households demanding more land, so they could only compensate them from collective income.

3

Farmland belongs to the village collective. The reason why all peasants have a strong demand for adjustment of land reallocation based on household membership changes relates more to their concerns about fairness than their concerns about their interests. Each peasant, as a member of a village collective, can demand fair and equitable treatment. In this sense, the expanded households’ demands for more farmland from the village collective is to guarantee their membership status. For the village to carry out the adjustment of land reallocation based on household membership changes in order to satisfy peasants’ demands, it would have to convene villagers’ assemblies and reach consensus decisions. Since farmland reallocation affects the major interests of each peasant, it would inevitably touch on all sorts of conflicts that have built up in the village over a period of time, such as the distribution of responsibilities, rights, and interests. It is virtually certain that villagers would also take this opportunity to pressure the village cadres to handle all kinds of long-​term, unresolved problems and difficulties, such as debts owed to peasants by the village collective. In this way, the process of farmland reallocation becomes a process of dealing with various accumulated conflicts and dilemmas, balancing the village’s accounts, and reaching consensus through discussion of every peasant’s rights, interests, and obligations. All those long-​accumulated problems must be settled before farmland reallocation can proceed smoothly. This is why farmland reallocation would provide the possibility for good village governance. In other words, it is precisely the process of farmland reallocation, which affects every member in a village collective, that has stimulated village politics, helped peasants reach consensus, and enhanced their ability to act in concert. It is also a typical process in which peasants solve their own problems

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and manage their own affairs; it is through village autonomy in land readjustment that villages can be governed well. The problem now is that there is little room for farmland reallocation, since the government has fixed villagers’ land contractual management rights “over the long term, without change (changjiu bubian 长久不变)” with the confirmation of land use rights on collectively owned land; with this, the opportunity for villages to achieve good governance through farmland reallocation has been blocked.

chapter 17

Convening a Peasants’ Assembly to Reach Consensus According to Lü Dewen (吕德文), the mass line (qunzhong luxian 群众路线; a political, organizational, and leadership method) includes two linked and mutually supportive aspects. One is mass viewpoints and working styles, in which all serve the people and are for the masses, and the second is the mass work methods, which is how mass work is launched and done well. Absent either one, the mass line is incomplete and unsustainable. Mass line education as currently practiced throughout the country tilts mainly toward the mass viewpoint and working style—​the aspect where problems can be solved more easily. The mass work methods are more difficult to resolve. During the summer break of 2013, when I was doing field research in Diankou Town (店口镇), Zhejiang Province, I listened to a talk by Qian Jianrong (钱建荣), a village cadre there. I thought it quite enlightening, so I briefly introduce and discuss it here.

1

Qian Jianrong, a high school graduate, first worked in a local supply and marketing cooperative before starting his own business, which eventually registered a sales turnover of more than 20 million yuan and profit amounting to several million yuan. Qian also loves to ponder various issues and often offers suggestions on grammatical errors and typos in the newspaper, Zhuji Daily (《诸暨日报》). In 2005, he decided to run for election as village head and won with a high number of votes. Three years later, Qian Jianrong gave full play to his self-​initiative and transformed a backward village into an advanced one. He spoke of two mass line-​related incidents worthy of note. The first incident was the visit of a municipal Party committee secretary (shiwei shuji 市委书记) to the villages, including the village that Qian Jianrong headed. The secretary met with a veteran soldier, a family in financial difficulty, a veteran cadre, an elderly party member, and a retired teacher. The five did not raise any special demands, so the secretary was very happy during the visit. Likewise, the five and their family members felt very honored by the secretary’s visit, for they had never heard of a municipal Party committee secretary

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_018

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paying a visit to villagers’ homes, let alone in their own village—​it had to be a great honor. Qian thus believed that officials must be down to earth (jie diqi 接地气): if only the leaders would be grounded, then many problems would be easily resolved. He added that the visit had occurred already seven or eight years ago, but if you were to interview those people now, they would definitely not badmouth the Communist Party; they were extremely appreciative of the fact that the secretary had paid them a personal visit and listened to their demands. Qian thus had the two Chinese characters qingting (倾听), meaning “listen intently,” calligraphed and hung on the wall of his office. He concluded that it is imperative for a cadre, whether high or low, to listen to the demands of ordinary people with a smiling face—​otherwise how could he or she communicate with the people? Qingting, as discussed by Qian Jianrong, is an important working style that integrates mass viewpoints and mass working methods. The second incident that Qian related occurred during his two months’ attachment (guazhi 挂职) to a neighboring village right after his installment as village head, in order to learn the ropes of his job. This two-​month attachment was very educational. He had just arrived when that village convened a cadres’ meeting. It turned out that many of the villagers came, too, and they sat on the table. The cadres’ meeting obviously could not go on like this. The village secretary of the neighboring village was an old and highly experienced cadre who was quick-​witted enough to immediately change the cadres’ meeting into a mass meeting, in which every villager who was willing to speak could do so, one at a time, and if one meeting was not enough, another would be held. Everyone could “say all they knew and say it without reserve (zhi wu bu yan, yan wu bu jin 知无不言,言无不尽),” in Chairman Mao’s words. In the end, 30 mass meetings were held. The outcome is that the villagers had expressed all of their opinions, vented all their frustrations, and even reached a unanimous consensus. At one stroke, the village was transformed from a discontented village to a satisfied one. In mass meetings, there will be many sharp opinions, harsh criticisms, and unreasonable demands. Some people will speak while others will just listen. As long as the masses can fully express their views, the most extreme and unreasonable opinions among them will find an ever-​shrinking market. Whether the demands raised in one person’s speech are reasonable or not will be heard and discussed by the other villagers, and the unreasonable ones will gradually lose ground and not be discussed further. After all of the villagers had voiced their opinions, weighed the positive with the negative, vented their tempers, and calmed down, each could put himself or herself in the other’s shoes, and

114 Chapter 17 reshape differing viewpoints into a general consensus. Decisions in the village thus became easier to make and put into action, and the village-​level governance naturally became more effective. In other words, through open, just, fair, and continuous meetings that let villagers “say all they know and say it without reserve,” allow and encourage them to discuss the issues completely, make decisions, and form consensus, the sharp conflicts among them can be eliminated at a stroke. Open, full discussion is key—​not shutting the doors and trying to solve things in private. And that is the serious problem existing in mass work as it is currently done—​ shutting the doors and solving things privately, in secret. It increases the masses’ distrust of cadres and widens conflict and opposition. Another important aspect of mass working methods is constant meetings. From what he learned during his assignment, Qian Jianrong learned the importance of meetings, so he also had the five characters for “People’s Chamber (baixing yishiting 百姓议事厅)” hung on the front of the village office lobby.

2

Everyone seems to understand what a meeting is. But what is its purpose? There are roughly two kinds of meetings: democratic and centralized. Democratic meetings encourage the free airing of views and the synthesizing of opinions toward a decision. The main purposes of democratic meetings are not to solve problems and make decisions but to reach consensus on the current situation, transform the reasonable minority into a majority, convert the unreasonable majority into a minority, clarify problems and demands, and in the process change the emotional to the rational, and let righteousness defeat evil. The atmosphere created by consecutive meetings will powerfully mobilize all participants toward politically correct and standard proposals, and it will exact a heavy psychological price on those who oppose the consensus. With a consensus reached through full discussion, the centralized meeting that follows becomes only a matter of going through the motions and supporting the consensus reached. The implementation of decisions made in this way will not be difficult and will cost virtually nothing. The more democratic a meeting, the simpler the process of centralization and the easier the execution. This, roughly, is the inexorable logic of organizing meetings among villagers in village governance.

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3

Meetings discuss principles and intangible principles (wuxu 务虚), but it is precisely through meetings that all interested parties have the right to participate in a full discussion relating to their own interests. They are a kind of mass work method as well as a kind of mass viewpoint. Only by adopting more specific measures that combine mass viewpoints and mass working methods, such as listening intently and convening meetings, in actual practice, can mass line education be brought into reality, and state and local governance become more effective.

pa rt 3 State Resources to the Countryside and Peasant Participation



chapter 18

Offering Job Opportunities Instead of Sheer Relief There are generally two ways by which state financial support resources go to the countryside. One is directly via bankcards to peasant households. For example, the comprehensive agricultural subsidy, new rural medical insurance, and New Rural Endowment Insurance all reach peasant households this way. The other is via the project system (xiangmuzhi 项目制). This is used to provide public facilities and basic services to the countryside, and includes farmland consolidation projects, water conservancy construction projects, and so on. The problem with the project system is that when a project finally reaches the village—​after the local government’s application, review and approval by the state, and the acceptance of bids by contractors—​it encounters difficulties, possibly nail households, because of the lack of peasants’ participation in the process. The most typical scenario for a national project is that during its implementation, peasants whose farmland is occupied by the project or whose seedlings are lost due to construction will demand a high level of compensation. The actual value of a tree, for example, may be rather small, and the stipulated compensation will likewise be small, but the peasant will demand a high price, and if he does not get it, he will vow to fight to the bitter end. What the peasant wants is state money, which is abstract, and money from the construction team—​it does not relate to the local peasants’ affairs. Local peasants who are unaffected by the project will only stand around and watch. If the nail household succeeds in getting a high price, he becomes an instant hero among the masses, a person with ability, so ordinary peasants will take him as a role model—​they will learn his resolve and his methods for benefiting from the state and construction team. When the contractors begin work in the village, they might even take the opportunity to collect tolls from the trucks as they drive in, or they refuse to let the trucks in. Originally the project was intended to serve the local peasants and benefit the people—​a good deed—​but it turns out that doing the good deed is not easy, and it fails to be done well. The more the state does good deeds, the more village “nail households” appear. Ultimately, almost everyone is thinking up ways of benefiting from national construction projects. The peasants become “trouble-​makers.” To solve this problem of good tasks being accomplished only with difficulty, it was thought that peasants should be mobilized to participate in construction designed to improve their basic living and production conditions. Instead of having projects implemented and unconditionally paid for by the state,

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120 Chapter 18 the peasants should contribute both money and labor, and the state should reward them for pro-​actively engaging in the construction. For example, if a highway were being built, the village collective would have to bear part of the cost. This could be done, for instance, by having the village collective, and the peasants, level the roadbed, while the state takes care of the road surface. The state should even directly apply a policy of “replacing subsidies with rewards (yijiang daibu 以奖代补)” for construction intended to benefit peasants, such as smaller-​scale water conservation facilities. In these, if the village collective or individual peasants contribute funds and meet project requirements, the state would then partially compensate them through the reward funds. The premise for state funding for projects to benefit peasants, which would include replacing subsidies with rewards, offering job opportunities instead of sheer relief, and leaving the operations to peasants while the government provides only financing and subsidies (minban gongzhu), would be that the village collectives and peasants must be involved and bear responsibility for village construction, otherwise those funds would not be distributed to the village. Only villages with the enthusiasm and willingness to shoulder responsibility would be able to receive such financial support. In other words, under this system, state financial support for rural construction is linked to the enthusiasm of villages. Only those villages willing to assume partial responsibility can be supported by the state’s selective construction funds. As a whole, rural construction of public projects and public welfare requires investment, especially labor, from village collectives and peasants from the beginning in order to be eligible for state funding. Conversely, if the village collectives have the ability to organize the initial investment, it becomes easier to apply for state funding. Because public projects and public welfare undertakings aim to provide services for peasants’ agricultural production and everyday lives, as opposed to projects funded only on peasants’ self-​raised funds, and because villagers and their collectives bear part of the funding while the state provides financial rewards and assistance, these projects become more beneficial to peasants. Hence some areas can even achieve the “four non-​compensations (sibubu 四不补)” in this construction. For example, in the construction of “beautiful villages (meili xaingcun 美丽乡村)” in Qingyuan City (清远市), Guangdong, it was possible to achieve the policy goal of non-​compensation for the demolition of old buildings, damage to seedlings, labor contribution, and occupation of farmland. Moreover, large numbers of peasants volunteered their labor in order to improve agricultural production conditions and their everyday lives; they even pooled their comprehensive agricultural subsidies and used them for the construction. In this way, the state’s limited funds could achieve better

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things, effectively transform rural production and living conditions, and build infrastructure. When peasants are enthusiastic and willing to voluntarily contribute labor or even money, one will not find unconcerned peasants who merely stand by and watch or nail households demanding high levels of compensation. Instead, all of the peasants are mobilized to contribute their labor and ideas for the construction, and if any nail household were then to ask for high prices, the other peasants surely form into groups and attack it for damaging the village’s and their own interests. Only those village collectives that can raise funds and labor in the early stages of project construction should be able to receive state funding support, whether by replacing subsidies with rewards, or by offering job opportunities instead of sheer relief. The more projects can be implemented in a village, the more capable the village collective has shown itself in raising funds and labor, so the more state funding a village can obtain. As a result, competitive state funds for rewards and subsidies (caizheng jiangbu zijin 财政奖补资金) are obtained from completely different inputs from different villages. Some villages might not receive any reward or subsidy at all, while other villages might get millions of yuan in rewards and subsidies. Since state funding will come down only if a village has raised matching funds, some villages depend on loans for those matching funds. Originally, the villagers should have volunteered to contribute their labor, but in fact, they are unwilling to do so, so the collective has to borrow instead. As a result, the more state funding a village obtains, the better the village’s construction, but the higher its debt. This is the main reason village collectives throughout China in the present millennium are in debt. Only those villages with well-​developed collective economies can come up with the matching funds, so those are the ones that can get more state funding. However, villages with weaker collective economies will either be unable to get the state funding or go into heavier debt. In this way, projects whose financial planning is intended to mobilize villages and peasants to take initiative in investing labor or money through rewards and subsidies have led to two unexpected problems: (1) an extremely uneven distribution of funds, and (2) village debt. Debt brings far more troublesome predicaments to village governance than inadequate infrastructure. The situation is even worse when there is a lack of trust between village cadres and peasants. Let us suppose that village cadres manage to obtain 200,000 yuan in state funding for rewards and subsidies for a project that requires an expected voluntary contribution of peasant labor worth 100,000 yuan. The peasants are unwilling to contribute, so the village collective has to borrow money to pay for their labor contribution. However, when the project gets under way, the peasants come to believe that, in actuality, the village cadres have

122 Chapter 18 applied for 400,000 yuan from higher levels of government but have only spent 200,000 yuan on this project, intending to pocket the rest for themselves. On this belief, the peasants still take the opportunity to become nail households, demanding more money for themselves. In the end, the village collective amasses debt, and the villagers’ distrust of their cadres intensifies. As a result, the more construction projects a village has with state funding support of this kind, the more chaotic its governance becomes. In the absence of mobilized peasants, the individual capability of village cadres is the key factor in villages’ applications for competitive financial funds, aside from the financial capability of the village collective. If village cadres can find some connection with the department in charge of the project—​a former classmate, an ex-​comrade in arms, a fellow townsman—​or even establish a relationship through bribery, the higher level of government may allocate financial funds as rewards or subsidies to the village even without the matching funds. As for whether the project can meet acceptance requirements, this may be dealt with through various modifications, such as combining different rewards and compensation items instead of dealing with them individually. A system of shared benefits is gradually created when competitive financial supported projects are introduced, and resources channeled to villages. The more resources a village has, the stronger the system of shared benefits. Of course, this system will certainly be recognized by peasants for what it is, which will powerfully alienate them. Alienation would provide further support for the behavior of nail households and give peasants grounds for opposing the voluntary contribution of labor. As a result, the attempts to mobilize the participation of peasants in public projects through state funding as rewards or subsidies lead to the same result as projects handled through the general projects system—​“doing the good deed is not easy, and it fails to be done well”—​because of the competitive allocation of financial resources.

chapter 19

Peasant Participation in Rural Land Consolidation Projects

1

To protect cultivated farmland, the state channels huge sums of money each year from the land assignment fee for urban construction (chengshi jianshe yongdi churangjin 城市建设用地出让金) to pay for rural land consolidation. At present, the funds for land consolidation have reached as much as 100 billion yuan per year. Spending such vast sums for land consolidation is virtually unprecedented. When conducting field research in Fuchuan County, Guangxi, I learned that Fuchuan was one of ten pilot counties in Guangxi for land consolidation. In the next three years, the state would be allocating 420 million yuan to consolidate Fuchuan County’s almost 400,000 mu of rural land. Land consolidation generally takes two forms. One is to provide arable land with infrastructure to facilitate cultivation, such as tractor roads, canals, and forest belts. A general requirement is that the land consolidation makes farmland accessible to roads and irrigation facilities. The second is land leveling. In most land consolidation projects, there is always a certain percentage of land, such as 10%, that needs to be leveled. Land leveling, arable land formation, road alignment, and channel reinforcement (qu yinghua 渠硬化) are for the purpose for easing mechanized operation and field management. Land consolidation generally has three objectives. First, it aims to increase the area of cultivated land, mainly by leveling wasteland (unused ditches, ponds, and paddy ridges) and converting it into arable land. Although it has been said that land consolidation can increase arable land by 10%, the director of Fuchuan County’s Land Consolidation Center (土地整理中心) commented that in Fuchuan, land consolidation seemed not to be increasing farmland but rather reducing it, because the construction of roads and channels requires space. The second objective is to improve the quality of arable land in order to facilitate tillage, and the third is to combine small, scattered parcels into single ones for cultivation (lianpian gengzuo 连片耕作). The direct goals are only the first two, but the third goal can be achieved indirectly, so it will be discussed in the next section. The contracted land use right belongs to peasants, who then obtain income through farming the land. Of course, peasants welcome land consolidation

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_020

124 Chapter 19 since it facilitates farming. Looking at the general situation of peasants nationwide, peasants have “two hopes.” One is for supporting agricultural infrastructure, especially roads and channels, to solve the problem of bringing machinery and water to the farm. The second is combining their small, scattered parcels of farmland, which they say could reduce farming time by more than a third. In the past it would take 50 working days to cultivate 10 mu of land, but with combined parcels it takes only 30 working days. For the peasants, the importance of combining parcels of farmland is quite clear. Land consolidation does not address the need for combined parcels, because the allocation of land management rights (tudi jingyingquan 土地经营权) is up to village organizations. Land consolidation solves the need for infrastructure such as channels, ditches, roads, and bridges, as well as the problem of leveling uneven land. Land consolidation must be carried out on cultivated land where peasants have contractual management rights, and it involves mainly the following issues. First, to build or repair canals, ditches, roads, and bridges, land must be occupied. Whose land? How should adjustments be made? Who benefits how much? Second, because fields are squared off through land consolidation, farmland belonging to different peasant households in the past has to be reallocated. Third, since land leveling greatly changes the peasants’ contracted farmland, there is the issue of how to confirm the new contractual rights relationships. Fourth, because land consolidation and the improvement of canals, ditches, roads, and bridges change water usage and routes of operation, the vested interests among different peasants are also changed. How should these interests be adjusted and balanced? Neither the departments in charge of land consolidation nor the contractors that work on the projects can resolve all of these issues, so many annoying things are commonly encountered during the course of land consolidation. In other words, as an engineering project, land consolidation has great significance for improving the quality of arable land, facilitating agricultural operations, and ensuring food security. This is why hundreds of billions of yuan are spent on land consolidation every year. However, since land consolidation projects are carried out on land where peasants have contracted management rights, land consolidation will in fact change existing land interest relationships and easily lead to conflict. Meanwhile, besides looking forward to the greater convenience that land consolidation will bring to the work of cultivation, peasants also hope to take the opportunity of land consolidation to combine their formerly fragmented land into single parcels. They say, “The higher levels of government should not give us only resources, but also the right to farm combined plots of land.”

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Since 2009, Fuchuan County has implemented more than ten land consolidation projects, each covering an area of several hundred hectares; the projects cost about 20 million yuan. The earliest land consolidation project in Fuchuan was in Gepo Town’s (葛坡镇) Shangdong Village (上洞村) and Hedong Village (合洞村; thus it was called the “two-​cave project” or liangdong xiangmu [两洞项目] for short). The project was implemented in 2009 and covered 431 hectares, of which around 500 mu of land was leveled. Four years later, 500 mu of arable land were yet to be allocated, since land consolidation has changed the previous land interest structure (such as the convenience of water use and the problem of water drainage), and the quality of the work done was not very good. As a result, the consolidated land could not be allotted, and the peasants raised many different opinions, so that the county’s Center of Land Consolidation has had to revise the project plan many times over and repeatedly extend the project for further patch-​up work. The peasants are now arguing that the Center of Land Consolidation should compensate them for several years of not being able to farm, but it is impossible for the Center to have such a compensation fund. The township and village-​level authorities have complained that the county’s Center of Land Consolidation and the project team did not let the township and village levels and the peasants participate in the design, implementation, and supervision of the “two-​cave project.” In short, the “two-​cave project” remains unresolved and has become a perennial problem. That the “two-​cave project” could not accomplish its well-​intended objective came as a shock to all three levels of county, township, and village government. The county Party committee secretary thus demanded that the planning and implementation of future land consolidation projects organized by the county’s Center of Land Consolidation seek the participation of peasants, especially in getting them to endorse and sign the planning documents. However, the peasants who signed the documents never understood the plans and construction drawings. Even when they signed them, they refused to acknowledge the signatures, so that the Center of Land Consolidation could not resolve the matter. In reality, land consolidation is beneficial for almost all peasants. The state has invested thousands of yuan per mu in infrastructure building to greatly improve working conditions for machine farming and irrigation. How could this not be good? Well aware of the benefits, the peasants had signed and agreed to the documents before the project began. The problem is that after construction was completed, and the peasants had benefited, they began to compare

126 Chapter 19 with one another the benefits they received and found they had not benefited equally. Then they began asking the construction teams and Center of Land Consolidation for compensation. If one person seeks compensation, it is not a problem, but when more and more peasants do so, it appears as if land consolidation has negatively impacted their interests, and that it is a terrible evil. Peasants welcome all kinds of benefits, big or small. However, if there is even a little damage to their interests, they are unhappy and take action to block construction of, stall, or destroy the project. What has given rise to such phenomena? It is because current state projects always deal with individual, scattered peasant households instead of organized peasants. The individual, scattered peasant households they deal with are usually led by the trouble-​makers, who make various reasonable and unreasonable demands that the state simply cannot cope with. In other words, the cost to the state when dealing with those peasant households is high, so that even well-​intended projects usually fail to be done well. What if the peasants were organized? In other words, if the state were to interact and work together with organized peasant households on well-​intended projects like land consolidation, would they be done well? Earlier I quoted peasants saying, in effect, that “the state cannot just give us money—​it also has to give us rights.” What does that mean? It means that at present, the state has done good for peasants by abolishing agricultural taxes, providing agricultural subsidies, and building infrastructure for peasants’ contracted lands, but what worries them more at the moment is the impossibility of farming contiguous fields. If the state could give peasants the right to organize farming on contiguous fields, it would be wonderful. But which rights do the peasants want here? Is it the individual management right? Clearly not, because the greater the peasant’s individual contract management right, the more the individual peasant can block the farmland reallotment that would facilitate contiguous plot farming; it would make contiguous plot farming management more difficult. In fact, what the peasants want are the village collective’s right to adjust and reallocate farmland and even the right to “divide and contract farmland (huapian chengbao 划片承包).” Only the village collective has the definite authority to readjust land. Through village organizations, peasants can form a common will by which the collective can “divide and contract” land in order to facilitate farming. The greater the power of individual peasants over their land, especially nowadays when large numbers of peasants have ventured out to work or do business, with some having worked in cities for a long time, the more difficult it becomes for village collectives to reallocate land

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to the remaining peasants and to facilitate contiguous plot farming. Hence the rights that peasants demand from the state are not the stronger contract and management rights for individual peasants, but the rights of the village collectives to reallocate arable land. This example can illustrate why huge mistakes would be made if one does not understand the peasants’ situation and tries to interpret what they say literally. That is to say, during land consolidation, if peasants’ contract and management rights and total contracted farmlands were recognized on the one hand, and the specific land parcels contracted by peasants were allowed to be changed on the other, then land consolidation can be stabilized on the whole, with small adjustments, through the village organizations’ deep involvement. This would, in turn, effectively solve the problem of unevenly distributed benefits brought about by land consolidation. It would even be possible to redistribute all the land according to the number of mu contracted in the past. In the process of this redistribution, peasants’ participation would be fully emphasized, and peasants would arrive at a consensus on contiguous plot contract farming through repeated rounds of discussion, then land can be sorted out and allocated to individual contracted peasant households by drawing lots. Peasants have used land consolidation to achieve contiguous plot farming in the experience of “aggregation from small to large parcels” (xiaokuai bing dakuai 小块并大块) in Longzhou City (龙州市), Guangxi. It is precisely through the conflicts and interest adjustments that often appear during the process of land consolidation that gets the peasants heavily and deeply involved in it, and it is through this involvement that the contiguous plot farming issue can be resolved. Thus in land consolidation, it is possible to fully mobilize the peasants’ participation and give full play to the collective power of village collectives, not only to resolve the inevitable conflicts of interest that arise in land consolidation, but also to use it as an opportunity to solve a problem that has long plagued Chinese peasants, one caused by the fragmentation of their land rights, which has prevented them from farming contiguous plots of land on a more enlarged scale. It is like killing two birds with one stone. The state has given village collectives certain rights to reallocate land, which can prevent marginal groups among the peasants (like nail households) from obstructing things or making inappropriate demands. The state is thus able to do good things at a low cost and get them done well through convenient organizations—​the village collectives—​which have certain powers and capabilities.

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Fuchuan County managed to compete for a total of 420 million yuan in land consolidation funds for the 2014–​2016 period, and within three years it had consolidated most of the 400,000 mu of arable lands in the county. If such large-​scale land consolidation had been implemented in the manner of the “two-​caves project,” it would have been a big mess. What can we do? Liao Liyong (廖立勇), the Party Secretary of Fuchuan County, said that peasants must be involved in the land consolidation. The question is how to involve them: should they participate individually or be organized first, and how would they be organized? The land consolidation in Fuchuan County in the next three years will be vast in scale, with obvious long-​term consequences. The outcome of the land consolidation will relate not only to whether peasants’ cultivation will be eased or whether village governance in Fuchuan County will be orderly, but also to national food security. Land consolidation is therefore bound to be the focus of work in Fuchuan County in the next three years, in which case it is likely to realize contiguous plot farming on an enlarged scale through land consolidation. Mr. Liao described a few of his ideas, as follows: First, at the county level, besides the land departments that have large land consolidation funds, most of the other departments also have various land-​ related project funds: the Agricultural Bureau, National Development and Reform Commission, Finance Bureau, Water Conservancy Bureau, Forest Bureau, Agricultural Machinery Bureau, Bureau of Traffic Management, Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, Immigration Office, Civil Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Housing and Urban-​Rural Development, Organization Department of the Communist Party of China, All-​China Women’s Federation, and so on. If project funds are not properly integrated, the problem of repeated and disorderly construction may occur. Hence, Mr. Liao believed that in the next three years, the county government should integrate the vertical lines of the government (tiaotiao 条条) as well as the project funds of each, in order to jointly plan and carry out the projects. They may then be inspected separately. Second, for such a large project, the township-​level government must play a top-​down role connecting role in design, implementation, and supervision. The township is the local horizontal line of authority (kuaikuai块块), which has around 20 civil servants and 100 staff in government-​affiliated institutions (excluding doctors and teachers). The township-​level government can play a huge role in land consolidation-​centered work if all civil servants and the staff of government-​affiliated institutions are integrated and well mobilized. This mobilization by township government goes hand-​in-​hand with the integration

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of vertical lines of authorities by county government. Together, it would be “integrating the vertical and strengthening the horizontal lines of authority (zhenghe tiaotiao, jiqiang kuaikuai 整合条条,加强块块).” Third, since land consolidation affects peasants’ interests, they must be brought in to participate in the process. However, participation by peasants should not be random and disorganized. Instead, they should be allowed to participate in the project through an institutional design of the villagers’ groups. The key to this institutional design would be to reinforce certain powers of the villagers’ groups to reallocate specific plots of land. That is to say, under this institutional design, peasants should be allowed to reach a consensus through discussion. Each peasant’s contract and management right to land is not equivalent to the right to contract a specific plot of land for 30 years without change—​what remains unchanged is the 30-​year period of contracting and managing of village collective farmland. In this way, it is possible to use land consolidation not only to greatly improve the peasants’ farming conditions, but also to realize their dream of farming a combined plot on an enlarged scale. With this arrangement, village collective organizations would have certain powers and capabilities, which local governments can use to get things done well. Furthermore, the Fuchuan County Party committee used land consolidation as an opportunity to integrate the vertical lines of authority at the county level and strengthen the horizontal lines of authority at the township and town level, which successfully realized the objective of “strong towns with expanded powers (kuoquan qiangzhen 扩权强镇).” Only with strong, healthy top-​down linkages at the township level can village governance in China be stable and orderly. We can use the Fuchuan County’s experience with land consolidation in the next three years as an experiment on establishing a rural grassroots governance model. If the Fuchuan experiment is successful, it may be applied to other parts of the country. In conclusion, it is clear that land consolidation is not a matter of engineering or partial management, but an issue of major importance that can truly affect the overall governance of China’s grassroots.

chapter 20

Emphasis on Peasants’ Participation in the Transfer Payment Process At present, the state’s transfer payments (zhuanyi zhifu 转移支付) to rural areas have reached the scale of a trillion yuan per year. In the less than a decade since the abolition of agricultural taxes in 2006, when the state stopped collecting agricultural taxes and fees from peasants, it has also begun making large-​scale transfer payments back to the countryside. The vastness of the change is inconceivable. Before the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the state had collected them from hundreds of millions of peasants. It was considered the most difficult task in the country, because of the extremely high costs incurred in reaching peasant households that were scattered far and wide, and because each household’s operation was small, the surplus was always small. Surprisingly, now that that the state no longer collects agricultural taxes and fees and instead transfers payments to peasants on a large scale, sharing money with peasants has become the most difficult task. The two forms of transfer payment are competitive transfer payment and general transfer payment. Competitive transfer payments involve a bottom-​ up application for infrastructure building and other construction projects, and they generally require matching funds at the local level before the state invests funds in the construction. General transfer payments are for the financial support of eligible peasants or villages; as long as there are clear signs or standards for such payments, they are not controversial. For example, every peasant who participates in the New Rural Cooperative Medical System (hezuo yiliao 合作医疗) receives a subsidy of 320 yuan per year from the central and local governments,1 and every peasant over 60 years old in the New Rural Endowment Insurance system receives a minimum monthly pension of 55 yuan.2 The comprehensive agricultural subsidy is generally issued to peasant households based on actual planted area, but actual planted area is not easy to measure, and often the household with contract rights on the land is not the household that actually cultivates the land. Thus, it is a 1 In 2016, the per capita financial subsidy for the New Rural Cooperative Medical Plans at all levels reached 420 yuan, an increase of 40 yuan from the previous year. 2 The basic pension was increased from 55 yuan to 70 yuan per month as of 1 July 2014.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_021

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hassle to check who is planting how much land. In the end, the comprehensive agricultural subsidy is issued indiscriminately to peasants based on the area of their contracted land, though it has little to do with the cultivator or the size of the actual planted area. Another example is the Rural Minimum Livelihood Guarantee System (rmlgs; nongcun dibao 农村低保), through which the state spends hundreds of millions of yuan each year. The relevant policy stipulates that the state ensures that particularly impoverished peasants get it. The problem lies in establishing a clear, uniform standard for defining what makes a particularly impoverished peasant household. Even though the peasants, living in the acquaintance society of the village, have a consensus about who among them are particularly impoverished families, when the rmlgs indicators exceeds the number of extremely poor households that are acknowledged by consensus in the village, there are big disputes over who should receive the assistance, and many conflicts arise. Yet another example is the rebuilding of dilapidated houses in villages. The budget for rebuilding reaches into the tens of billions of yuan annually, and the rebuilding of a house can run tens of thousands of yuan, but it is very difficult to determine whose house is dilapidated, how that should be determined, and what standards should be used. As a result, virtually every time a house is rebuilt, the expense arouses disputes among the peasants. In other words, projects involving general transfer payments must have clear standards, otherwise they will almost surely lead to disputes or conflicts. Unclear standards create loopholes for grassroots cadres’ private gain; they enable dominant villagers’ groups to squeeze the government for maximal personal interest. This is why the state uses general transfer payments as much as possible and seeks to standardize them, as with, for example, using the all-​purpose card (yikatong 一卡通) for the comprehensive agricultural subsidy payments. This disburses funds to peasants directly via bank cards, since it is unlikely that the government will really check who is farming which field and for how many seasons. Meanwhile, general transfer payments are not evenly allocated among peasants based on the rural population but on specific situations. For instance, rmlgs follows the principle of “whoever needs it gets it (yingbao jinbao 应保尽保),” but since there are no standards for what constitutes a poor family and which family satisfies the minimum livelihood standards, a one-​size-​fits-​ all approach does not work. The government can thus either give village cadres the right to judge this or let villagers select the poor families. Either way, however, as long as a single personal or family factor is disputed, the end result will not be objective, fair, and just, and hence give rise to disagreements. In the end,

132 Chapter 20 regardless of how the rmlgs is distributed or what its poverty indicators are, there will be conflicts about it within the village, and even petitions. Competitive transfer payments generally need the local authorities to submit their applications before they are arranged by higher levels of government, based on actual conditions. However, the approval of certain competitive transfer payments often depends on the applicant’s personal abilities or personal network. Projects that are granted owing to the applicant’s personal network will more likely make it possible for him to derive more personal gains from it, even though it has been applied for in the name of the local authorities. To prevent corrupt behavior by individuals in connection with transfer payments, the state often stipulates open bidding for competitive projects, and the payment arrangements are handled in top-​down fashion by higher-​ level authorities, so as to eliminate as much as possible any local influence. As a result, peasants and grassroots cadres are excluded from such projects. However, when the bid-​winning construction team begins work on a public project on peasant land, which directly affects the peasants’ personal interests, conflict usually breaks out between the peasants and the construction teams, which have come from outside of the village. Furthermore, since nail households, ruthless people, and people who hope to profit through public projects exist in every village, they often try to obtain more compensation by creating trouble, while other peasants not affected by the projects watch with disinterest. Even if a public project commissioned by the state has been effectively implemented, it may differ greatly from peasants’ actual demands. Rural public goods are known to be diverse, varied, and impossible to standardize. However, the more standardized and top-​down a public project is (as in a project awarded through public bidding), the less flexible it is, so it is less likely to satisfy actual local needs. Hence, the tension between flexibility and standardization becomes quite severe. The most fundamental problem is that top-​down implementation of state public projects only improves peasants’ agricultural production and living conditions—​it is charitable, but it does not improve peasants’ organizational and participatory capabilities, since the projects are external to the villages. Transfer payments, competitive or general, are the state’s way of allocating money to peasants, but the process of allocation is obviously not smooth and rather inefficient and ineffective, and this has to do with the wide distribution of peasant households. To put it simply, the cost to the state of interacting with more than 200 million small but diverse peasant households is very high. More specifically, given the immense differences among rural villages in various regions in China and the huge number of peasants, it is fundamentally

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impossible to find a uniform, standardized way of transferring subsidy funds to peasants or a one-​size-​fits-​all method of operation. For state transfer payments to be better targeted, the state would have to allow localities to have a certain level of flexibility in the transfer payment process. However, once there is some flexibility, local governments could take this opportunity to obtain private benefit—​and all sorts of projects based on personal relationships and emotional attachments would emerge. Less severe manifestations of this would be the use of transfer payments by local governments for political vanity projects (zhengji gongcheng 政绩工程), such as roadside renovations and demonstration sites (shifandian 示范点). With flexibility, local governments would inevitably apply transfer payments for other than their intended purpose. Corruption would even occur. Thus, the issue of standardization versus better targeting and flexibility presents a kind of administrative dilemma quite familiar to us—​the old decentralization versus centralization dilemma. It shows up repeatedly in the matter of the state’s transfer payments to rural villages. How can this problem be solved? Since standardized, one-​size-​fits-​all approaches are virtually impossible, it seems that the only approach left would be to organize peasants at the grassroots and involve them in the expression of demand preferences in state transfer payments. On the one hand, transfer payments to villages would not be only for poverty alleviation and charity, but also to increase peasants’ skills in organization and connecting with state resources. On the other hand, peasants would be able to connect effectively with state resources only through a certain platform that would truly maximize the benefit that the state’s resources provide for their productive work and lives. This platform obviously should be the acquaintance society of the village. It so happens that peasants already have more than 20 years’ experience with self-​management, self-​education, and self-​service through democratic self-​ governance, and have matured thereby. Now, if the village, this autonomous acquaintance society, were to function as a platform to connect with state resources, the state would also transfer some of those resources to this autonomous platform, which would then use democratic means to decide on their use. Such a connection between the bottom-​up demands of peasants and the top-​down transfer payment system in the democratic village platform may effectively utilize state resources and enhance peasants’ skills in democratic autonomous governance at the same time. The enhancement of peasants’ capability in autonomous governance would further promote their competence in deciding their own affairs and maintaining the basic order of agricultural production and their everyday lives.

134 Chapter 20 In other words, the state’s transfer payment process must have the peasants’ participation. If the transfer of state resources does not simultaneously improve peasants’ participatory skills and organizational capability of grassroots organizations, and is used merely for charity and alleviating poverty, it will be inefficient and beset with controversy.

chapter 21

How Financial Resources Should Be Allocated to Villages

1

My field research on the county and city levels shows that there are too many rural development projects supported by central government funds. When projects become ubiquitous in the countryside, they are neither impressive nor effective in supporting agricultural development. It is thought that state resources for supporting agriculture should be coordinated at the county level, that county governments should integrate the funds to develop modern agriculture or build new villages. Specifically, they would convert special transfer payments from the central government into its general financial funds and do the overall coordination and planning of construction. There is no doubt that county governments understand what peasants need and want better than the central government does. They understand their own local situations better, and they are more capable of accomplishing good things in a targeted manner than the central government. The question is whether the county governments will use the funds to accomplish good things where the central government hopes they will use them, or will they use them elsewhere? Historically, the relationship between the vertical authority structures of the center and the horizontal authority structures of the local governments (tiaokuai guanxi 条块关系) in China have always gone in a vicious circle—​ between chaos, as soon as the relationship is relaxed, and stifling rigidity, as soon as it is tightened. The expression yi shou jiu si (一收就死; literally, “to die upon gathering in,” or more loosely, “stifling rigidity, as soon as it is tightened”) applies when the central government is trying to carry out its tasks through various departments, offices, committees, and bureaus, so that it makes everything very detailed and specific, even doing its utmost to standardize everything, in order to prevent the local authorities from diverting its resources for other uses. However, the more specific and standardized things are, the less adaptable they become, and the harder it becomes to meet the ever-​shifting, diverse demands and local realities of the grassroots. By contrast, once the central government switches to principles and abstractions to fit local realities, the local authorities respond immediately by taking resources that originally should have been used for A and using them instead for B—​so that the task

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_022

136 Chapter 21 that should have been done carefully and well is done in a perfunctory manner. The final outcome is that the central government has no choice but to tighten its supervision of local authorities, make clear and definite rules, and gather its authority again. The counties and cities argue that the central government should delegate its authority to earmark transfer payments to the county level, letting the counties coordinate them, because when central funds are spent at the county level, the more they are subject to specific rules and requirements, the less likely they will match the reality on the ground, and the more local loopholes there will be. Such cases account for a large number countrywide and put undue pressure on the central government. Thus, they argue, the central government has no choice but to delegate its power, reduce special transfer payments, increase general transfer payments, and allow the central government’s special agricultural support funds to be coordinated at the county level. Local demands for more general transfer payments from the central government and the ability to use various central special transfer payments are of course justifiable, especially when those payments are completely unconnected to the realities on the ground, or even seem bizarre. This has emboldened local governments, especially at the county and city level, to assert their demands. So, how would county or city governments use those funds to support agricultural development? Compared to various ministries, offices, committees, and bureaus at the central level, county governments certainly understand their local situations better, so they can make more appropriate and targeted use of agricultural development funds. However, when county government uses these funds, the decision-​makers themselves are not the beneficiaries of these funds, and they have their own preferences and even personal interests. There are two manifestations of county governments using funds from transfer payments. One occurs when funds supporting agricultural development are allocated to stakeholders, thus forming what we call a “profit-​sharing order (fenli zhixu 分利秩序),” which combines top-​down funding transfer and bottom-​up rent-​seeking. This is already quite common—​to the point that, according to the Director of the Agriculture Bureau in a large agricultural county in Hubei Province, agricultural enterprises no longer think about the market all day but rather about the mayor, about policies, and about how to profit from the policies, and as a result they enter into evil ways. The more autonomy local governments have in using transfer payments, the greater the room for rent-​seeking, and the greater the likelihood for the formation of the “profit-​ sharing order,” with its attendant problems.

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The second manifestation is the use of large amounts of transfer payments on project demonstration sites. The plus side of these is the visibility of the use of the funding and the fact that they are relatively safe and mistake-​free. Li Zupei (李祖佩), who studies county governance, has found that county governments like building project demonstration sites and direct a lot of resources to them. Generally, there are three prerequisites for the selection of demonstration sites. First are village cadres empowered and able to access large top-​ down transfer payments, second is that the village has a certain industrial foundation, and third is a small number of demonstration sites in the county. When various financial resources are used on demonstration sites, they quickly undergo drastic transformation, with visible effects. Meanwhile, concentrating the funds on a small number of sites reduces the likelihood of problems arising over the use of funds, especially in preventing bottom-​up rent-seeking and top-​down corruption. Where the allocation of various project funds easily cause corruption, concentrating the county’s funding on the demonstration sites can better ensure the safe landing of those funds. Since the village cadres are empowered and capable, the resources more easily reach the demonstration sites, which also tend to encounter fewer problems such as nail households, thus lowering governance costs. However, even if results are visible, the funds safely allocated, and governance costs low, the project demonstration sites are still only for demonstration, and it is not the intention of the state to have the funds allocated to a single site, or that they are used to make the site dazzling, glittery, beautiful, and majestic. The top-​down transfer payments are meant to support agricultural development and serve the peasants, not to pile up the resources in only one place, which give the impression that the state is so rich that it has nowhere to spend all of its money. Whenever large sums of money have been used to construct beautiful, majestic sites, leaders should be forbidden to go inspect the sites, and the local governments should be forbidden to promote them. In reality, it is quite easy for county and city governments to direct large amounts of funds to demonstration sites that cannot be reproduced elsewhere. One township Party committee secretary commented: “Some villages have invested several hundred million yuan on one after another demonstration site for years on end. When these projects concentrate so much funding, they are basically non-​reproducible, so how can they have any demonstration function?” Demonstration sites do not include only administrative villages, but also leading business enterprises in agricultural modernization. A director of a county Agriculture Bureau said: “The way government supports leading enterprises must be changed. At present, the state has invested tens of millions of yuan or even hundreds of millions of yuan into many private enterprises,

138 Chapter 21 but the outcome is that ‘one dominant enterprise monopolizes the market and holds the government hostage (yijia duda, longduan shichang, bangjia zhengfu 一家独大、垄断市场、绑架政府),’ or it even diverts the funds from agricultural development and puts them into the real estate market.” One county-​ level city in Hubei Province has invested various funds amounting to approximately 300 million yuan on a model village for more than a decade. Obviously, this model village serves no demonstrative purpose, because virtually all of the funds for supporting agriculture that the city could muster for nearly a decade has been funneled into it. Now it is building another model village—​but the problem is, there are more than 500 administrative villages in the city. How many years will it take for the government to rebuild every village in the city? Moreover, should the funds set aside by the state to support agricultural development be piled on an individual village that can have no modeling or demonstrative purpose, so that the peasants in this village enjoy far more public goods than those in other villages? And yet the Provincial Party Committee convened a province-​wide New Rural Construction Work meeting in this non-​ reproducible model village, and proposed a slogan urging everyone to learn from its example!

2

The reason why the central government wants to transfer resources to villages is obviously not because it has too much money and nowhere to use it, but because the villages are highly in debt. After the reform of agricultural taxes and fees, the former method whereby the funds for the construction of rural public projects and public facilities would be raised by the peasants themselves has fallen apart; the central government has no alternative but to devise all sorts of ways to raise funds to support agricultural development. The central government’s funds for agriculture are not like the icing on the cake but rather like sending charcoal in snowy weather: they are for the purposes of maintaining a baseline of agriculture and basic order in villages. Generally speaking, spending money among such a large number of villages is like sprinkling pepper (sa hujiaomian 撒胡椒面), which is not good or right as it will divert precious limited funds away from big projects. However, when funds are all funneled into demonstration sites or even leading enterprises, peasants may have no chance of earning any profit, which would be at odds with past practices, when policy allowed peasants to have a certain limited amount of financial support from the state. What, then, is the role of sending

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funding resources to the villages? Why does the state want to spend this money for nothing? Some people say that dispersing money across so many villages is useless, but the real question is, how is it being spent. It is better to spend it among a large number of villages than not spending at all, and if it reaches its target, it may even work wonders. Let us return, for instance, to the city with more than 500 villages. Those villages together have debts of 421 million yuan, and only 26 villages are debt-​free. Village debt has a huge negative influence on village governance. If that city had spent its 300 million yuan over a decade on village debts instead of the model village, it could have had incredible results. If it had taken the 30 million yuan per year it had spent on the demonstration village and distributed it evenly among its 500 administrative villages, then the villages would have received an average of 60,000 yuan each, which they could have used for many things. In 2002, I was raising outside funds for a demonstration site project of providing public goods to five rural villages in Jingmen City (荆门市), Hubei. Each village had an annual budget of 40,000 yuan, and the villagers’ representative assemblies decided on how to use it on the stipulated public projects and public welfare enterprises. The effects were good. The annual investment of 40,000 yuan produced economic and social effects far more valuable than the nominal 40,000 yuan. Why were the effects so good? Because the people deciding how to use the funds were the beneficiaries: the peasants could decide how to maximize the effectiveness of this 40,000 yuan through the villagers’ representative assembly. The combination of the outside funds with the peasants’ bottom-​up autonomous governance resulted in the formation of a sense of initiative and ownership among the peasants as they could make effective, even optimal, use of their limited funds. Hence, with regard to the use of funds, only by letting the peasants, as the ultimate beneficiaries, take part in the decision-​ making on how to use those funds—​not leaving the decision-​making to the top-​down vertical lines of authority and the horizontal lines of authority at the county government level—​can the funds really be used well and effectively.

3

Many things in China, including transfer payments from the central government, exist in a vicious circle between chaos, when the central government loosens up, and stifling rigidity, when it tightens up. The central and local governments have always found it difficult to resolve the issue of national unity

140 Chapter 21 versus regional difference. With respect to state resources going to the countryside, how to draw a compromise between the standardized use of project funds and diversified rural practices remains a big, difficult issue. The results of having county-​level governments coordinate their use usually does not solve the problem, but rather diverts attention away from it, since they pile the funds onto demonstration sites. That approach is less fair and effective than the former “pepper sprinkling” approach of distributing agricultural support funds. On the whole, the central government’s top-​down transfer of agricultural support funds is not intended to build individual demonstration sites or models but to solve the many problems existing in rural areas. Instead of letting county government coordinate the funding for various demonstration site projects or leading enterprises, it would be better to continue letting the vertical lines of authority implement projects that would benefit more peasants. When the central government transfers funds, it may be right to reduce special transfer payments and increase general transfer payments if the latter satisfy these prerequisites: they must reach the peasants who will truly benefit from it, ensure the participation of peasants in autonomous governance, and connect with the peasants’ bottom-​up demands for public goods. In this way, the transfer resources that the central government have saved up from other sources can have the effect of sending charcoal in snowy weather: it would guarantee the peasants’ basic livelihood and the basic order of agricultural production.

chapter 22

The Integration of Funds in the Villages of Qingyuan City In 2014, Qingyuan City in Guangdong Province started a pilot project for comprehensive rural reform. One important item of this reform is the integration of agriculture-​related funds. At the village level, these funds, such as the comprehensive agricultural subsidies and Forest Ecological Benefit Compensation Fund (shengtai gongyilin butie 生态公益林补贴, or febcf), are paid via bank cards. With the villagers’ consent, the funds are integrated for village public projects and the public welfare, so as to improve villages’ organizational capability and meet the various demands of peasants’ agricultural production and everyday lives. As with land consolidation, several pilot towns and townships in Qingyuan City have successfully completed the integration of funds at the natural village level. Specifically, funds integration meant that each natural village had to hold peasant householder meetings to seek their approval for transferring their agricultural comprehensive subsidies and febcf payments from their bank accounts to the bank account of the natural village’s economic cooperative. In Jiulong Town (九龙镇) and Xiniu Town (西牛镇), both in Yingde City (英德市), where I did field research, the vast majority of natural villages had gone through this process (the exceptions were villages where the peasants had all gone to work in the cities, so that the villagers’ conferences could not be held), signing and affixing their thumbprints to the withholding agreements. The person in charge at the natural village brought the signed agreements and photocopies of the peasant householders’ identity cards to the bank to complete the procedure. All of the natural villages in Jiangying Town (江英镇) in Yangshan County (阳山县) also have held householders’ meetings and signed the withholding agreements. The bank, however, was very careful and went house-​to-​house to double-​check. When we were there conducting field research in March 2016, the bank had completed the task for only three of the natural villages in the entire town. The reform of the system in which comprehensive agricultural subsidies are transferred money via bank cards to households has made no progress even after several years of discussion. The discussion has taken place mainly at the grassroots level, and it is thought that the comprehensive agricultural subsidies are neither increasing peasants’ income nor stimulating peasant enthusiasm for farm work. It seems that not issuing them anything would not be good,

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142 Chapter 22 but what is issued does not serve its purpose. The grassroots generally recommend keeping the comprehensive agricultural subsidies at the village level rather than allocating it to peasants, so that it can use it for public projects, public welfare, and provision of services for peasants’ agricultural production and daily lives. In this way, the money could accomplish greater things. For instance, calculating on the basis of 100 yuan per mu, there would be 300,000 to 400,000 yuan of comprehensive agricultural subsidies in an administrative village of 2,000 to 3,000 people with combined farmland of 3,000 to 4,000 mu. Together, those subsidies are generally several times higher than all of the financial subsidies that a rural administrative village receives in an entire year, so it could be used for a wide range of things. The central government has always been hesitant about taking back the comprehensive agricultural subsidies and reallocating it to village collectives when it has already been giving them to the peasants. In fact, the central government in recent years has revised the comprehensive agricultural subsidies to start favoring large households. In 2005, the Central Document No. 1 even proposed that 20 percent of the comprehensive agricultural subsidies to peasants should be deducted and transferred to large households. The comprehensive rural reform in Qingyuan is quite significant since it has integrated agriculture-​related funds and transferred the comprehensive agricultural subsidies and various subsidies for environment, public welfare, and forests, which had originally been allocated to peasants’ households, to public funds for natural villages, through the peasants’ voluntary agreement. With these public funds, natural villages can discuss how to use them and target them for construction based on the needs of peasants’ agricultural production and everyday lives. This construction will inevitably increase natural villages’ organizational capability, encourage peasants to invest capital and labor to change their production and living environment, and build better lives for themselves. Natural villages are acquaintance societies, and during the People’s Commune era they were the production teams. The villagers’ groups below administrative villages are the owners of collective land. These villagers live and farm together and have the same interests and aspirations in their production and daily lives. Since the public funds for village construction were deducted from what the villagers had been receiving, the peasants will be certain to find precisely where they are needed, because their demands and preferences for public goods can be more precisely expressed. When using these funds in an acquaintance society, no one will dare to let it go to waste, let alone misuse it for corrupt ends. Instead, since the funds are the village’s own money, the villagers will find the most reasonable, economical, and efficient ways of using it

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where it is needed or spend it for construction. It becomes easier to mobilize villagers to invest their own money and labor, too, when the funds are used. In this way, the central government has successfully allocated the comprehensive agricultural subsidies to peasants via funds integration and public projects and public welfare construction at the natural village level. It has improved not only agricultural production and the peasants’ living conditions, but also the peasants’ mobilizing ability. Of course, this is an excellent way of integrating the funds. The reason why the rural villages in Qingyuan City can so easily integrate funds at the natural village level relates to their clan organizations. Almost all natural villages in Qingyuan City are clan-​style single-​surname villages. Before 1949, all of the clans built ancestral shrines on common clan property, especially clan land. After the reform and opening up of the 1980s, the vast majority of these natural villages rebuilt or renovated their ancestral shrines, which required the establishment of ancestral shrine construction committees, with representatives from different clan branches (fang 房) to collect fees from all male peasants for the construction work. Almost no one refused to submit the fees. Clan identity and clans’ ability to take action laid the foundation for the funds integration of natural villages in Qingyuan City to go smoothly, and in the process successfully mobilized peasants to invest in rebuilding their own villages. The natural village-​based clan organizations and the clan identity they foster explain why rural Qingyuan can smoothly integrate funds and use them optimally in village reconstruction. In the natural village of Louzai (楼仔), in Jiulong Town, Yingde City, the villagers used the integrated public funds to organize and invest their labor into completely changing the village’s exterior environment, which included building a road to the village and a basketball court, planting trees, and so on. For more than a year, the villagers alone invested more than 4,000 man-​days (gegong 个工). If each worker had received 80 yuan per day, that would have amounted to as much as 320,000 yuan. However, Louzai has only 400 people or more, so the amount of integrated agricultural funds for the village each year is just over 30,000 yuan. Thus in the span of just over a year’s time, Louzai’s appearance changed dramatically without any investment by the state, and even without monetary investment from the villagers. They only mobilized the peasants to contribute their free time to produce the work of 4,000 volunteers. Jingmian (泾面), a natural village in Jiangying Town, Yangshan County had also integrated the comprehensive agricultural subsidies, already back in 2008, in order to build roads into the village and a cultural activities center. There were only 45 households and 260 people in Jingmian. Because transportation

144 Chapter 22 into and out of the village was so poor, most of the peasant households had already moved out and bought or built houses elsewhere. With all of the villagers’ consent, Jingmian integrated its comprehensive agricultural subsidies and subsidies for environment, public welfare, and forests, amounting to approximately 50,000 yuan per year, to build a village cultural activities center starting in 2010. However, construction was stalled after the foundation was laid, because the road conditions were so poor that construction materials could not be brought in. Thus, Jingmian had to switch plans and fix the road into the village instead. Between 2012 and 2013, Jingmian vied successfully for 150,000 yuan in funding for road repair from higher levels of government, and the integrated 120,000 yuan of agriculture-​related funds was used as the villagers’ self-​raised matching contribution toward the successful rebuilding of the 1.2-​kilometer village road. The village cultural activities center was then completed in 2015 at a cost of more than 300,000 yuan. It became the best building in Jingmian, considered an ideal place for holding weddings and funerals. On the day before the Qingming Festival each year, all 45 householders return to Jingmian from wherever they may be in order to meet and discuss the village’s public affairs. According to the cultural activities center staff person, the village still owes 90,000 yuan to the construction team even after receiving another 80,000 yuan in rewards and subsidies from the government. Although most of the households have moved out of Jingmian, the village still shows some vitality because of the integrated public funds. At present, Jingmian is undergoing land consolidation, so it is trying to consolidate peasants’ lands in order to achieve moderate scale operation, avoid land abandonment, and make the land profitable. Other places around the nation, where natural villages are not based on single clans living in clusters, might not have the ability to mobilize all villagers in the same way that Qingyuan did, and get them to agree to having their comprehensive agricultural subsidies deducted and pooled into a village fund. If one household does not agree to it, others will soon follow suit, but mandatory deductions by village collectives seriously violate national policies. Without mandatory deductions, most village collectives will not be able to integrate funds and use them for village construction. The question now is, why has the state designed such an inefficient system for the comprehensive agricultural subsidies, with its direct payments to peasants’ households, while it sets aside rather few funds to support village-​level construction. I have said repeatedly that top-​down national funds should meet peasants’ bottom-​up demand for public goods, so that the funds can be effectively used to provide essential public goods catering to the needs of peasants’ agricultural production and everyday lives. Doing so can also improve

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peasants’ subjective awareness, initiative, and grassroots organizational capability. The public resources transferred by the state to village communities may provide the impetus that revitalizes them. The integration of funds in the villages of Qingyuan City has already proven this.

chapter 23

Village Debt

An Ulcer on Village Governance



1

In May 2015, I  joined Song Yaping (宋亚平), the President of Hubei Academy of Social Sciences, to do field research in a few counties and cities, and we found that locked-​up village debts arising from the rural agricultural tax and fee reform are becoming a big problem for villages. Village debts must be dealt with as soon as possible to prevent irreparable negative impact on village governance. More than three years ago, I met Zhao Shukai (赵树凯), a research fellow at the Development Research Center of the State Council, who asked about the village debt situation. He said he was quite puzzled by the fact that during the agricultural tax and fee reform, village debt in all regions was reported to be severe, so the central government adopted the approach of locking up (suoding 锁定) the debt. Now that more than ten years had passed, he said he had not heard any news about the village debt explosion. As time goes on, things that were not easy to do before will naturally fade into oblivion. Apparently, everything will become fine after a certain delay. Does this also imply that the earlier severity of village debt was overestimated? The leader of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group (Zhongnongban 中农办) had similar questions:  Why haven’t the village debts, once considered a time bomb, exploded yet? Had they been overestimated? I remember that I had replied that outstanding village debts would not disappear automatically, but the harm they would bring to rural society would not appear like an explosion but rather like an ulcer. This ulcer would greatly harm the mechanisms of rural society and rural governance, and that the negative effects on villages could be lethal. Around 2002, the villages in Hubei Province, like villages throughout China, underwent a lock-​up of creditors’ claims and debts (zhaiquan zhaiwu de suoding 债权债务的锁定). The lock-​up of creditors’ claims was mainly to stop the collection of agricultural taxes and fees owed by peasants, while the lock-​up of debts was mainly to stop payment to creditors. After the lock-​up of debts, the government organized a top-​down clearance of debts and removed the high interest on village debts. Before the agricultural tax and fee reforms began in 2002, the peasants were heavily burdened, and in villages everywhere

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there were poor households or nail households that always delayed payment of agricultural taxes and fees. Local governments often demanded the villagers’ groups to borrow money to make up what was missing, so they could finish collecting the agricultural taxes and fees on time. In many areas, cadres took loans out at high interest rates so they could fulfill their tax collection task, which was subject to a “one-​vote veto.” Before the tax reform, village debt had reached alarming levels. Of course, village debt did not consist only of the loans that villagers’ groups had taken out to pay taxes, but also debts incurred by village enterprises from the loans they had taken primarily from formal financial organizations, such as credit cooperatives and agricultural banks, for developing their businesses. There were also debts that village cadres had accumulated, from loans taken out mainly from private individuals, in order to fill their tax collection quotas. Village-​level creditor claims, as opposed to village-​level debts, were almost entirely for agricultural taxes and fees that peasants should have paid, but did not. This is not to say that peasant households did not pay their taxes or fees at all. They usually delayed payment, and only a minority among them were the village poor, who were really unable to pay. There were also small groups of poor families who could not afford to pay the taxes at all, as well as nail houses who irrationally refused to pay anything at all. The majority of people just kept delaying payment, hoping somehow to get rid of it that way. The distinguishing feature of village debt was its ubiquity. By the time that creditors’ claims and debts were locked up, virtually every village in Hubei Province was nearly one million yuan in debt on average. What does one million yuan mean for a village? Before the agricultural tax reform, the average total tax burden of the peasants in each village per annum was more than 200,000 yuan, and the burden of peasants in Hubei topped the list in China, which explains why peasant-​cadre relationships there were extremely tense. The nearly one million yuan in debt carried by the villages was equivalent to four or five years’ worth of agricultural taxes and fees paid by the peasants. With such a large shortfall, and an annual interest rate of 10%, the interest that the villages were paying each year was equivalent to their entire annual revenue from agricultural tax and fees. This means that it was completely right for the central government to decisively lock the village debts, and then some time later clear them and remove the high interest. The problem is that in the more than ten years since the lock-​up, the principal, now stripped of its high interest rate, has now substantially depreciated. The complexity of village debt is evidenced by the high debts owed by some of the village-​run enterprises that went bankrupt—​as high as 10 million yuan. Some villages had only borrowed money from peasants and private individuals

148 Chapter 23 to fulfill “one-​vote veto” obligations, so their village debts amounted to only a few hundred thousand yuan. Debts owed to formal financial institutions have become bad debts after being locked up for over ten years. Banks and credit cooperatives may have already written them off, but the problem is that debts owed to private individuals cannot be delayed and must be repaid. My field investigations in Xiangyang City (襄阳市), Zhongxiang City (钟祥市), Jianli County (监利县), and Qianjiang City (潜江市) in Hubei Province showed clearly that in each location, without exception, village debts have reached a critical point; they must be resolved, and with no further delay. Village-​level debt in Qianjiang City exceeds 300 million yuan, with claims of 150 million yuan. Average debt for every village is approximately one million yuan. Village-​level debt in Zhongxiang City is 421 million yuan. Only 26 of its villages are debt-​free; the other 469 are all debt-​ridden. One village in Yicheng City (宜城市) had debts of 18 million yuan, and on average, each of Yicheng’s villages had debts of nearly one million yuan. One village in Xiangzhou District (襄州区) in Xiangyang City had debts of 60 million yuan, and the average debt of each of Xiangyang’s villages was nearly two million yuan. Almost every village in Jianli County is also in debt.

2

In all of the counties and cities visited, the leaders and township and town cadres felt that village-​level debt was a real headache. They all thought that village debts could no longer be locked up, that they had to be truly resolved. The severity of village debts has greatly affected the normal functioning of village governance, and the outcome of further delay is unthinkable. A staffer in Qianjiang City’s Office of the Rural Work Leading Group (nongban) commented: Until now, the central government has not released any policy or measure to unlock village debts, so that debts that should be collected can’t be collected, but debts due to be repaid must be repaid. The villages are powerless to pay off such heavy debt. A few honest people in the villages have suffered losses, while the cunning ones took advantage of the situation and gained. The masses have plenty of opinions about this, and it affects the credibility and image of village-​level organizations. It saps the fighting spirit and cohesion of grassroots organizations and affects the sustainable development of the rural economy.

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A cadre in Yicheng City said: Currently, village-​level debt pressure is extreme, and the pressure of maintaining stability is, too. It is especially the creditors whose families are now in financial difficulty who are strongly demanding the cadres to pay them back. Some cadres in those days had used their own money to pay for collective agricultural taxes and fees, now they are getting old and strongly demanding the return of their money, too. They say they worked their whole lives for the Communist Party, and still suffered such a big loss. This has had a huge impact on rural grassroots organizations and mass work. The Yicheng cadre also mentioned the village debts owed: … to peasants, cadres, and Party members who were the masses and backbone of the past Party establishment in the village. This debt you can’t run away from. The central government has reined in its forces, thinking about delaying repayment until the debt goes away, but this is impossible. This has greatly harmed the grassroots masses in their farm work. Someone in Zhongxiang City related this example:  An old village Party secretary borrowed money from villagers in order to pay for agricultural taxes and fees, but after the locking of debts, he never repaid them, so the villagers complained a lot about it. Later on, when this old village Party secretary stepped down and opened a shop selling agricultural equipment, his creditors appeared at the shop and walked off with fertilizer, using the earlier iou s for payment. There were also examples of village cadres who had committed suicide due to the huge pressure. Almost everyone could tell several stories about the severe outcomes of village debt.

3

At the time, the lock-​up of village-​level debts and creditors’ claims was only an expedient measure. It was generally expected that the debts would be cleared in two or three years at most. However, since the creditor-​debtor relationships were too complicated, no one wanted to take up the dirty job of collecting debts that the peasants owed on their agricultural taxes and fees. This left locked-​up debts and creditors’ claims unresolved. Because the serious consequences of village debt do not erupt explosively, the central government has

150 Chapter 23 turned a blind eye to the issue. However, this is not a good reason to delay the debt repayment or to argue that repayment should be delayed since the village debt has not really been harmful. The serious consequences to village governance of locking up village debts and creditors’ claims are mainly as follows: First, it disturbs and confuses people. Before the locking up, the peasants who had taken the initiative to pay their agricultural taxes and fees in full, whether they were active in village governance or just plain honest, were the ones who were more willing to support the village collective and the state and who believed in the slogan, “Pay enough to the state, leave enough for the collective, and keep the remainder for yourself.” In short, they were the most important, basic supporting force for village collective and public affairs. But those who delayed payment were generally of three types: (1) the small number of genuinely poor families who lacked the money for agricultural taxes and fees, a situation that all peasants could understand; (2)  the nail households who simply refused to pay even though they could afford to; and (3) passive households who just delayed and procrastinated in their payments. Ever since the tax reform, practically everyone believes that it is highly unlikely that the government will collect the agricultural taxes and fees owed in the past. Hence, the pro-​active and honest sorts of people who had really supported the village collectives were precisely the ones who suffered losses, but the cunning people profited. This sort of mix-​up in the relationship between rights and obligations has greatly harmed the masses who had been the mainstay of the village collectives. If the trust and support of these people are lost, the grassroots organizations will have difficulty accomplishing anything in the future. One village cadre said that peasants did not fear poverty, only unfairness. Now that the kind of unfairness resulting from the lock-​up of debts and creditor’s claims has angered people, who will be left to support the grassroots organizations and believe in the country? The second consequence is that fundraising for public affairs has been affected. After it had abolished agricultural taxes and fees, the central government proposed the “one project, one discussion” arrangement, under which each peasant would be required to contribute 15 yuan per year toward village public affairs. However, because many village collectives still owed money to some of the peasant households, these peasants demanded that the village collectives just subtract the amount from the debt owed them. Ordinary peasants, meanwhile, said that they would only contribute after those who had owed agricultural taxes and fees in the past would pay off those debts. Thus, in each “one project, one discussion” meeting, some peasants paid the fee with debt, the fundraising effort for the project would fail, and the other peasants would

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respond passively to it: if one household did not pay, then many followed suit, and finally no one paid. The “one project, one discussion” approach naturally failed, but that was not all: anything that involved peasant contribution of labor and money failed because there were always those who objected to it. The reason for this is very simple: the village collective owes me money—​why can’t I use this credit to pay my contribution in money and labor? Or a peasant might say: if you want me to pay, fine, but first collect money from people who still owe the collective its past taxes and fees. The result is that nothing can be done. The third consequence is the formation of a hard opposition in village governance. The village collectives had borrowed money from the villagers. Some of it was borrowed by village cadres, so the village could submit agricultural taxes and fees, and some of it was borrowed by villagers’ group cadres from their relatives and friends, for the same purpose, but now neither the interest nor the principal has been repaid. More than ten years have passed. When the debts were locked up, a worker’s total income for three years was still less than 10,000 yuan. Now that income levels have increased to an average of 30,000 yuan for a worker, should the debts be repaid? Some of the creditors are very old, some hospitalized, and some even on their deathbeds, and yet the village collective has not paid the debts. Other village cadres who acted as guarantors for the loans for agricultural taxes and fees have been hounded for money, even forced to commit suicide. Although, on the whole, this group of creditors is not large—​less than one-​tenth of all peasant households—​the locked-​up, unpaid village debts have greatly deteriorated the relationship between village collectives and these creditors. The village head of one township in Yicheng City told me that one-​third of the petitioners in his village were demanding that the village collective pay back their loans. Village cadres already have no prestige, and when the year is coming to a close, it is quite common for them to leave the village and go elsewhere to avoid creditors showing up at their doors and dunning them for payment; they cannot spend the New Year holiday at home. Of course, the village cadres can do nothing in the face of creditors demanding payments, because the village collective has no revenue, and the new cadres ignore the old affairs of the past. It has even gotten to the point that no one wants to be a village cadre. The villagers who cannot recover their debts not only hold grudges against village cadres but also become quite dissatisfied with the state. In response to anything at all in village governance, whether it is good or bad, these resentful villagers will rise in opposition to it. These villagers who act in opposition to everything have become such a big hindrance that village cadres who may wish to accomplish something good for the villagers and collective in the end cannot do it, or it is not done well. The village cadres

152 Chapter 23 then lose faith and get lazy, unwilling to do anything more. With nothing done or accomplished, they lose popular support, and the village organizational establishment becomes looser.

4

Village debts may be huge, but in fact, the country’s total village debts approximate to only one trillion yuan, which is still low compared to the more than one trillion yuan that the state transfers each year to the countryside. In many villages, the transfer payments received from the state each year far surpass the village debts. Therefore, the issue of village debt, in essence, is not one of funding, but rather one of awareness of its existence, and awareness of its negative consequences. The state transfers more than one trillion yuan every year to address the “three rural issues (sannong wenti 三农问题)” i.e., relating to agriculture, countryside, and peasants, and for rural construction. However, if the village-​level debt issue is not resolved and the proper relationship between rights and obligations in rural areas is not established, then no matter how huge the transfer payments are, they will achieve half the results for twice the effort or fail to get the expected results. Locking up village debt has not solved the village debt problem, which has become a major hidden danger in rural governance, a major reason why rural governance is fallen into difficulty, and a lethal wound to the rural grassroots organizational establishment. Resolving village debt is an issue that will brook no delay.

chapter 24

The Failure of Transfer Payments to Generate Vitality in Hollow-​Shell Villages Despite the huge top-​down transfer payments of a trillion yuan per year to the villages, grassroots governance still lacks vitality. Instead, peasants everywhere have developed an increasingly pronounced “wait, depend, and request” mentality (deng kao yao 等靠要). In some areas, nail households in villages even take advantage of state funds to obtain improper benefits, which is entirely and essentially extortion. Ordinary peasant households are either indifferent to them or stand around and watch, or worse, heckle them. As a result, no matter how much resources the state transfers to the countryside, no matter how things it does, or how many basic public goods and services are provided, the capability of village grassroots organizations has not improved, and neither has peasants’ identification with the state. The vitality in grassroots governance is fast disappearing. Yang Hua (杨华) comes from Hunan Province, and clan identity still exists in his hometown. Many years ago, the village organization in Yang Hua’s hometown applied for funding from higher-​level governments to construct a landfill site, and the higher levels had similar project funding. However, by the Lunar New Year, the villagers’ group still had not received the funding, since the queue for funding was very long and the village cadres lacked guanxi. By then, the village’s garbage was already piling up everywhere. Yang Hua works in the city, but his clan has certain standing in the home village, so he contacted the village organization leader and a few representative peasants to suggest that villagers contribute money and labor to build the landfill site, and not wait and depend on the government. They started working without any delay. The landfill site was built within three days, using only 1,400 yuan and 60 man-​days, in contrast to the initial estimated budget of 20,000 yuan. They even cleared out the garbage throughout the village. The example of this landfill site in Yang Hua’s hometown shows that village society still has vitality, but the keys are mobilization and organization. Also, stimulating the enthusiasm of the village to build a landfill site at low cost was only a matter of organizing villagers who were otherwise playing mahjong. It was a low-​cost way of doing a big public project. In the process of constructing the landfill site, a sense of camaraderie developed among villagers who were making fun of each other while at work. If this project were done with money

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_025

154 Chapter 24 allotted by higher levels of government, the cost would have been higher and the results not necessarily good. For more than a decade, I have been doing an experiment on the establishment of senior citizens’ associations in four Hubei villages. The work is quite simple: initiate the associations’ establishment, and then I donate 5,000 yuan per village per year for activity expenses and leave it to the associations to decide on how to use the money. Since then, the four associations have operated well. They play an essential role in the lives of the local elderly and have even had an effect on village governance. The 5,000 yuan annual contribution for each village means that each elderly person in these places will receive only 0.10 yuan (one mao 毛) per day. However, this tiny sum has had a big effect, because it has effectively organized the elderly, not only in letting them enjoy themselves in their old age, but also to continue contributing meaningfully in certain areas of life. My slogan at that time was “One mao buys the elderly a day of happiness,” and now it seems that has been accomplished to some extent. The senior citizens’ associations have essentially played the role of fulfilling a big task with a small amount of money. A small investment has stimulated some enthusiasm in the society of these villages. My small personal donation to the senior citizens’ associations has played a big role, and through the entire process, I  hardly ever got involved in any of the specifics in their establishment. Regrettably, some local governments have spent far more on establishing senior citizens’ associations than I have, but almost none of them is really well-​run. Some even shut down after only a few days. Why the huge difference? One reason is that when I donated money to the senior citizens’ associations, they would feel indebted to me because I  had no obligation to donate, and so they must use every penny wisely. The elderly also believed that this money belonged to the association and must be wisely used. The small amount of money was thus used where it was most needed, and on important things. As for money invested by the government on senior citizens’ associations, by contrast, the associations do not feel this personal indebtedness, nor do they feel they are answerable to anyone, so it does not matter to them how they spend the money. Another reason is that whenever money comes down from the government, there is someone behind it who had applied for and vied for it, and that person will often feel entitled to squander or abuse it. The third reason is that money from the government often has detailed stipulations on its usage in order to prevent abuse. Since the money can only be used for specific areas, the senior citizens’ associations and the elderly as a group have little say about how it should be used.

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When the state invests in village construction, the construction will be done by the state; the state will not be stimulating the peasants’ enthusiasm or linking it to the peasants’ own vital interests. Thus, the more the state invests its resources into the countryside, the more passive the peasants become—​the more they have the mentality of “wait, depend and request”—​and the less efficiently the resources are used. Although the peasants definitely benefit from the state’s investment in public infrastructure building and public services, they are passive beneficiaries. They neither participate nor contribute to the process. They also lack a voice in the process, so they cannot boldly criticize any nail householder or monitor construction quality. Peasant participation is thus crucial for improving the efficiency of use of state rural resources. Currently, two types of state funding are commonly adopted. The first is replacing subsidies with rewards. That is, when peasants self-​initiate a public construction project, and the government examines it and find that it qualifies, the state issues a reward. For example, if peasants dig a 10,000 cubic meter pond, they may need to spend 20,000 yuan on the project. After the government examines the pond and finds it acceptable, it disburses 10,000 yuan in rewards. Since the peasants dug the pond, the benefit goes to them, and they keep the property rights and management of the pond. Replacing subsidies with rewards is a good approach for such projects. The second type of state funding is used for projects that are far beyond what peasants can do on their own. For a project such as building a village access road, the higher-​ level governments contribute 70 percent of the funds; the rest is covered locally with village collective funds and peasants’ contribution of free labor. Only when peasants contribute their free labor and the village collective contributes money will peasants consider the road as their own and cherish it. The problem now is that in most areas of the country, the village collectives fail to stimulate peasants’ enthusiasm and organize their participation for contributing either money or labor, even when state funding requires local contributions. The collective then has no choice but to borrow money to support the project. As a result, the more the national resources go to the countryside, the more the villages go into debt, and the poorer the mobilizing capability of the village collectives becomes. In the end, the requirement that national funding have matching local support, which was initially aimed at mobilizing the peasants, has ended up by further excluding peasants from the funding process. Where does the problem originate? From the ineptitude of grassroots organizations, and the underlying lack of vitality of grassroots governance. Prof. Pan Wei (潘维) of Peking University once said that a country must have the capability to handle not only the big things, but also the small ones. The small things may be trivial, but they are complicated. If a blanket top-​down

156 Chapter 24 arrangement is used to deal with small village issues in different areas of China, it would be ridiculed. However, if local villages are given a free hand, they might arbitrarily spend the precious national funds on places unrelated to agriculture, such as building projects to score political points or using it for corrupt ends. Thus, with the top-​down transfer of state resources, the country once again faces the dilemma between chaos, when the central government loosens up, and stifling rigidity, when it tightens up. The crux of the problem lies in the condition of peasants, the ultimate beneficiaries of the state resources. If the peasants are scattered and the state transfer funds contingent, then the peasants have no say in the provision of basic public services. As a result, they have the “wait, depend, and request” mentality, and whenever there is any opportunity to get something for nothing, they do their utmost to get it. Peasants have difficulties in their own agricultural production and everyday lives, but under the current top-​down financial transfer system they have no way of effectively expressing these difficulties or their demands to higher levels of government. “Effectively” here would refer to their making the most necessary appeals for limited funds to resolve prioritized needs, not appealing for unlimited funds to satisfy all their needs. The latter cannot be satisfied. Peasants cannot form an effectively targeted will or decide on the best direction and measures for using those top-​down financial resources. Thus, under the current top-​down transfer system, they will definitely wait for, depend on, and request aid from the government as much as possible, and even become indifferent. Hence the current system of national funding for the countryside fails to mobilize peasants or stimulate their effective participation. The purpose of the funds is to provide basic public services, and it is a form of charity, but it has not turned into careers for the peasants, either as individuals or as a group. Without their mobilization or channels for their participation, whenever they encounter difficulties during their agricultural production and everyday lives, they seek help from the village collectives, which are unable or unwilling to respond. They become atomized as a result. Of course, atomized peasants cannot summon up constructive strength—​instead, a small number of black sheep, like nail households and free riders, will emerge among them. The latter can destroy the basic order of peasants’ agricultural production and everyday lives, as well as basic common rules, and no one dares to stand up against them, leaving little space for asserting justice. When peasants encounter difficulties, the village collectives’ role is very important, because they represent the common interest. When they respond to peasants’ demands, the peasants’ trust in and support for them will be strengthened. The more they respond to peasants’ demands, the more trust

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and support they get, and the more capable they become. It is a positive feedback loop. When the village collectives have the capability, they can prevent free-​rider behavior and even criticize nail households. With peasant backing, they become a huge force. The positive interaction between village collectives and peasants needs a specific channel, like the villagers’ assembly or village representatives’ assembly, which lets peasants express their demands and preferences, thereby forming strong common interest and purpose. Then the village collective will face peasants’ demands directly, respond to them, and touch on their interests. Strong peasant will, formed through the process of mobilization and participation, can suppress the opposition and resistance of the minority and prevent damage caused by black sheep. Of course, the current problem is that village collectives lack the basic financial resources needed to respond to peasants’ demands, because most village collectives have become empty shells, and may even be heavily in debt. If the state could transfer some of its funds to villages instead of allocating everything through specific projects, the village collectives would be able to have some public funds on hand, and then they could make a connection between those top-​down funds and the bottom-​up peasant demands when they mobilize the peasants and let them express those demands. Such a connection can satisfy peasants’ common pressing needs and release a huge amount of energy, since it will touch on the peasants’ actual interests. This kind of connection is the source of vitality in grassroots governance within the current context of state funding for the countryside in China. Without the mobilization of peasants, participation of the masses, and vitality of grassroots organizations, it will be difficult to meet the diverse needs of the countryside, mobilize peasant support for and trust in the state, and enhance the country’s fundamental power, even if the state were to transfer more funds to the countryside. How state funds can benefit peasants is a topic that deserves further study.

pa rt 4 Exploring the Village Governance System



chapter 25

The Paradox between Small Government and Convenient Service Platforms

1

During our field research in Wangting Town, Suzhou City, we were attracted by two projects that the town’s Comprehensive Management Office was carrying out. The first was promoting grid management (wanggehua guanli 网格化管理), and the second was building a smart online phone service platform. Grid management has become a basic method and starting point in comprehensive national governance being implemented throughout China, but I have reservations about it. Wangting Town just started grid management more than a year ago. At present, the whole town is divided into three levels of grids, with one grid at the town level, ten second-​level grids at the administrative village level, and 34 third-​level grids at the natural village level. Of the three levels, the third is the most important, since these are the platforms at the frontline dealing with the masses. Each third-​level grid has a grid director (wangge zhang 网格长), a grid administrator (wangge yuan 网格员) and several grid liaison members (wangge lianluo chengyuan 网格联络成员). A village cadre will concurrently be the grid director, while a villagers’ group leader will usually be appointed as the grid administrator; his or her main responsibility is to inspect the platform and submit reports. Every third-​level grid has cadres from different lines of authority acting as grid liaison members; regulations stipulate that each line of authority must send someone specific to fill the position. The liaison members have the responsibility and duty of responding to and resolving relevant issues coming through the grid. In this way, every third-​level grid is headed by a village cadre and supported by a villagers’ group leader acting as grid administrator as well as a number of liaison members from every department in the vertical lines of government authority. Grid liaison members not only have to pay house visits in the village to keep in touch with things but also disclose their mobile numbers and other contact details within their own grid. Every third-​level grid administrator has the contact details of all grid liaison members, so that information on any emergency situation can be sent at any time to the relevant grid platform. The grid platform

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_026

162 Chapter 25 also allocates work to grid liaison members, who have the responsibility and obligation to respond to and solve problems at the first instance. All the important departments in the vertical lines of town government have a grid liaison member in every third-​level grid. However, some departments have only a small number of people on staff. For instance, the Comprehensive Management Office has only two persons. In this case, each person has to serve as a liaison member in 17 of the 34 third-​level grids. Fortunately, in the more than one year the system has been in operation, they have not received any urgent notifications from grid administrators that require immediate response via the platform. According to the regulations, every grid administrator must report and register all issues to be resolved within the grid to the grid platform, which will then notify and allocate work orders to the grid liaison members charged with resolving the issues. Starting in March 2016, Suzhou City integrated all of its online and phone service platforms by establishing a unified online-​and-​phone convenient service platform (wangdian bianmin fuwu pingtai 网电便民服务平台). Suzhou City used to have a fragmented complaint system:  there was the 96889 hotline, the Hanshan Wenzhong forum, digital urban management, the mayor’s hotline, the public surveillance network, the mobile complaint platform (shouji tousu pingtai 手机投诉平台), the WeChat official account platform (weixin gongzhonghao pingtai 微信公众号平台), the 12345 hotline, and so on, all belonging to different systems and departments of the government. Suzhou City used the 12345 hotline as the base into which it integrated the rest, and built a convenient service platform operating on three levels—​city, district, and township or town—​to implement real-​time monitoring, assignment of work orders, closing cases, and assessing satisfaction level of the complainants. The convenient service platform comes directly under the Comprehensive Management Offices of the city and districts. It is required to solve problems and close cases within a certain time frame, and to relay the information regarding the completion of the case to the complainant, who will then comment and indicate their satisfaction level. Once per month, the city government will report on the status of complaints in the districts and counties, and the district and county governments will do the same for the towns and townships. The Comprehensive Management Office responsible for the convenient service platform must promptly register complaints and appeals before sending work orders based on the complaints. In Wangting Town, there are a total of 60 departments that may transfer work orders; these include various stations and offices, public service units like schools and hospitals, and village-​and state-​owned joint enterprises such as water utilities. All departments, including government and public service institution departments, and state-​owned

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joint enterprises qualify as units in the vertical line of authority that can send work orders, so they are each required to assign a line monitor (tiaoxian lianluoyuan 条线联络员). The line monitors respond to or resolve the complaints or requests sent by the convenient service platform as appropriate or independently, if possible, or report them to leaders along the line for resolution. Between 1 and 30 April 2016, the convenient service platform of Wangting Town received 96 work orders from higher-​level government, including five orders for reporting situations, five for consultations, 57 for complaints, 11 for offence reports, seven for repair claims, six for construction matters, one for rush repairs, and four for seeking help. Between 1 and 30 May 2016, it received 81 work orders transferred by higher-​ level government, including 13 orders for consultations, 41 for complaints, eight for offence reports, three for repair claims, ten for construction matters, one for seeking help in service, one for rush repair, and four for “other.” Between 1 and 30 June 2016, it received 124 work orders transferred by higher-​ level government, including eight orders for consultations, 65 for complaints, 17 for offence reports, 20 for repair claims, four for construction matters, nine for seeking help in service, and one for “other.” The 110 emergency call system remains; it follows the slogan, “If there is an alarm, there must be a dispatch; if there is difficulty, there must be assistance; if there is danger, there must be rescue; if there is a demand, there must be response (youjing bichu, younan bibang, youxian bijiu, youqiu biying 有警必出,有难必帮,有险必救,有求必应).” The many police and non-​ police activities that it handles will not be listed in detail here. Both grid management and the 12345 platform aim to solve problems. The difference is that grid management builds a system to find, report, and identify problems, send work orders, deal with problems, and evaluate problem-​ solving. It is an internal circulation system that aims to find and deal with problems promptly. The 12345 platform, on the other hand, focuses on dealing with various individual complaints, which then become the starting points for finding and reporting problems. The follow-​up, through the convenient service platform, identifies problems and their handling and finally evaluates the process.

2

Let us first discuss the 12345 convenient service platform. In terms of convenience, it has been very efficient in enabling people to report problems and file complaints simply by picking up the phone. Usually a complaint will enter the

164 Chapter 25 convenient service platform’s official processing system. Generally speaking, reasonable and solvable appeals and complaints can be quickly settled via the 12345 platform, provided that it is effectively operated. Appeals that are difficult to solve, of course, cannot expect instant resolution by relevant departments with simply a call. However, if the relevant departments receive tons of complaints every day, the immense pressure will prompt them to quickly address the issues. Problems that cannot be resolved will of course remain unresolved no matter how the complaints have been filed. A larger question than level of difficulty of problem-​solving is whether the appeals or complaints are reasonable. Reasonable appeals and complaints must be settled, while unreasonable ones cannot be. The question is how to measure whether a complaint or appeal is reasonable, and who decides. To shirk responsibility, some departments may label reasonable appeals as unreasonable and not handle them, while other departments may want to handle originally unreasonable appeals just to reduce trouble. With stricter supervision and evaluation from supervisors, the relevant departments tend to spend a lot of administrative resources to solve unreasonable appeals and complaints, but with looser review criteria, the relevant departments tend to deal with reasonable appeals and complaints in a perfunctory manner. The cost of filing complaints in the 12345 platform is very low, but the cost of solving problems is very high. Thus, under effective operation and especially supervisors’ strong pressure through evaluation rankings, the relevant departments will tend to spend considerable administrative resources on dealing with difficult appeals, even the ones that are not very reasonable. If the relevant departments quickly respond to and resolve complaints and appeals, however, this may stimulate more appeal and complaint referrals via the 12345 platform, which puts even greater pressure on them and make operation unsustainable. In fact, complaints from relevant departments led the supervision department to loosen the supervisory evaluations, which in turn resulted in the relevant departments responding more passively to appeals and complaints. The complainants then quickly found their complaints were not very effective and raised fewer complaints. To improve the effectiveness of the 12345 platform in handling reasonable complaints and appeals, whether easily resolved ones or difficult ones that are powerfully reflected by the masses, the basic operation of the 12345 platform must be ensured. The key for that is moderate supervision and evaluation by the supervisory authorities. It is unrealistic to expect the 12345 platform to solve all problems, and it is unnecessary to make it just a form of a convenient service platform.

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The most common problem that arises with the 12345 platform is satisfying unreasonable appeals or complaints, because this engenders overly high expectations among complainants and results in a boom of appeals and complaints.

3

Grid management adopts a bottom-​up set of processes: identifying problems, reporting problems to the top, channeling problems to the platform, sending work orders, solving problems, and evaluating results. In general, the villagers’ groups of the past make up the third-​level grid, and villagers’ group leaders serve as the grid administrators. Unlike in the past, villagers’ group leaders can now report situations in a timely manner via the grid platform in order to resolve problems. There are, however, two problems. The first is how to make the difficult decision on which problems should be dealt with by the vertical lines of authority, and which problems should be left to villagers’ group leaders. The second is determining how to evaluate the responsibilities of the grid administrator. One of the evaluation criteria is the number of problems that the grid administrator has identified and reported. A higher-​level government may even set a quota for grid administrators on the number of problems to be identified and solved each week, which may result in grid administrators seeking problems for the sake of finding problems, and handling problems for the sake of solving problems.

4

Whether a 12345 convenient service platform or a grid management approach is used, both need a platform to deal with problems and send work orders, and both need performance evaluations. More importantly, they need a department that processes appeals or complaints and provides solutions. Wangting Town, Suzhou City has 60 departments on the vertical lines of authority, and each department has to have an order-​taker who takes charge of matters relating to work orders, such as processing and ranking all work orders; they may even need supervision from the town Commission for Discipline. Hence, all departments on the vertical lines of authority in the town must arrange for someone to log in to the platform, download work orders, allocate the tasks, and report the progress.

166 Chapter 25 A single arbitrary call to the 12345 convenient service platform or a false report passed by a third-​level grid administrator in order to meet a work quota can make all 60 departments on the vertical lines of authority in town government very busy. These departments originally had plenty of tasks to do, but now so many spur-​of-​the-​moment tasks have completely disrupted the working plans of the line departments. This disorganized state of affairs wastes government resources and, of course, under such circumstances, small government becomes impossible.

chapter 26

Low Probability Events and Dilemmas of Grassroots Governance

1

When I was conducting field research in Weizu Village (围足村) in southern Jiangxi, the village Party secretary said that there were too many message banners in the village. There was no place to hang them anymore, so they could only stack them up in the office. If people from higher-​level government come on inspection, then they hang whatever banner they can. Behind every banner is a story, a central task, and a higher-​level department in charge of supervision. Since 2015, one central task in L Town in southern Jiangxi has been the rescue, care, monitoring, and protection of people suffering from mental disorders, mainly with the aim of preventing them from causing incidents. Town statistics show that there were 26 people in all with mental disorders who may cause incidents, and a guardian has been assigned to each. The town government has signed agreements with the guardians, according to which it pays each one a 1500 yuan per year incentive to provide adequate guardianship. Besides the guardianship, the town government implements the programs of “territorial management (shudi guanli 属地管理)” and “whoever’s in charge is responsible (shei zhuguan, shei fuze 谁主管、谁负责).” Village and residential committees respectively assume responsibilities of supervision and management of people with mental disorders within their jurisdictions and units, fully implementing the incentivized guardianship mechanism, in which “the Comprehensive Management Office takes the lead, relevant departments provide cooperation, the treasury provides full financial guarantee, the village (residential) committees supervise and manage, and families actively participate.” Apart from families and guardians, the organizations involved include village (residence) committees, Comprehensive Management Offices, police stations, town health centers, and so on. In principle, they are required to visit and contact people with mental disorders at least once every month as a preventive measure against incidents that pose a risk to stability maintenance. In Beitian Village (陂田村), the villagers’ committee secretary said that the village had four people with mental disorders who had been trouble-​ free in the past. However, ever since the incentivized guardianship system was implemented, they started receiving constant visits from cadres in the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_027

168 Chapter 26 Comprehensive Management Office, the police station, the health center, and the villagers’ committee. This aroused intense emotions among the patients. One was induced to psychosis, shouting in the streets all day long that someone was scheming to kill him. Around 2013, the media was reporting on trouble and brutal incidents caused by mentally disturbed people. To maintain social stability, the Central Comprehensive Management Office began the work of rescue, protection, and monitoring treatment for these people throughout the country. This work is undoubtedly necessary to preempt hidden dangers affecting social stability, and to show the care of the state and society. However, if implemented too mechanically, these measures can cause unnecessary problems. The village Party secretary of Beitian Village commented that many problems arose from nothing: “The more you beat gongs, the more demons appear, and the more frightened you are of something, the more it occurs.” For instance, in 2011, the higher levels of government demanded that every village had to send people out just to “beat the gong” and shout, “Take care to prevent fires” in the autumn and winter. It turned out that a forest fire would break out in the hills every few days. Later on, after the village stopped beating the gong, the fires virtually stopped. Whenever a passenger van had an accident, the higher levels of government would immediately ask the village cadres to visit every peasant household to make sure that if they were registering all the passengers of any vans and motorcycles they owned. It even got to the point that if a single accident occurred somewhere in the country, cadres at every level of government from the top down to the village level were on high emergency alert and had to carry out rigorous inspection and prevention measures to prevent any such accident from happening again. Thus the cadres had to respond to all of these rigorous top-​down prevention measures. They were like the proverbial “single needle below, with a thousand threads above.” With so many tasks being dropped upon them from above, the village cadres were too busy to attend to them all.

2

Were there any incidents caused by people with mental disorders? Of course. Were they common? Nationwide, certainly there were more than a few. However, for any specific village, they are certainly events of low probability. Since China is a vast territory undergoing an unprecedented period of rapid transition, and with a lot of population mobility, there is nothing strange about unprecedented, low-​probability incidents happening in the countryside. A few

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years ago, media attention focused on the suicide of four children in Bijie City (毕节市), Guizhou, followed soon after by the nasty case in Hunan of a “left-​ behind” teenager who killed his grandparents for not letting him play Internet games. Another violent incident occurred in southern Jiangxi Province in 2015, where we did our field research. This one involved a young person who robbed a shop and killed the shop owner and his family members just so he could treat his classmates to a meal. The media and society thus focused on the problem of rural left-​behind children, so that it also drew a high degree of attention from the central government. The suicides of the four left-​behind children are nonetheless very rare, low probability incidents, but the rarer the incident, the easier it is to attract media attention, and the easier it is to arouse social concern. In today’s highly developed, networked era, high levels of media and society attention has made low probability incidents become focuses of attention. When social attention focuses on low probability incidents, it pressures governments at all levels to concentrate resources on solving them or at least pay attention to resolving them. The outcome, for a country of China’s size, population, and rapid change, is that unanticipated, low-​probability incidents can happen nearly every day, and then they get amplified through media focus and the Internet. Once they enter the country’s decision-​making systems, all the various ministries and departments begin to study them, formulate regulatory measures to prevent them, and even order top-​down emergency inspections in order to prevent having to take any responsibility for them. Once a low-​probability incident has been headlined by the media and amplified via the Internet, the first reaction by the department in charge is to forestall criticism by launching an emergency investigation, taking preventive measures, and issue prohibitory documents. When the documents from the various ministries and departments finally come down to the village level, they are inevitably overwhelmed by the demands of the higher levels. The village cadres grow weary of holding constant meetings at different levels of administration to discuss the documents and implement what is required. They say that the number of statements and reports they submit to higher levels of government each year may exceed one hundred. They counted themselves fortunate to be familiar with own village situation, but often they were barely coping with the situation. In the present Internet era, the amplification of low-​probability incidents is inevitable. To avoid having to assume responsibility, the relevant ministries or departments in charge, following their own bureaucratic logic, will proactively intervene and make inferences and extrapolations of many things from a single instance (juyi fansan 举一反三). As a result, the entire society focuses its attention on low-​probability incidents, while no one pays attention to,

170 Chapter 26 or even has the ability to pay attention to, the truly routine things. The focus of grassroots governance likewise is diverted to these low-​probability events, and indeed, the entire administrative system begins to revolve mainly—​and vainly—​around their prevention. Because there is really no way to prevent low-​probability events (society is inherently full of risks), efforts to prevent them waste governance resources at the state level and greatly reduces the efficiency of the entire administrative system, including that of grassroots governance systems.

3

On top of this, to prevent low probability events, extensive investigations are conducted, various prohibitive regulations passed, and follow-​up systems developed, with the result that many regular tasks that should be done cannot be carried out. For example, primary and secondary schools throughout China no longer organize spring or autumn trips, and some do not even dare to offer physical education courses, for fear of accidents. If any problem arises in the daily operation of grassroots government, the higher levels of government will not hesitate to criticize, punish, or even dismiss grassroots cadres without looking into the details. Every society has its unavoidable low probability incidents, because this world is fundamentally a risky place, and if you must avoid all risks, it may only lead to greater risk. In this world of contradictions, we cannot eliminate contradictions—​we can only transform them. If the higher levels of government demand the elimination of contradictions and the prevention of all low probability incidents, the outcome would be panic over trivial things and self-​ created tension. Indeed, “the more we are afraid of ghosts, the more they will appear (yue she pa gui, jiu yue shi jian gui 越是怕鬼就越是见鬼).” Avoiding low probability incidents has severely dominated the resources of rural grassroots governance, which has resulted in grassroots organizations focusing more and more on submitting various reports, conducting various checks and inspections as demanded by the higher levels of government, and carrying out various activities, like hanging message banners, that have no practical meaning whatsoever locally, and yet must be done. Meanwhile, the problems affecting peasants that most urgently need solving, and the mass mobilization work that would truly enable the cadres and peasants to develop rapport—​all these tasks are being done less and less.

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4

Worse still, in today’s grassroots governance, there are various “innovations” that will appear to prevent low probability events but likewise waste grassroots governance resources. During my field research, one village Party secretary attributed the poor quality of rural work to “innovation,” which is being used in all localities to gain recognition by higher-​ups and build up political track records. In the past, rural cadres’ work was evaluated by hard indicators such as “collecting the grain and levying tax payments (shouliang paikuan 收粮派款),” family planning, and economic development, so that evaluation was straightforward, but now the kind of work evaluated by hard indicators is dwindling. Now the higher-​ups’ evaluations focus on various forms of “innovation and creativity (chuangxin chuangjian 创新创建).” All of the local governments are doing their utmost to think up all kinds of innovative, creative activities, making the work of local governments seem as if it had been done by the Communist Youth League (gongqingtuan hua 共青团化). In the absence of quantifiable indicators, the evaluation of innovation and creativity depends mainly on form and even exclusively on reports, so that local policymakers are spending more and more resources on formalized innovative and creative activities detached from local reality. On the village level, the innovative and creative activities have become improvised exercises. Although they have met with numerous complaints at the village level, the capacity of grassroots governance is still weakening as a result. In current grassroots governance, both “disclaiming responsibility (mianze 免责)” for low probability incidents and “exaggerated merit claims (yaogong 邀功)” for innovation and creativity, which lack quantifiable indicators, are ultimately practiced at the village level, which results in perfunctory coping with tasks and wheel-​spinning in village governance. While the village cadres busily cope all day with the tasks assigned by higher-​ups, they are unable to respond to peasants’ real demands for agricultural production and living needs and the maintenance of the basic social order in the villages. Large amounts of state resources are being used in places where they are meaningless and virtually ineffective.

5

At present, rural China is experiencing an unprecedented rate of transformation. The rural population is moving to the cities, leaving the countryside in decline. However, for a long period to come, the countryside will still be

172 Chapter 26 a place where large numbers of people will have to depend on farming to make a living, and where some will be returning in case they fail in the cities. Therefore, maintaining the basic order of agricultural production and meeting daily needs remain the primary mission of current village-​level governance. During this transitional period, the emergence of all kinds of unanticipated things will be quite normal, but there is no need to go overboard on prevention, since every problem has a solution:  “If soldiers come, put up a defense; if floods come, block them with earth (bing lai jiang dang, shui lai tu yan 兵来将挡,水来土淹).” Meanwhile, frothy and wasteful innovative and creative activities are mostly formalistic and should be discouraged. Truly, if we let the villages have the capability of responding to demands to improve peasants’ productive and daily lives, and if we let village cadres have the capability of solving the various minor things that appear in peasants’ productive and daily lives, and, in the process, improve peasants’ organizational skills and grassroots organizations’ governance quality, it would be wonderful. Simply put, the focus of current rural governance lies solely on routine governance capability, not other things. At present, the construction of grassroots organization has seriously deviated from its objective and direction and should resolutely be corrected.

6

During the two decades since the 1990s, the relationship between the state and peasants has experienced dramatic changes. In the 1990s, it consisted mostly of the state demanding things from peasants while peasants fulfilled their obligations for the state. After agricultural taxes were abolished in 2006, the state no longer collected taxes and fees from peasants and instead started to transfer large-​scale payments to rural areas. The government also “stopped the clearance of all debts (tingzhi qingqian 停止清欠)” for peasants who were in arrears of taxes and fees, so in reality, those debts have never been cleared to this day—​it was equivalent to an exemption. Government officials are now forbidden to use coercive force on peasants; the peasants’ previous obligations to the state have now been transformed into peasants’ rights and interests. The government gives them comprehensive agricultural subsidy, assists villages to build rural infrastructure, new rural cooperative medical insurance (xinnonghe 新农合), new rural social endowment insurance (xinnongbao 新农保), various transfer payments, minimum subsistence security for poverty alleviation (dibao fupin 低保扶贫), hardship allowance (kunnan buzhu 困难补助), major illness relief (dabing jiuzhu 大病救助), land property rights, and so on. The

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peasants were very satisfied and grateful when they received these new rights and benefits. Shortly thereafter, they began to take these benefits for granted, then they became dissatisfied. Because they were receiving benefits without contributing anything and had rights without obligations, these charity-​like transfer payments inevitably created in them the mindset that they had the right not to bear any responsibility. The state must provide assistance to the poor, disabled, and seriously ill, but when being poor becomes a privilege, and the poor want rights but say nothing of obligations, the situation is obviously unsustainable. There is no such thing as a free lunch, but poverty is not a right, either. Everyone should first accept responsibility before they can enjoy rights. Accepting responsibility, which includes accepting obligations, is a prerequisite to enjoying rights. Building a state-​peasant relationship that balances responsibilities and rights is the most important task in current grassroots governance. The standards for evaluating rural grassroots work are becoming increasingly vague. Before, there were three major areas for evaluating the quality of rural work: taxes and fees, family planning, and economic development; later on, maintaining safety and stability was added. Tasks in these areas were relatively easy to evaluate. They were “hard,” i.e., quantifiable, and it was easy to tell whether they were completed or not—​there was no room to fake it. In current rural work, however, the collection of agricultural taxes and fees has been abolished, and family planning and economic development-​related work are either not done anymore or have diminished in importance—​they are no longer the focus of rural grassroots governance. The work of rural grassroots governance has thus changed: from real to rhetorical; from the completion of specific tasks to the prevention of potential problems; from mobilizing the masses and contacting peasants to coping with higher-​ups and completing various reports; from collecting money to distributing resources; from relying mainly on cadres’ prestige to get work done to the gradual fading of village power to become more open, standardized, and routinized; and from emphasis on solving problems to emphasis on obeying rules. As a result, procedure has been increasing in importance and complexity, grassroots governance capability has been focusing more on compiling reports and sending document files, work has been centering more in the office, and village cadres have become younger, while keeping office hours. This big shift has been from “hard,” quantifiable tasks to softer, preventive, “innovative and creative” ones, which are hard to quantify and must be evaluated through reports, examination, inspection, and filing documents to cope formalistically with higher-​ups’ demands. At present, the main measures of good or bad governance at the grassroots level include the work of “disclaiming

174 Chapter 26 responsibility,” i.e., preventing low probability incidents, and “exaggerated merit claiming” with regard to innovation and creativity activities—​all emphasize form, and all have relatively “soft” indicators. This is an important feature of current grassroots governance. What is the focus of grassroots governance today? How should it be evaluated? Whether “disclaiming responsibility” or “exaggerated merit claiming” should be ranked as less important in grassroots governance, the focus should still be on responding to peasants’ demands for improved basic production and daily living conditions. How the government responds should be discussed carefully. In the past grassroots governance of the acquaintance society, feeling and face were some of the most important aspects of getting work done. The focus of grassroots work now is on filling various forms in order to cope with higher-​ ups’ checks and examinations. Grassroots work has thus become office-​based. Grassroots governance has changed from being irregular, informal, and production-​ oriented to standardized, formalized, routinized, technology-​ based, and digitalized; it has gone from solving problems to preventing their emergence. It has been a dramatic change for grassroots governance: when it had once depended on the power of feeling, reasoning, and law, it now increasingly excludes the first two in order to emphasize “law” alone. The formalization of village governance must emphasize the matching of responsibilities and rights, and the reliance on human feeling (renqing 人情) and face (mianzi 面子) to get work done has clearly gone out of date. As village cadres’ salaries increase, they have to start keeping regular office hours, and while governance costs rise, problem-​solving ability declines. Village cadres’ positions are being replaced by highly educated people with strong writing skills, so the nature of village governance is changing. Rural grassroots work originally had many tasks that were vague, ambiguous, principle-​compromising, informal, and unregulated, with less documentation and a lot more discretion, fewer black-​and-​white distinctions and more gray areas. Now, the establishment of complex institutions may entail precision governance in areas affecting fewer interests, resulting in high governance costs and low efficiency, but formal institutions have yet to be established, while traditional governance institutions have been destroyed and abandoned. Signs of this phenomenon have emerged in the governance of several villages in China today.

chapter 27

The More Interests Are Involved, the More Complicated the Rural Governance System

1

In 1987, the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committees (《村委会组织法》) was enacted on a trial basis, and then it was officially promulgated and implemented in 1998. In 1999, most villagers’ committees in China had adopted the “election by the masses (haixuan 海选)” initiated by Lishu County (梨树县), Jilin. That is, no candidate was preselected; villagers could freely select and vote for anyone, and whoever got more than half the votes would be elected. If no one got more than half, then the two leading vote-​winners would enter a second round of voting, and the one receiving more than half of the votes would be elected. Other places did not implement “election by the masses” but “recommendation by the masses (haitui 海推)” instead. That is, villagers nominated candidates for villagers’ committees on blank paper, and the two persons receiving the most nominations would become the candidates for village head. Within a short period, “election by the masses” and “nomination by the masses” made villagers’ committee elections much more democratic, and the villages led the entire country in terms of democracy. The democratic selection of candidates for the villagers’ committee prevented manipulation of the selection process by the township or village party committee—​a practice that villagers had bitterly excoriated. Regrettably, villagers’ committee elections could not solve the many problems of village governance. While village democracy and villagers’ autonomy were swiftly and widely implemented, the peasants’ tax and fee burden was also building up rapidly. The democratically elected village cadres seemed not to be genuinely representing peasant interests or state ideology, but rather attempting to profit from their positions. Before the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the elected village cadres had already quickly formed “village interest communities (xiangcun liyi gongtongti 乡村利益共同体),” which sought personal benefits by increasing the peasants’ tax and fee burden. After agricultural taxes and fees were abolished, these elected village cadres lost their enthusiasm for serving as village cadres, since there was nothing to gain from it any more. No one even wanted to come forward to run in the elections. In interest-​intensive areas, vote-​buying in villagers’ committee elections had

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_028

176 Chapter 27 been rampant. with the price for a single vote in some places exceeding 10,000 yuan. Cadres elected this way did their utmost to find ways of profiting after the election. In the end, the state found that elections alone were not enough—​the villages also needed institutional arrangements to match. Villagers’ autonomy was initially in four areas: “democratic elections, democratic decision-​making, democratic supervision, and democratic management.” Major village events could not be decided by just a handful of village cadres but had to be open to discussion. Therefore, under the leadership of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the openness of village affairs was promulgated nationwide; every village had to have a bulletin board and periodically publicize village affairs on it that required public input. The mere openness of village affairs was not enough, since the publicizing of village events could be perfunctory. Thus, the establishment of a village affairs supervision committee in Houchen Village, Wuyi County (武义县后陈村), Zhejiang in 2004 soon attracted national attention. Houchen Village is a suburban village, so the village collective had been heavily compensated for land expropriation by the state. However, no one could say where that money had gone, so the villagers had much to say about it and filed one after another petition with higher-​level governments, as they completely distrusted their cadres. A work team that Wuyi County dispatched to Houchen Village established a village affairs supervision committee comprised mainly by villagers who had filed the petitions. This committee decided that all major expenditures of the village had to have its approval before the money went out. This committee was basically an official version of the earlier village financial management group. However, in Houchen Village, the village affairs’ supervision committee became the third official village management team in addition to the village cadres and villagers’ committees, elected by a village representatives’ conference, and serving three-​year terms. Originally, there were three sets of village-​level organizations:  the well-​ known village Party committee, the villagers’ committee, and the village-​level economic cooperative organizations, which had been the “communes” in the production brigade during the People’s Commune period. However, the small economic scale of ordinary villages, collective ownership of land, and peasants’ contractual management rights on the land left little room for the economic organizations to play a role. Nationwide, in the vast majority of villages, the economic cooperative organizations merged with the villagers’ committees, but in some villages, the village Party secretaries assumed the powers of the economic cooperative organizations. For example, Zhejiang Province stipulates that the village Party secretaries are the legal representatives of their

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village economic cooperative organizations. The two entities that really play a role in village governance are the village Party committees and the villagers’ committees. The establishment of the village affairs’ supervision committee in Houchen Village simply changed the number of village governance entities from two to three, but the procedures for the operation of power became much more complicated. Before, two teams had to cooperate, but now, three had to cooperate. If the three teams were well-​coordinated, the coordination cost would be low, but if not, the cost could be extremely high, since the costs of dispute over trifles would greatly increase. The concept of the village affairs’ supervision committee in Houchen Village was soon promoted to other villages in Zhejiang and other developed coastal areas. Around the same time, various democratic institutions besides elections were established. Two of them were written into No. 1 Central Documents: the “four discussions and two disclosures (siyi lianggongkai 四议两公开)” system of Dengzhou City (河南邓州), Henan, and the Five Conferences Decision-​ making Law (wuyi juecefa 五议决策法), widely promoted in Zhejiang Province, which ensure the openness and fairness of decision-​making through complex procedures designed to prevent corruption among village cadres. In retrospect, the notion that real democratic elections at the grassroots level would guarantee good village governance now seems too naive. Villages in the economically developed coastal region could not achieve “good governance” merely through triennial democratic elections because of newly burgeoning economic interests, and more complex institutions were needed to balance power.

2

Starting in 2014, Ninghai County, Zhejiang formulated 36 articles listing village-​ level powers based on the Five Conferences Decision-​making Law. These set the clearest and most detailed norms in history on villages’ use of power, so as to prevent the abuse of those powers. When I was doing field research in Ninghai during summer break in 2015, I found that Ninghai formulated these 36 articles primarily to curb rampant corruption that had emerged, with rapid economic development, among village cadres, especially those in several towns and townships (subdistricts) surrounding the county seat. Serious corruption among petty officials had become so severe that major incidents would occur if it were not controlled. Ninghai had undergone rapid economic development in the previous decade; as the city had grown rapidly, many construction

178 Chapter 27 projects needed land, and the expropriation of that land and demolition of what was on it involved the reallocation of many, many interests. Urbanization had also changed land used for agricultural production into high-​value construction land. Ninghai’s Taoyuan Subdistrict (桃源街道), which we studied during our field trip, is a key development area where a large number of projects have been in full swing, so in the past decade there has been massive amount of land expropriation and demolition. In order to expropriate agricultural land, carry out demolitions, and relocate villagers, the local government needed the village cadres to mobilize the villagers and to assist in and complete the various tasks of land expropriation, demolition, and resettlement. A system allowing discretionary use of unused budgeted funds (baoganzhi 包干制) was usually adopted to stimulate village cadres’ enthusiasm. For example, if the local government was going to expropriate 200 mu of land, it would budget 30,000 yuan per mu in compensation fees to villagers based on fixtures on the land and then transfer the money to the village. The village cadres would then proceed to calculate the individual payments to village householders. This system was locally called “a bag of spring onions.” Although there are clear standards for compensation for fixtures on the land, there are still many areas that are not clearly defined. For example, how much should a peasant be compensated for trees, when it is obvious that he had rushed to plant them just before land expropriation? The village cadres were thoroughly familiar with the situation in their own villages, so they could still effectively calculate the compensation due to information symmetry. Working within the 30,000 yuan per mu budget, the village cadres eventually spent only 20,000 yuan per mu in compensation for fixtures on the land. In this way, the excess 2 million yuan became the village collective’s money. To lift village cadres’ enthusiasm for land expropriation and resettlement, the local government had intentionally been vague about the allocation of excess funds. Some village cadres simply split it among themselves. It was precisely because they were anticipating the division of the surplus funds and had the authority to obtain the funds that they were extremely enthusiastic about the land expropriation and demolition work. Meanwhile, the costs of land expropriation and resettlement to the local government were also relatively low. If it were not for this excess 2 million yuan, the cadres in all likelihood could have stood on the side of the villagers and demanded far more than 30,000 yuan per mu in compensation for fixtures, as well as various other compensations. The problem is that the cadres’ division of the 2 million yuan-​surplus among themselves was illegal. Some villagers who learned about it reported it to higher

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levels of government, and their suit hit the mark. A good number of Taoyuan Subdistrict’s village cadres were thus sentenced for misappropriation of funds. After land expropriation and demolition comes earth-​moving and construction. In Taoyuan Subdistrict, outside construction teams could not come in to do the earth-​moving, but among the locals, the only people who could be described as being in the right time and the right place with the right connections were the village cadres. All they had to do to reap a hefty profit was to form a construction team from a few randomly selected people and then take on the project. Because village collectives gain income from land expropriation, demolition, and construction work, the issue of how they use this income leaves much room for rent-​seeking. To put it briefly, the benefits that economic development brings, especially those attached to land, greatly boosts the “value” of the village cadres’ positions and intensifies the competition in villagers’ committee elections. Vote-​buying is a natural result. Fiercely contested elections divide villages into two sides, and the struggle between the two sides does not end after the election, since the defeated side will inevitably file a petition and appeal to higher levels of government. Rural governance thus becomes very chaotic. In villages where we conducted field research, there were even murder cases and other violent crimes due to elections, and in several villages, some village heads were behind bars because of economic crimes. Because of these circumstances, Ninghai County decided to supervise village-​level micropowers, and one of the methods was to come up with the list of 36 articles on village-​level powers based on the earlier Five Conferences Decision-​making Law, and clearly state in writing how each line of authority at the village could use its powers. After Ninghai County formulated the “36 articles,” it put special emphasis on publicizing them, so nearly every household received a brochure detailing the “36 articles,” and information on the “36 articles” could be seen in the streets and alleys in a form pleasing to the public. The “36 articles” have played a significant role in regulating village-​level power. The earlier situation, in which village-​level power was used rather chaotically, has undergone a great change for the better. The “36 articles” indeed had a great effect on village governance in Ninghai County.

3

The systems established through the “36 articles,” the Five Conferences Decision-​making Law, the “four discussions and two disclosures,” the “village affairs

180 Chapter 27 supervision committee” and the general opening of village affairs reflect a marked change from the earlier perception that democratic elections equals good village governance. On the one hand, village cadres satisfactory to the masses must be selected, and on the other hand, the elected cadres should be supervised and constrained in order to let village-​level power operate in a regulated manner. The question now is, why does Ninghai need a system as complicated as the one established by the “36 articles” to regulate village power, and does it indeed regulate village-​level power more effectively? One of its rationales relates to the rapid development of Ninghai’s economy, which gave rise to many economic benefits that were not entirely specific, and how these benefits were to be distributed and shared was a matter still in process. It was precisely the immensity of the interests involved and the competition for benefits that required more complex regulation on village-​level power. Meanwhile, because of the competition for benefits, the “36 articles” were being invoked by all parties, which facilitated their implementation. The large number of varied interests in developed regions have also provided a resource base for the implementation of such complex systems. In other words, the fact that complex systems like the one created by the “36 articles” could be produced, implemented, and put into operation in developed areas like Ninghai County has much to do with rapid economic development and the vast tremendous economic benefits that it brings. Conversely, if the “36 articles” were implemented in a rural central western area with fewer collective resources and potential benefits to compete over, they would not be applicable. Such complex systems would be very difficult to activate and implement even if the message banners were hung in the village Party committee office and printed in the brochures sent to peasants. The cost of implementing the complex systems of the “36 articles,” “Village Affairs Supervision Committee,” “four discussions and two disclosures,” and so on in such regions would greatly increase village governance costs. If introduced to such regions, they would only become formalistic, the kind of system that exists only on village walls. In fact, even within Ninghai County, there are obvious local differences in the implementation of the “36 articles.” In Taoyuan Subdistrict, near the county seat, their effect on regulating village-​level power is considerable, but in the more remote villages, they play a smaller role. Although it seems that all of the rural cadres now speak of village governance using the discourse of the “36 articles,” it is only formalistic.

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4

One of the more conspicuous problems among China’s institutional innovations at present is that the new, innovative systems need to be more complex, extendable, and adaptable than the old, in order to cope with proliferating conflicts of interest in areas of rapid economic development, but they are premised on the support of even more resources and interests. Simply transplanting such complex systems in the central western regions would result in formalistic exercises and ineffective wheel-​spinning in their village governance, because these areas lack the basic resources to support the high costs of those systems. The core of complex systems does not lie in their complexity but in the dramatically increased costs of governance they would incur. Think about it: in the past, an issue only required a decision by cadres in the village Party committee and villagers’ committee, but now it need to go through “four discussions and two disclosures” and the Five Conferences Decision-​making Law, so that something once very simple is made incomparably complex. If a village collective has large amounts of resources and fierce competition for benefits, a procedurally complex system can take into account each interested party’s concerns, but if a village collective has few resources, and the competition for benefits is feeble, such complex decision-​making procedures would only increase fuss and bother. They would become perfunctory exercises, and ultimately become empty formalism.

chapter 28

Supervision Mechanisms in the Grassroots Governance of Central Western Villages

1

In January 2016, I travelled to Henan’s Pingqiao District (平桥区), Dengzhou City, Xiangcheng City (襄城市) and Yancheng District (郾城区), in that order, to examine grassroots governance, particularly democratic decision-​making, democratic management, and democratic supervision mechanisms. Dengzhou is the originator of the “four discussions and two disclosures” system, which has become a basic institution in village governance nationwide, especially in the developed coastal region, in the past few years. In Henan, it was promoted even earlier throughout the province, where it has had an important impact on village governance. Another focus of this trip was the Village Affairs Supervision Committees (vasc s). Most villages throughout Henan Province have established vasc s, the third committee after the village Party committee and villagers’ committee, and they have been playing increasingly prominent roles in village decision-​making. A vasc was first established in Houchen Village, Zhejiang Province in 2004, and since then this system has been widely adopted throughout China. During this field trip, we also studied the design of the “sunshine three powers (yangguang sanquan 阳光三权)” system in residential groups, i.e., “duties and responsibilities must be listed, use of power must follow procedure, and outcomes must be transparent.” Of the three, “duties and responsibilities must be listed” is entirely consistent with the list of 36 articles on small-​and micro-​powers in Ninghai, Zhejiang. Whether the system follows the “four discussions and two disclosures,” vasc, or the “sunshine three powers” design, the core idea is to prevent the corruption of small and micro-​scale powers at the village level through more precise, specific institutional means, which entails more complex institutions. The complexity is reflected not only by the complexity of the institutions themselves, but also by various supervisory constraints on power to make the exercise of power more open and transparent. The widespread, rampant corruption among petty rural officials, as well as the kind seen at close hand among the masses, has extremely negative effects on Party work and grassroots governance. More complex grassroots governance systems that can prevent corruption would significantly improve the effectiveness of village governance.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_029

Supervision Mechanisms in the Grassroots Governance

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Villages are China’s most basic organizations, and villagers practice autonomy in governance. Based on the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committees, villages have implemented democracy in four respects: democratic elections, democratic decision-​making, democratic supervision, and democratic management. When the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committees had just gone into effect, the focus of villagers’ autonomy was on democratic elections, which greatly increased the level of democracy in villages and improved village governance. However, the triennial villagers’ committee elections could not solve other problems in village governance, because unconstrained powers will naturally produce corruption. For this reason, the focus was then placed on developing methods of “democratic decision-​making, democratic supervision, and democratic management,” i.e., the “four discussions and two disclosures” method, the vasc s, the listing of village powers, and so on. These were soon promoted and applied throughout China.

2

Dengzhou City in Henan began exploring “four discussions and two disclosures” in 2004. In June 2004, the General Office of the cpc Central Committee and General Office of the State Council issued official documents requiring villages to enhance the openness of village affairs. When Dengzhou City was implementing the spirit of these higher-​level directives, it creatively modified “openness of village affairs” to “four discussions and two disclosures,” to wit: major decisions in village affairs would be (1) proposed by the village Party branch, (2) deliberated by the two villagers’ committees, (3) reviewed and discussed by the village Party assembly, and (4) decided by the villagers’ representative assembly. Furthermore, (1) the decision-​making would be open, and (2) the implementation outcomes would be open (i.e., publicized). For short, this was called the “4+2” measure. It was promoted throughout Dengzhou City in 2005, to Nanyang City (南阳市) in 2008, and to all of Henan Province in 2009. In the same year, “four discussions and two disclosures” attracted nationwide attention, so the following year it was written into the No. 1 Central Document, whereupon it was applied to the rest of the country. In the ten-​plus years that “four discussions and two disclosures” have been implemented, its greatest benefit has been the proceduralization and standardization of decision-​making on major village affairs. On the “4+2” basis, Dengzhou City achieved good results by first implementing “first propose, second deliberate, and third approve” (yi shen er ti san tongguo 一提二审三通过) in its villagers’ groups. Villagers’ group affairs, compared with village-​level

184 Chapter 28 affairs, are more specific and minor. Villagers’ groups often lack standardized organizational systems, so when Dengzhou City first promoted “4+2,” it did so by implementing its simplified version, “first propose, second discuss, and third approve” to those villagers’ groups. The task of “first propose” falls on the council comprising the villagers’ group leader, village cadres, Party members, and villagers’ representatives to the villagers’ group. “Second deliberate” would entail the submission of the proposal to the village Party committee and villagers’ committee for deliberation. “Third approve” requires that the proposal be approved by the assembly of villagers’ representatives and then made known to the public. “First propose, second deliberate, and third approve” has been particularly important in suburban villages in Dengzhou City, which have had land acquisition and demolition projects, because the villagers’ groups are the main collective landowning entities. Peasants belonging to the same villagers’ group have the same rights to land revenue, and the same villagers’ group is often the main geographical unit in their production, daily lives, and public affairs. Dengzhou City’s greatest difficulty in implementing “4+2” at the village level was in convening meetings, because most Party members and villages’ representatives had gone to the cities to work. Very often, the Party members and village representatives showed up at different times, or not enough people showed up to make a quorum. Dengzhou City therefore simplified the “4+2” procedure by combining some procedures for matters that were not so significant. Commonly this was done by combining the “proposal by the village Party committee” with the “discussion by the village Party committee and villagers’ committee,” and by combining the “deliberation by the Party members’ meeting” with the “resolution by the villagers’ representatives’ conference.” The vast majority of villages in Dengzhou City have now simplified the “4+2” procedure. The explanation from the people in Dengzhou City is that “four discussions and two disclosures” is both a procedure and a concept. When “4+2” was first implemented, procedure was especially important. Once the village cadres and villagers had come to a decision on a significant village affair that had to follow “4+2,” the village cadres dared not make arbitrary decisions, and villagers could be forthright about protecting their rights and interests. After more than ten years of practice, villages in Dengzhou City have grown to depend on “4+2” to solve all significant, difficult, and troublesome village matters. Not using it is not acceptable to the masses. One person in Dengzhou City concluded that the promotion of “4+2” had gone through four stages: promotion, standardization, flexible adjustment, and “scientific use” (systematicization). Through long-​term practice, “4+2” in grassroots governance in Dengzhou City has altered people’s concepts on negotiation and compromise and

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led to the formation of concepts coming from the masses and to the masses. It plays an especially significant role in difficult village affairs where consensus is lacking. The “4+2” procedure is also the processes of communicating with the masses, propagandizing the village organization’s proposals, unifying people’s thinking, and reaching consensus. Major decisions made this way are easily implemented. The more difficult and significant a matter is, the more the procedure should be followed. The more a consensus is held on a matter, the simpler the procedure becomes. People in Dengzhou City also said that key to the “4+2” procedure are patience and care. Whether the procedure is “4+2,” “8+2,” or “10+2,” a core technique is use of the “three working methods (sanzi gongzuofa 三子工作法),” literally the “three zi working methods,” which are face, liquor, and lips (mianpizi, jiupingzi, zuipizi 面皮子、酒瓶子、嘴皮子). Before “4+2,” sufficient background work must be done on any major or difficult matter; one must ensure that the villagers have reached consensus and the opposing minority has been persuaded. When calling a Party members’ assembly or village representatives’ assembly, one must absolutely not force passage of a decision or demand that the minority opposition obey the majority in favor. A decision has to have 100 percent support, because even a single person in opposition can make it difficult to carry out an important decision. Therefore, the people in Dengzhou said that regardless of the matter being decided, the key is patient and careful mass work, so that a decision “comes from the masses and goes to the masses.” The “4+2” procedure acts as a mobilizer so that consensus is finally achieved.

3

Xiangcheng County focused on establishing vasc s. Xiangcheng has 441 villagers’ committees and seven residents’ committees, so it had to establish 448 vasc s in all. County regulations stipulate that the vasc director and two vasc members be elected by the assembly of villagers’ representatives, and that one vasc member must be a Party member. Among the 448 vasc s, around 200 of the directors are concurrently village cadres, primarily the village Party deputy secretaries. Committee members, especially the directors, are highly respected people; quite often the jobs go to the “five veterans (wulao 五老)”: veteran Party members, cadres, teachers, workers, or soldiers. According to the regulations, the vasc must participate in all significant decision making of the village, and village financial expenditures must be endorsed by the vasc before it can be disbursed.

186 Chapter 28 One important task of Xiangcheng County is to include the vasc s in discipline, inspection, and supervision work. The Town Commission for Discipline Inspection convenes monthly meetings with all of the vasc directors, check their work, exchange experiences, communicate the thinking of higher levels of government, and conduct training. The Commission forms the strong backing for the vasc s. One cadre in Xiangcheng County’s Commission for Discipline Inspection said that vasc s cannot be absent or overstep their authority, meaning that vasc s cannot intervene in political struggles in their villages without a reason for doing so, which further complicates the exercise of village power and village decision-​making. vasc s cannot be absent, because they are expected to perform a good supervisory job, “to clarify things to people and prove cadres innocent.” Of course, not all vasc s in Xiangcheng County have played their roles in village affairs supervision, but in form at least they must participate in all significant village decisions and endorse all village expenditures. Some careful and responsible vasc directors, like the 79-​year-​old Wang Fuhai (王福海), a retired experienced teacher who is the vasc director in Mafangying Village (马房营村), has strictly monitored every village expenditure; the publication of the quarterly village financial report must also have his signature. In July 2015, Wang Fuhai’s wife fell ill, so he had to look after his wife in a city hospital. When the villagers’ committee had to submit its financial statement to the township, the village Party secretary and village head had to go to the city hospital with all the receipts to look for Wang Fuhai to get his endorsement. The ever-​careful Wang found a receipt of 100 yuan for dining, so based on the rule against treating people to dinner at the village level, Wang Fuhai rejected the reimbursement and he removed the receipt. The village Party secretary and village head explained that the receipt came from an occasion when Party members of the village had done a full day of voluntary work, so they were treated to a bowl of noodles, but Wang still rejected reimbursement and said that it was reasonable, but illegal. In the end, the village Party secretary had to foot the bill. Because vasc personnel are known for being careful and responsible, without yielding to compromise, the vasc s have gained the villagers’ trust. vasc s’ full participation in the whole process of major village affairs, as well as their strict supervision of village finances, have been effective in “clarifying things to people and proving cadres innocent.” When village affairs are transparent, the masses will have no complaints, the cadre’s prestige will be enhanced, and he or she will have the ear of the villagers. The vasc s have played a role in enhancing village cadres’ standing with villagers and improved the mobilization capability of villagers’ groups. The vasc s, comprised of highly respected, just,

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and stern “five veterans” who volunteer their services and proactively supervise village affairs and finance, have ensured the effective use of village resources and greatly increased village mobilization capability. With effective village affairs supervision, top-​down financial resources should become public resources, to be kept in the village collective instead of allocated to peasant households via the all-​purpose card. The more collective resources there are, the more necessary and useful the vasc s become, and the more villagers will care for and participate in village affairs, which will rejuvenate village governance. Strengthened village affairs supervision and replenished village resources will revitalize village governance; the village collective will have also better capacity for responding to peasants’ demands for improved production and living conditions.

4

Yancheng District in Luohe City has implemented the “sunshine three powers” system, emphasizing the need for villagers’ groups to “list the powers of each position, set procedures for the use of power, and ensure the transparency of outcomes (zhiquan qingdanhua, yongquan chengxuhua, jieguo touminghua 职权清单化、用权程序化、结果透明化).” Within a short timeframe, the system had made big strides in operation and began to play a practical role. Yancheng District in particular emphasized fundamental work, one of which was making all village affairs open. The “Yancheng Sunshine (郾城阳光)” website was established to disclose all village-​related public information online in a timely manner. Putting all village affairs under the sunshine effectively narrowed the room for cadre corruption, enhanced the Party organization’s prestige, and closed the gap between cadres and the masses. Most districts in Yancheng have remained ordinary rural areas with the usual characteristics of villages in the central western region. In the grassroots governance of Yancheng District, there are four types of things that usually produce conflicts between the cadres and the masses and become the focus of petitions: (1) the allocation of quotas under the minimum livelihood guarantee (mlg) system; (2) allocation of funds for the reconstruction of dilapidated housing; (3) allocation of hardship relief funds, and (4) allocation of opportunities to join the Party. Basically, the fundamental problem is in the top-​down allocation and use of financial resources. In general, there is a lack of complete statistical data on peasants’ household income in the central western region, but the expenditure of higher-​level governments on mlg, hardship relief, and

188 Chapter 28 dilapidated housing reconstruction is relatively large. Hence the effective allocation of these resources is vitally important in village governance. Before the implementation of “sunshine three powers,” village cadres, especially the village Party secretaries, had relatively large powers to decide how resources were allocated in Yancheng District. Compensation for village cadres was comparatively low, and there was once a case in which village cadres used the mlg funds to subsidize themselves. When more funds were being transferred to the countryside from above, it was natural for village cadres to favor their relatives and friends. Since village cadres had the power to allocate resources, every person hoped they would take care of his or her own interests first, so that in the end, the village cadres could only satisfy a few and offend the many. One village Party secretary said that in 2014, when his village received five quotas for dilapidated house reconstruction, everybody was calling him for one, to the point that he could not get any sleep. When “sunshine three powers” was implemented throughout the District in 2015, village cadres no longer could decide such things on their own, so calling the village Party secretary day and night no longer had any use, and he could finally get a good night’s sleep. “Sunshine three powers” set rules and procedures for the use of power by villagers’ groups, so that cadres no longer dared to abuse power, since doing so was no longer easy. Both the people who were close to the cadres themselves and those in opposition to them could no longer be granted preferential treatment in mlg evaluation and other matters; this new arrangement relieved village cadres as it elevated their standing. Therefore, while it may have seemed at first that following procedure lowered efficiency, in fact it greatly enhanced efficiency and improved cadre-​villager relations. Statistics of the Yancheng District Commission for Discipline Inspection show that the number of petitions by peasants dropped by 70 percent in 2015. Clearly this was due to the implementation of “sunshine three powers” and its positive effects.

5

Undoubtedly, the innovations in grassroots governance in Dengzhou, Xiangcheng, and Yancheng have been particularly meaningful as they meet prevailing demands. Great progress has been made in terms of decision-​making, management, and supervision of village affairs, substantially raising the level of effectiveness of village governance. The “list of 36 articles on village-​level power” in Ninghai, Zhejiang that I studied during the 2015 field trip was completely identical to the lists of village power in Yancheng District, Luohe. Meanwhile, vasc s originated in Houchen Village, Wuyi County, Zhejiang, where in 2006,

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not long after Houchen Village established its vasc, I conducted field research for half a month. The “four discussions and two disclosures” introduced by Dengzhou has been widely implemented in Zhejiang Province and in Shanghai. These innovations in grassroots governance and their popularization have greatly improved the effectiveness of village governance nationwide. However, the foundations of grassroots governance systems vary greatly between central western rural areas like Henan Province and developed eastern coastal areas like Shanghai and Zhejiang Province. Although the central western region also has its wealthy villages, and suburban areas and the well-​developed coastal region have their ordinary agricultural villages, on the whole, villages in the latter region have developed economies with dense interests, but not so the villages of the central western region, which have lost people, capital, and resources from urbanization. Hence, the economic foundation of the grassroots governance systems in these regions differ markedly. Our investigation has shown that the foremost aim of innovation in grassroots governance systems in central western region, of which Henan is representative, is to fairly allocate resources being transferred from the state, such as the quotas for mlg and dilapidated house reconstruction, while the foremost aim of innovation in the developed eastern coastal areas is to resolve issues on resource allocation within villages. Houchen Village, Zhejiang created the vasc as a result of numerous issues regarding compensation allotment that arose when the Wuyi County government was expropriating land from Houchen; these issues attracted villagers’ attention and touched off complex factional struggles among them. Finally, the vasc was established in order to absorb the strength of the opposition and ensure open and fair allocation of public resources in the village. However, one possible outcome of establishing a vasc like this was that the complex game among the village Party committee, villagers’ committee, and vasc might result in a power deadlock. For this reason, when Zhejiang promotes Houchen’s experiences with vasc to the rest of the province, it usually requires that the vasc director be a Party member, or even a village Party committee member. Henan Province also requires that the vasc s in their work not “be absent or overstep their authority.” The “four discussions and two disclosures” and the “listing of village-​level powers” have made procedures and standards mandatory, formalizing the whole process of the exercise of power. They have made the exercise of power at the village level complicated. Therefore, I regard the “four discussions and two disclosures” and the “listing of village powers” as complex systems. When villages have plenty of resources, whether top-​down or internal, complicated systems can ensure that those resources are allocated in an open, transparent, and fair manner. Complex systems that follow procedures prevent

190 Chapter 28 abuses of village power and close the cadre-​masses gap, because when resources are allotted, the proceduralized use of power and the use of voting to persuade the minority to heed the majority are feasible and reasonable. By contrast, the villages of the central western region, like those in Henan, have fewer public resources, so the focus of their complex systems ensure the fair allocation of top-​down transferred resources. Therefore, village governance innovations in Henan’s Dengzhou, Xiangcheng, and Yancheng, almost without exception, aim to deal with the allocation of top-​down transfer resources such as quotas of mlg, hardship relief funds, and dilapidated housing reconstruction funds. Nevertheless, the focus of the complicated institutional arrangements for most central western agricultural areas differs from those of the developed eastern coastal region. In the developed coastal region, the focus of their complex systems is the fair allocation of resources, while the complex systems in the central western region are expected to allocate resources and mobilize people’s participation. If mobilizing the masses in the process of resource allocation were impossible, such resource allocation would at most result in no incidents or petitions, but it would also be impossible to improve the mobilization ability of village-​level organizations in the process of resource allocation and thereby enable villagers to take the initiative to participate in improving their own production and living environment.

6

Because of the density of interests in the villages of the developed coastal areas, all of the various kinds of powers within villages are mobilized in the competition for profits. Complex institutions, however, have guaranteed that this competition remains orderly, and they have created a checks and balances system that ensures a certain level of fairness and justice. In fact, villages’ substantial public resources and interest density constantly draw upon these complex institutions, and as a consequence, regulations, which had once only existed as messages posted on a wall, are now transformed into living practices. In the central western agricultural areas where villages lack public resources and dense interests, complex institutions are chiefly for allocating limited top-​ down resources, but when such complex institutions cannot draw upon various strong forces, they easily end up as toothless institutions. The institutional innovations in grassroots governance in Henan’s Dengzhou, Xiangcheng and Yancheng had first been propelled by mandatory requirements to strictly follow the institutions’ procedures. However, a one-​sided emphasis on standards and procedures can reduce the effectiveness and vitality of village governance.

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With the impetus generated by top-​down resource allocation, the realization of complex village institutions is possible; people eventually form consensus on them, at which point it becomes very important for them to be scientific, flexible, and simplified. Indeed, the economic foundation of institutional practices is an interesting topic.

chapter 29

The Secret of Building Happy Villages

1

In Zigui County, Hupei, I investigated the building of Happy Villages. I went to villages in several townships and towns and felt that the Happy Villages, in their construction and design, were quite successful, and that their experiences deserve to be summarized. The construction of the Happy Village projects in Zigui involved establishing village councils with “two chairs and eight members.” Happy Village building in Zigui County was launched in 2012. Around the time agricultural taxes and fees were abolished, many villages and villagers’ groups throughout the country were being combined and integrated. Zigui followed suit, which also reduced the number of village cadres. After the merging of villagers’ groups, however, the scope of a villagers’ group was far greater than that of a production team during the People’s Commune era, or that of an acquaintance society, so that added to the difficulty of getting various tasks done. Thanks to the abolition of agricultural taxes, village work became easier. Hubei Province even abolished the posts of most of its villagers’ group leaders and had their duties taken over by the village cadres. Zigui County did not get rid of the villagers’ group leaders, but called the larger, merged villagers’ groups “communities (shequ 社区),” because this name coincides with the idea of community building advocated by the central government, and it would attract attention from relevant parties. The biggest problem with rural community building in Zigui after the mergers was the enlarged scope of villagers’ groups, because it dampened efforts towards effective building and management. A study done by the county Party committee and government showed that the best units for rural community-​ building were the earlier villagers’ groups before the integration, or more precisely, the production teams from the People’s Commune era. The villagers’ group was not only part of an acquaintance society, but also the most basic unit of common production and allocation. To this day, it is still the collective representative of land ownership and the basic unit for peasants’ contracted land. It is difficult to split villages after they have merged, but splitting their respective villagers’ groups would be easy, because the only thing that changed after merging was their names; their residential structures, land property structures, infrastructure facilities, and social relationships remain unchanged. Therefore,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_030

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the county Party committee and county government require that rural community building should be based on the original villagers’ groups, to prevent the community building efforts from becoming perfunctory exercises. Because the scope of a “community” may be large or small, the county Party committee and government changed the earlier “community building (shequ jianshe 社区建设)” to “village building (cunluo jianshe 村落建设),” with “village” here referring to something on the scale of the former production teams and villagers’ groups. Zigui County started the pilot for the Happy Village building program in May 2012, and by the end of 2012, the initiative was implemented throughout the county. The key to the building of Happy Villages in Zigui County was the establishment of village councils consisting of “one chair and eight members (yi zhang ba yuan 一长八员),” with the eight members’ positions based on their respective duties in propaganda, coordination, rights representation, mediation, environment protection, support and assistance, economics, and management and supervision. During the 2014 reelection, the county also rearranged the village councils to “two chairs and eight members” by adding the position of “village Party group leader.” In practice, at the villagers’ group level, because so many young people have gone out to work, the “two chairmen and eight members” consist mostly of people in their sixties—​those who lack the opportunity to go out to work or do business in the cities but have few family burdens. Even so, it is hard to find ten people to fill all the positions, and in practice, the “two chairs and eight members” often have to multitask. Moreover, the villagers cannot really distinguish among them or show much concern about it, and cadres usually cannot tell who is doing what. Even the village heads cannot distinguish among the members. Usually, the “two chairs and eight members” consist of only three or four people, with the chair as organizer and the rest as members of the council. Therefore, the council becomes more of a committee instead of an administrative department with a clear division of labor. It becomes a democratic deliberative body, with the chair as organizer and the other members having equal decision-​making rights. The chair of one council said that, because the council is like a committee, the “two chairs and eight members” should include the representatives of various interest groups within the village, particularly those from the opposition. The “two chairs and eight members” are nominated and elected at villagers’ meetings, which have made the councils’ decision-​ making very representative and authoritative. Generally speaking, matters at the villagers’ group level are small and trivial, and the elected council members are usually people who are active and have more free time. A conspicuous pattern is that in some villages, almost all of the elected council chairs have

194 Chapter 29 earlier been the emcees of weddings and funerals (the locals call a wedding emcee zhike 知客, and a funeral emcee duban 督办), and even if among the chairs there are people who have never been an emcee before, then as soon as they become one, they are naturally asked to participate in weddings and funerals. With this status, they boost the council’s mobilizing and convincing capabilities. Compared with these council directors, the former villagers’ group leaders only played the role of relaying information between superiors and subordinates; they usually lacked the capability of mobilizing the masses. Of course, having a villagers’ group leader is better than none at all, just for their communication role (around 2004, the post in most places in the country had been abolished or assumed concurrently by other village cadres in rural reforms). A villagers’ group leader cannot arbitrarily decide on important issues in the villagers’ group, because he or she is just one private person, so a villagers’ meeting must be held. The meeting may not be able to continue if there is objection to the speech of the villagers’ group leader, but the situation is different if there is a village council with more than one person that can organize meetings to discuss significant affairs and reach consensus among themselves before the villagers’ meeting is held. If an objection is then raised, other council members can help to explain the matter, so that the meeting can continue; it becomes easier to unify villagers’ opinions. Moreover, when the council fails in a specific task, other members of the council can visit villagers and try to persuade them again, since there will always be someone who can do communication work. Since the “two chairs and eight members” of the council have formal titles and are elected by villagers, any one of them has the status to visit villagers and do this kind of persuasion work. With a council, village cadres can easily arrange for it to handle various tasks. If the council chair resigns, the village Party secretary can say, “Anyway, I wasn’t the one who let you be chair,” which contains a refusal but is also mixed with higher expectations and praise. Everyone in the village really attaches importance to the reputation that comes from being elected by the masses. The village Party secretary can rely on the council chair, and it becomes much easier to implement policies through the council in order to deal with various problems within a villagers’ group. Of course, there are also examples in which village council members have formed consensus on safeguarding legal rights and then called a villagers’ assembly to reach a decision on the issue. Usually, safeguarding rights in this way will not be unreasonable or unmanageable, and it will be based on sufficient grounds. Such activity also provides a good information channel between superiors and subordinates.

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The village councils’ greatest roles are representing villagers’ interests and forming consensus on those interests. Since a villagers’ group is a local community sharing the same living and production spaces, the people within it are bound to form relationships or develop friction, show free-​rider behavior, even form nail households or deadlocks due to conflicts of interest. However, elected, strongly representative village councils whose members are actively involved in villagers’ agricultural production and everyday lives and play key roles in weddings and funerals can organize villagers and make decisions based on the common interests of the whole villagers’ group. Under this public interest, any free-​rider can be constrained and criticized. This process is manifested in the most concentrated, typical way when various national projects are implemented in the village, and the village council can play its roles. In places where village councils cannot play their roles, national projects are usually carried out by contractors’ teams, and even though these projects—​ small-​scale water projects, village road projects, land consolidation projects, and so on—​are intended to benefit agriculture and peasants, their realization usually requires the teams to occupy peasants’ land, which damages peasants’ seedlings, dismantle peasants’ pigsties, and so on—​and for all of this the peasants must be compensated. Generally, the compensation is still inadequate, and the more ruthless among the peasants become “nail households,” demanding compensation above the standard. In any case, the state and the project teams are all outsiders and public organizations, so these “nail households” feel that they lose out if they do not somehow wrest more benefits out of them. They then block the project teams from doing construction work, while other villagers stand around and watch. If the “nail households” manage to get more compensation, then the other villagers follow suit. If the “nail households” enter into conflict with the project team, the other villagers take the nail households’ side to protect their fellow villagers, thus leaving the project in limbo. Once the unreasonable demands of a “nail household” are met, hundreds or thousands of other “nail households” emerge. Ultimately, the more beneficial national projects there are, the more “nail households” appear. Good things are not done well or cannot be done. At present, this is the kind of predicament that has appeared in many places. Since Zigui County established village councils, they have gotten involved in the realization of various agriculture-​related projects. They start by organizing villagers’ meetings, where the compensation for things like seedling loss or damage, land expropriation, and so on are discussed and decisions are made. For minor losses, villagers are usually persuaded not to be overly perturbed, since everyone else in the village understands the situation and does not mind. For example, if the village council has already arrived at a consensus decision,

196 Chapter 29 and a project occupies a bit of land, causing a little damage to a peasant’s seedlings, the loss is obvious, but the peasant will not mind so much, because he regards it as a contribution to the collective. This preempts the emergence of nail households demanding extravagant amounts of compensation. The project then goes smoothly, and the protection of villagers’ interests is further ensured. The village councils played a large role not only in the implementation of agriculture-​related projects but also in projects relating to the rural hygienic environment. Poor rural hygiene, especially the wanton dumping of garbage, is a chronic problem in villages throughout the country. By convening villagers’ group meetings via village councils, Zigui County formed a villagers’ consensus on their willingness to maintain a clean, hygienic environment. Then work was implemented in stages by contracted households, and the village council conducted periodic checks under the supervision of village cadres, so this project went smoothly. It is even easily sustainable. In some villages, the village councils have met and decided to send out volunteers each year on work to improve the village environment, with good results, so that the overall village hygienic environment has improved, to the benefit of villagers. One cadre concluded that the mobilization of the masses by the village councils, which involves getting the masses to participate in the process of improving the conditions of their production and everyday lives, has produced a vast change in comparison to the previous approach, in which such projects depended entirely on higher levels of government: If the masses don’t participate or put their sweat and blood into it, the masses don’t care. In projects done by higher-​ups, the masses can seize any opportunity whatsoever to demand sky-​high prices. Then if the project is damaged, no one feels sorry or takes the initiative to repair it, because no one has participated—​they were all waiting for the higher-​ups to act. But as soon as the masses participate in a project, if they build a road themselves, only then will they feel sorry, only then will they consider it their own business—​and they won’t consider it just the higher-​ups’ business any more.

2

Two internal factors have enabled village councils to play an important role in the building of Happy Villages: (1) middle-​aged and elderly villagers with fewer financial burdens who can become one of the “two chairmen and eight members,” and (2) the committee system. An external factor is the large quantity

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of state resources being allocated for rural projects. We will briefly discuss the internal factors. The villagers’ group level deals with mostly miscellaneous affairs. It is China’s most fundamental level of China’s administrative system, just as capillaries are in the circulatory system, so the kind of governance they exercise is “micro-​governance (weizhili 微治理),” characterized by its unique, irregular, yet comprehensive nature; all of the conflicts it deals with are small, tangled, and inseparable, unlikely to be resolved through the exercise of official power, let alone the hierarchies of the bureaucratic system, with its fine division of labor. The people with the ability to cope with these things are those highly respected middle-​aged and elderly villagers who have a lot of time to spare. Their children are married, and they do not need to go out to work in the cities. They have fewer family burdens, are still in good health, and often have experience presiding at various events, especially weddings and funerals. They are passionate and capable and have some local standing. They take villagers’ comments seriously and hope to “do a little something in their old age” for their fellow villagers as an expression of their own values. Such responsible middle-​aged and elderly people can be found everywhere. They may not have high prestige and strong abilities, but they have clear minds and a capacity for work. Villagers select these warm-​hearted people who interact with them every day to join the village council, which makes the council more broadly representative and more dynamic, at low cost. These are precisely the kind of people who can satisfy the requirements of basic, capillary-​like grassroots micro-​governance. Their roles are similar to that played by retired women in subdistrict governance in the cities. In current grassroots governance, official power or village elites’ power has often been emphasized, but at the expense of the roles played by ordinary elderly villagers who have few burdens and wish to be meaningfully occupied. These roles are often realized through nonstandard, informal systems. For this reason, the village councils of Zigui County are filled with people in their sixties. For the councils to do well, the villagers will not be electing young, strong villagers, because younger people have heavier family burdens, have to venture outside their villages to work, and take care of children and aged parents. The villagers put special emphasis on people in their sixties to enter the councils. The “two chairs and eight members” of the village council do not have any bureaucratic division of labor. It may seem that Zigui, in designing these village councils, has clearly spelled out how labor should be divided among the “two chairs and eight members,” and some rule-​abiding village councils even carefully record the minutes of meetings and prepare meeting summaries. The

198 Chapter 29 problem is that clear division of labor, standardized records, taking votes in meetings, and preparing summaries are typical of a bureaucracy that can become an efficient governance system only when applied to routine matters, whereas village affairs are often nonstandard, wide-​ranging, vague, and scattered, so that village governance cannot be standardized to precision or made to use complex institutional arrangements. Standardized, complex systems are certain to result in a lack of flexibility and passion; it is impossible to use them and achieve low-​cost governance. The village council, as a committee, however, is a low-​cost, mobilized-​type, unstandardized, simple system without specific division of labor, and it has ensured the successful building of Happy Villages in Zigui. In that sense, the success of the village councils of Zigui County depends on the use of elderly villagers with free time and “fewer family burdens,” and the use of low-​cost, mobilized committees. At present, the village councils of Zigui seem to be showing signs of becoming standardized and bureaucratic. If so, then Zigui has misinterpreted why its experience establishing these village councils has been successful.

chapter 30

The Necessity of Low-​Cost Grassroots Governance

1

During my December 2015 investigation on the effectiveness of the establishment of Happy Villages in Zigui County, Hubei Province, I found that the key to their effectiveness was the establishment of village councils made up of “two chairs and eight members,” since these councils could respond to peasants’ demands, implement tasks from higher-​level government (especially with regard to the realization of various higher-​level construction projects), and developing village autonomy. While the two chairs were the core of these councils, the eight members could in reality be three or four people multitasking across concurrent positions in the council. Most of these members were volunteers who had the self-​motivation to work for the village and to do the job well. However, our study also found that Zigui County, dangerously misinterpreting its success, was also attempting to institutionalize “two chairs and eight members” by making it more high-​standard, more regulated and hierarchical, for achieving more formalized grassroots governance. For instance, the higher-​ ups are now demanding that the village councils document the content of each meeting, and that every decision they make receive the signed endorsement of villagers participating in the meeting. They are emphasizing the division of labor among the “two chairs and eight members,” demanding that young, strong villagers take the chairs’ positions in the village council, and that the village council must compile statistical reports on village conditions for higher-​level governments. Then the work of the village council would be included in cross-​ evaluations and rankings and duly rewarded, based on the appraisal, and so on and so forth. If this were to happen, the village councils, which are mainly comprised of the people who preside at weddings and funerals, would no longer be able to bear the additional responsibilities, meaning that Zigui’s efforts to build Happy Villages with village councils supported by the strength of rural society might not be sustainable. Our investigation showed that the effectiveness of the village councils in Zigui was due to effective mobilization of villages in forming consensus of interests via enhanced autonomy at the villagers’ group level, and to the fact that most council members were esteemed villagers in their sixties, especially the people who presided at weddings and funerals, who were enthusiastic about contributing to public affairs without pay. The “two chairs and eight members”

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_031 .

200 Chapter 30 model has provided a natural channel for these villagers and nongovernmental organizations to participate in village building and governance, supplemented by project funds and resources from higher levels of government. These have paved the way for effective village building. However, the problem now is that most villages in China (apart from a small number in the developed eastern coastal region), especially central and western villages like the ones in Zigui County, a mountainous area, are in decline. People, capital, and resources are flowing away from the villages to the cities—​ an inexorable trend, and the result of modernization. Within this context of rural decline, village building in general can only aim for the baseline. On the whole, village grassroots affairs are highly shared, miscellaneous, seasonal, occasional, non-​routine, and haphazard, so that bureaucratic systems have difficulty dealing with them. Bureaucratic systems are best at handling highly mundane, recurrent affairs and things based on fine division of labor; they are ill-​suited for the grassroots, especially at the villagers’ group level. The key to the success of the establishment of Happy Villages in Zigui was the form of the village council, a highly mobilized, informal, low-​cost organization with a lot of flexibility. Once the village council becomes regulated, standardized, and bureaucratic, it will become clumsy and unable to deal flexibly with the ever-​changing affairs of grassroots governance.

2

Nationwide, especially in the central and western regions, at the villagers’ group level, and even the administrative village level, economic interests are relatively sparse, affairs irregular, and resources few. Precisely for this reason, village cadres traditionally are not official cadres but peasants who work as cadres part-​time with no fixed salary, just compensation for lost work on their farms. The fact that village cadres must continue to work productively indicates that having a formal income source is necessary for them. Generally, village cadres do farm work and act as village cadres at the same time; they cannot leave their positions and go to the cities to work or to do business at whim. There is no need for them to sit in the village office all day every day, because it would be pointless, and there are seasons when they can become very busy with their farm work. Furthermore, village affairs are very occasional and may require rapid response. For instance, responding to a quarrel or fight between a couple in the middle of the night cannot be delayed until the next morning. Miscellaneous matters can occur any time in the village;

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they would make bureaucratized grassroots governance difficult. It would not be a good idea to adopt a bureaucratic system and make village cadres work regular hours in the office to deal with such grassroots affairs. Normally, with village cadres who work concurrently on farms or run their own businesses, if something happens in the village, or if villagers seek him out, or if there is core task that has to be done, they put aside their own work and handle the problem. The village cadres rightfully get compensated for the work loss. Meanwhile, they cannot leave their villages to go to the cities to work or run businesses, because if something happens and they cannot be found, even a small incident can become a big one if not handled in a timely manner. “Little things don’t leave the village (xiaoshi buchucun 小事不出村)” is an important basis for keeping order in a big country like China. The problem now is that village cadres, even those in their prime, who must stay in the village and farm their own contracted land, earn much less than those who work in cities. Their income plus the compensation for work-​loss on the farm is generally far lower than the income of those who work in the cities. Ordinary peasant households, meanwhile, will often have their parents’ farming income plus the income of children who have gone off to work in cities. This makes their annual income much higher than that earned by village cadres. As a result, village cadres’ annual incomes may be the lowest in the village. The result is that, being the poorest people in the village, they cannot really speak their opinions, settle issues, and handle people. Of course, it becomes very difficult for them to do their jobs well. Because the work-​loss compensation is too low, many village cadres do not intend to continue their service. It is not because the work is too much to handle and they demand higher wages—​it is because as cadres they can no longer go and work in the cities. It would seem that the only way to keep village cadres on the job is by increasing their remuneration. Hence, Hubei Province decided to increase the salaries of village cadres, chiefly the village Party secretaries and village heads. The provincial Party committee and provincial government stipulated that the main village cadres should have the same pay as town and township deputy cadres. Specifically, before the raise, the village heads and Party secretaries were generally being paid less than 10,000 yuan per year in work-​loss compensation, but now the figure is nearly 40,000 yuan per year. During my visit to Zigui County in December 2015, the county Party committee and county government were about to increase the pay of village cadres according to directives from the provincial Party committee and provincial government. Zigui had also considered raising the salaries of other village cadres as well. The original plan was to raise the pay of the deputy village cadres to approximately 70 to 80 percent of the pay for the

202 Chapter 30 main village cadres. But even for a small county like Zigui, increasing the salaries of all of its village cadres would incur a cost of over ten million yuan per year, when its annual revenue amounted to only several hundred million yuan. Raising the income of village cadres is not only for retaining them, but also for building a stronger, more formal grassroots organization. Currently, villagers’ group-​building in Hubei is manifested in three ways: (1) regular office hours, because once village cadres are salaried, they must be in the office; (2) making it possible for peasants to get things done without having to leave the village, through the establishment of village affairs buildings where village cadres can provide various services for peasants; (3) the formalization of village affairs, particularly in preparing meeting minutes and following regulated decision-​making procedures. To this end, the various complex rules and systems are printed out and displayed on the walls. The “four discussions and two disclosures” system invented by Dengzhou, Henan has become the basic institutional mode. As a result, the village cadre team, which formerly consisted mainly of part-​ time cadres, has gradually been removed from production work to become full-​time, formal staff. The problem now is that rural affairs are thin and irregular. Resources are scarce, and many things need to be handled with recourse to private authority, rather than through the formal bureaucratic system. This may make it difficult for the new formal villagers’ groups to deal with irregular, miscellaneous village affairs. The full-​time village cadre teams are now becoming so specialized that they are incapable of doing other things. This amounts to a conflict with the original idea of grassroots governance which is high mobile, highly flexible, and implemented with elections and village autonomy. The new formal village-​level organization rides above villagers and their trivial affairs. The irregularity, seasonality, generality, sparseness of events, and sparseness of interests in grassroots governance make it especially suitable for the mass mobilization line, not the bureaucratic system. As discussed earlier, the bureaucratic system works best with large amounts of regular matters that need efficient response based on the division of labor. At the town and township level and higher, conditions warrant a bureaucratic system, and the higher the administrative department, the greater the need for a bureaucratic system to deal with large numbers of more specialized matters. The question now is whether a bureaucratic system is needed at the village level, considering that the villages are experiencing an outflow of people, capital, and resources, and their governments need only to provide the bare minimum in governance. Of course, if they were to depend only on the work-​loss compensation, the income of village cadres today would be entirely inadequate for their basic

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survival in their villages, and village cadres who cannot work in cities or have other income except from farming their own contracted farmlands cannot remain as village cadres. However, the position of village cadre is not so highly technical that only a select few can handle it. In fact, there are still a large number of “middle peasants” whose main incomes are earned within the village and yet are comparable to urban incomes, for instance, by merging the farmland of peasants who have left for the cities and engaging in moderate-​scale farming, selling and dealing in agricultural materials, becoming agricultural brokers, agricultural machinery providers, small workshop owners, and so on. These middle peasants are best suited for becoming village cadres, since they can obtain income from the village and can work concurrently as part-​time village cadres and in agricultural production. Being a village cadre would not affect their income, and they have the willingness and ability to become one. In fact, in rural China today, virtually all of the village cadre teams are becoming “middle peasants,” especially those who are agricultural asset brokers. As a result, the earlier possibility that the village cadres may become impoverished and marginalized has never come to pass. Of course, the few village cadres who were unsuccessful making themselves middle peasants will sooner or later lose their posts. This is part of the natural turnover among village cadres, and there is no reason to be alarmed about it.

3

In most of China’s rapidly depopulating rural areas, the goal of rural construction is not to build a “strong, rich, and beautiful” countryside, but to maintain the basic order of agricultural production and peasant life. It is baseline governance. In this kind of governance, the miscellaneous quality, irregularity, seasonality, occasional quality, and generality of grass-​roots government are such that it needs to be flexible, in constant and close interaction with society, and low-​cost, as it works toward rural development goals. The sparseness of events and the irregularity that results indicates that highly bureaucratized systems are incompatible with the village grassroots, and the low-​cost, simple systems are needed.

chapter 31

Village Governance by the Capable in Southern Jiangsu Province and Types of Chinese Village Governance

1

Wangting Town is a relatively remote town in Suzhou City, located on the shore of Lake Tai. In 1996, it began the large-​scale importation of foreign capital to develop its secondary industry. The earlier small-​scale town enterprises with collective characteristics had developed slowly and were all privatized around 1995. When Wangting brought in foreign capital, it started with large-​scale electronics assembly, processing, and manufacturing, chiefly with Taiwanese capital, and this kick-​started the process of rapid industrialization. In approximately ten years, Wangting Town had brought in around a thousand enterprises of different sizes, including several hundred enterprises of significant scale. The expansion brought in nearly 100,000 migrant workers, double the number of registered households in town. The promotion of large-​scale investment that started in 1996 reached its climax in 2000, and in 2008, the state began implementing strict land use controls. Before 2008, as long as there was a project coming in, the village collective could, on its own, lease land to business enterprises, which would then build their factories, and the government would collect the taxes. After the stricter land use controls went into effect, any expropriation of land had to be based on a land use and construction plan approved by the state. As a result, since 2008, village-​level governments basically have not leased out collective land to business enterprises for development and factory construction. When land use controls were not as strict, villagers could lease land and build factories on it. Village cadres in many villages rented land, built factories on it, and then subleased them out for the income. In the beginning, land could be rented out at 3,000 yuan per mu per year, an amount much greater than the less than 300 yuan per mu that one could earn by farming. Thus, if a village leased out 1,000 mu of land, it could collect 3 million yuan per year in rental income. Of course, land rent in Wangting Town has now reached 10,000 yuan per mu per year, provided that the business enterprise leasing the land contributes an average of more than 30,000 yuan per mu per year in taxes. If the enterprise’s tax contribution is less than 15,000 yuan per mu, then the rent

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_032

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would be collected at the rate of 15,000 yuan per mu per year. This is stipulated uniformly throughout the town. When land regulation was lax, most of the factories that enterprises built on rented lands were simple, crude, and not well-​suited for production. Thus, some capable village cadres managed to obtain advance rental payments from these enterprises, and then the village collective would use the funds to build standard factories that could be leased out based on a per square measure basis, which yielded much higher returns than leasing out the land would. Currently, many of the land-​leasing enterprises have gone bankrupt, so the land has returned to the collectives. The village collectives had hoped to build standard factories on these returned land parcels but could not do so, because that would violate the current Law of Land Administration (《土地管理法》), which stipulates that factories cannot be built on collectively owned land. Thus, even though the National Development and Reform Commission (ndrc) could approve the project, the various national land and planning departments could not. Some of the bolder village Party secretaries took it upon themselves to raise money to build standard factories with only the ndrc approval, whereupon their village collectives’ rental income was greatly increased. However, most village Party secretaries did not dare to do this, because if anything happened, they would have to take the blame. The seven villages in Wangting Town have each leased out approximately 1,000 mu of collective land to enterprises, for an average revenue of 10 million yuan per village. Zhaiji Village (宅基村) earned the most land rental revenue—​ as much as 25 million yuan per year—​while the village with the lowest rental revenue earns around 7 million yuan. Currently, all of the villages are trying to figure out how to upgrade the enterprises and industries and how to obtain more rental revenue. Based on the uniform requirements of the town government, all of the villages in recent years have begun to pay dividends, mostly symbolic, to the villagers. Zhaiji Village pays out the largest dividends, but each villager receives only 200 yuan per year. The 700,000 yuan that the village spends on these dividends per year accounts for only 3 percent of the total land rental revenue. Apart from the miniscule dividends, a part of the village collective revenue is used to provide various welfare protections for villagers, including monthly payments of 810 yuan to every elderly villager above 60 years old for their old age security, a considerable part of which is paid out of village collective revenue. This single item can cost a village several million yuan per year. Besides elderly insurance, villagers’ medical insurance is also paid out of the village collective revenue. However, the main part of village collective revenue is spent on infrastructure building, which falls into two big categories. The first

206 Chapter 31 category is living environment—​which includes construction for beautifying the village and requires investment from the village collective. The more collective revenue a village has, the higher the construction standards set by higher levels of government, and these are always the pilot units for new programs. Villages with less collective revenue can use lower construction standards, because they lack the money, and in any case the higher levels of government cannot subsidize village construction. The other big category is construction for investment purposes, especially the construction of standard factories for increasing village collective revenue. The most important consideration in higher-​ups’ evaluation of village cadres is the extent to which village collective income increases.

2

Let us simplify the foregoing. Before 1995, town and township collective enterprises in southern Jiangsu developed so rapidly that they were considered miraculous, but in fact this was more of a continuation of the miracle of the 1980s. By the 1990s, following the rise of the buyer’s market, township enterprises in southern Jiangsu became increasingly debt-​ridden, and within a short period of time around 1995, Suzhou City completed the restructuring of town and township enterprises. Before they were restructured, the quality of their development had much to do with village cadres, especially the village Party secretary. For example, Huaxi Village’s (华西村) development was directly related to the village Party secretary, Wu Renbao (吴仁宝). A capable and clean village Party secretary usually could promote the rapid development of village-​ run enterprises. After town and township enterprises were restructured in 1995, however, village-​run enterprises were privatized, basically via manager buyouts. Many of the village cadres were also the heads of village-​run enterprises, so many of them also bought out the village-​run enterprises, whereupon they become private entrepreneurs or cadres and entrepreneurs at the same time. Most of these restructured enterprises went bankrupt; only a small number of village enterprises survived and thrived. Thus, those managers who bought out their village enterprises became famous entrepreneurs with more than 10 million yuan or even 100 million yuan in assets. Meanwhile, the enterprises that went bankrupt had their land and factories sold at low prices, but the land-​use rights to this collectively owned construction land remained in the hands of the operators who had bought those enterprises. They could continue to profit by leasing out their land use rights.

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In brief, before the 1995 restructuring of town and township enterprises with collective characteristics, most of the village cadres in southern Jiangsu were capable persons. It was precisely these people who developed large-​scale village enterprises and created the historic miracle of China’s economic development. They took the opportunity afforded by the 1995 restructuring to become wealthy private entrepreneurs. The twelve years between 1995 and 2007 were a period of transition in southern Jiangsu, from collectively-​owned town and township enterprises to the private economy and importation of foreign capital. It was, in particular, an era of economic development marked by investment promotion. Within this short period, large-​scale investment promotion programs were organized in southern Jiangsu to bring in more capital, which led to the rapid expansion of various processing and manufacturing industries. At the village level, capable people gave full play to their enthusiasm and initiative in the process of attracting investment, with local land resources a special draw. Some of the village Party secretaries who were bolder, better connected, and more capable were able to attract a large number of enterprises to their villages in a relatively short time. As a result, the village collectives could sit and collect land rental revenue, migrant workers came to the village to work for the foreign-​invested enterprises, and there were all kinds of spillover effects that presented opportunities for making a profit. This was the golden age of economic development southern Jiangsu, the period when Wangting Town’s economy took off. During this period, the personal ability and vision of the village Party secretary would determine the quality of the investment capital being attracted by the village collective, how much collective land could be rented out, and the standards for how much rent would be collected. In 2008, the state imposed strict land use control and forbade village collectives from promoting investment directly. Local governments then switched from promoting investment in villages to promoting investment in development zones. In southern Jiangsu, all collectively owned agricultural land on which factories had already been built through investment promotion became collectively-​owned commercial construction land (jingyingxing jianshe yongdi 集体经营性建设用地), but the practice of directly building things on farmland without that farmland first being expropriated by the state came to an end. Ever since then, villages have never been able to offer land leases on collective land in order to attract investment. Since 2008, the main tasks for village cadres has been, first, to ensure the continuity of enterprises operating on collective land and hence the flow of rental income and local tax revenues, and second, to use the collective income

208 Chapter 31 well for construction, including infrastructure building and other necessary investment. All of the achievements of the three periods discussed above, i.e., pre-​1995, 1995 to 2008, and after 2008, related to a large extent to the personal capabilities of village cadres. A good village Party secretary would have a very large role in the development of his or her village’s collective economy and the improvement of villagers’ agricultural production and everyday lives. Generally speaking, village governance in southern Jiangsu during these three periods may be described as village governance by the capable. A slight difference is that during the first and second periods, the village cadres were market-​capable people who could both be village Party secretaries and entrepreneurs at the same time—​a situation that led to the Jiangsu slogan at that time of being “doubly strong and doubly guiding (shuangqiang shuangdai 双强双带).” After 2007, most village Party secretaries have become experts in management, and more and more like professional managers.

3

Village cadres in southern Jiangsu have been linked to a very large number of collective economies in all three periods, though the main source of village collective economies after 1995 came from land lease revenue. As in all places in China, rural land in southern Jiangsu is collectively owned, but what makes southern Jiangsu stand out is the land revenue being realized from collective land, and how it is used to strengthen grassroots organizational capability, improve infrastructure for production and living, improve public services, and complete various state-​assigned tasks efficiently. It is precisely because of the immense scale of the collective economy or collective income that the capability of village cadres is so important. Who becomes a village cadre, then, also becomes important. Judging from our study of Wangting Town, the town and township governments had tried to ensure that every village had a certain foundation for its collective economy—​a collective economy belonging to the public sphere, unlike that of a private economy or partnership economy. Therefore, the town or township had the ability to adjust its collective economy. In 2003, Wangting Town merged 16 villages into seven, following mainly two principles: merging adjacent villages and combining strong villages with weak ones. After the merger, the collective economic income of the various villages no longer differed so much. The poorest villages still had basic developmental capability, and the richest could not distribute high dividends to peasants.

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Meanwhile, Wangting Town started transferring village cadres among the villages throughout the town. Besides transferring village Party secretaries among different villages, it also selected which cadres would be transferred. In the eyes of the town committee, village Party secretaries were on the same level as the local stations and offices of various levels of government, so that transfers between the posts were possible. During our field research, we learned that in Zhaiji Village, the village Party secretary was previously the head of the Town Civil Affairs Office, and that the Village Women’s Director was previously a town cadre. The village Party secretary of Hejiajiao Village had been the village head of a small village before 2003, and that after the village mergers, he was transferred to become the deputy Party secretary of a neighboring village before being transferred to become the concurrent secretary and director of a community (shequ) in 2009; he then became the village Party secretary of Hejiajiao Village in 2014. Some village Party secretaries have been transferred to take charge of local stations and offices of various levels of government. During our field research, the village head of Hejiajiao Village was transferred to Yinghu Village to become its village Party secretary. Horizontal transfers, such as the transfer of the director of the Town Civil Affairs Office to become a village Party secretary do not need to be publicized, but the transfer of village head to become village Party secretary is a promotion that must be announced. The villagers say that the elections are merely a formality. Normally, there is no way that a candidate nominated by the Party committee cannot get elected. Moreover, village Party branch committee members can in theory and in practice be appointed and dismissed by the higher-​level Party committees, and normally the village-​level assemblies of Party members meet only to confirm such appointments and dismissals. Village cadres in southern Jiangsu Province may be classified into two types: village cadres and line cadres. The village cadres consist mainly of village Party committee members and villagers’ committee members, and their appointments often overlap, i.e. one person may be on both committees. The line cadres are appointed and paid by town governments and assigned to village-​level posts in which they are in charge of work along the vertical lines of authority. Most line cadre positions are concurrently filled part-​time by village cadres, so that town and township governments can better manage selection and appointment of village Party committee members. Since the village cadres in southern Jiangsu are selected and appointed mainly by the township and town governments, they have become more professional. In Wangting Town, where I conducted the field research, the annual income of a village Party secretary and village head is around 170,000 yuan, while ordinary village cadres take home around 100,000 yuan, which is similar to the income of ordinary cadres in the town government.

210 Chapter 31 Because village collectives have many assets and much collective revenue, the village cadres’ capability affects whether their village collectives’ assets and revenues maintain value or increase, and whether they can use that revenue to do good things for the peasants. Hence, the town governments are often very cautious about appointing village cadres, who should basically have good interactions with villagers. Meanwhile, to prevent abuse by village cadres, the town governments not only closely supervise village-​level finances but also make various detailed rules to prevent misappropriations. For instance, regulations stipulate that any project requiring more than 50,000 yuan must go through an open bidding process conducted by the town project management office, all expenditures must be endorsed by the vasc, and so on. All these have largely constrained village cadres’ power. Correspondingly, there are definitely regulated procedures and record-​keeping for reference in the governance of southern Jiangsu villages. Rural governance methods in Shanghai Municipality are also quite similar to those of southern Jiangsu.

4

To better understand village governance in southern Jiangsu, let us compare it with the situation in Zhejiang and the Pearl River Delta. Zhejiang is a typical example of private economy. Back in the 1980s, the private economy was already thriving in some Zhejiang villages, and by the 1990s, the private economy developed rapidly. People described the development of its private enterprises with the saying, “Every village lights fire, every chimney belches smoke.” Zhejiang’s private enterprises basically started from family workshops. If business was good, the family workshop would expand its production, say, from one lathe to two, and then three, and so on, and then they would use annexes to their houses in order to expand production further. They could also go on to build factories on the periphery of their homesteads (zhaijidi, i.e., the land that their houses and attached buildings such as sheds occupied). In this way, their residences commonly started as a small workshop, then a medium-​ sized one, and even became small factories. The entrepreneurs whose private enterprises started in the form of workshops or factories operating from their residences had a deep understanding of the land’s importance and of the interaction with government departments that takes place in the process of establishing enterprises, regardless of whether that department was in charge of land management, environment production, taxation, credit, or industry and commerce, because these departments

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wielded tremendous power over their enterprises’ development. Private enterprises that grew up under unregulated conditions became the darlings of the market, but they were still born without standards, so that even as they grew up, there were various problems that arose from being unchecked. These private enterprises naturally sought to maintain close contact with and seek protection from government departments. The best talisman for protecting oneself, then, was to become a village cadre, a deputy to the City or County People’s Congress, or member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (cppcc). Therefore, by the end of the 1990s, Zhejiang’s thriving private economy saw a large number of private entrepreneurs going into village governance: they would compete for the position of village head, then join the Party, and then replace the former old-​style village Party secretary. Soon after 2000, all of the old-​style village cadres in Zhejiang’s villages had been replaced with entrepreneurs. The trend toward plutocratic village governance could not be turned. At present, all of the leading village cadres in Zhejiang are basically wealthy people; it is no longer possible for ordinary peasants to become leading village cadres. In Zhejiang villages, the wealthy enter villagers’ committees through fiercely competitive elections, and then become village Party secretaries. Based on my experiences in field research, I consider the village elections in Zhejiang to be the most competitive and authentic among the village elections anywhere in China, because it is basically impossible for the town or township governments to manipulate them. Entrepreneurs turned village cadres cannot put in full-​ time shifts or become professional, nor are they concerned about their remuneration as village cadres. To this day, village cadres in many places in Zhejiang receive only work-​loss compensation, which is less than 10,000 yuan per year. Even in Keqiao District, Shaoxing City, where the remuneration is highest, the annual income of the district Party secretary is only a few tens of thousands of yuan. Zhejiang’s non-​professional, informal, and meagerly paid village cadres present a sharp contrast with southern Jiangsu’s professional, formal, and highly paid village cadres. There are two important aspects of the socioeconomic foundation for the Zhejiang village phenomenon. First, the earliest economic development mode in Zhejiang villages was the private economy. Peasants did their utmost to enter the market and achieve success. Most failed in their attempts to expand the scale of their production, but a considerable number succeeded in becoming entrepreneurs worth millions of yuan. As a result, a sharp division has appeared in the rural areas of Zhejiang between the wealthy who run private enterprises and ordinary villagers—​those who sell their labor. The wealthy are relatively few in number but are highly capable; furthermore, they usually

212 Chapter 31 form organic alliances among themselves. As a result, the wealthy dominate the cultural and social values of their villages. Meanwhile, there are many ordinary peasants, but they have fewer capital resources and connections, so they are at a disadvantage in any village competition. Village elections have therefore become competitions among the wealthy, and ordinary villagers can only participate passively; they basically lack a sense of being politically effective. However, while competing to become village cadres, the wealthy use the villagers and polarize them in the process, so that each election produces a factional struggle that leaves different factions in its wake. By contrast, southern Jiangsu’s economic development began from a collective economy, with little division among villagers, and even after the promotion of investment and the introduction of foreign investment in 1995, there has been less differentiation among the villages. Even though a small number of wealthy persons emerged from the restructuring of village-​run enterprises, these wealthy persons were not fully endogenous forces within their villages—​they were less able to challenge the powerful town and township governments, and consequently lacked voice rights. Hence, southern Jiangsu lacked the socioeconomic foundation for plutocratic village governance. Secondly, Zhejiang village collectives have virtually no collective income, which is consistent with Zhejiang’s private economic development mode. Since there is little collective economy, and the collectives have little revenue from leasing out land, there is no foundation for village governance by the capable—​the exact reverse of the situation in southern Jiangsu, where at any time, villages enjoy large collective economies with substantial collective income. Village cadres’ capabilities differ from one another, so the social, political, and economic effects of their management of their villages’ collective economies are likewise entirely different. Therefore, in southern Jiangsu, towns and villages are all very concerned about their cadres’ abilities, so that village governance by the capable was inevitable.

5

Let us now discuss village governance in the Pearl River Delta (prd). In 1994, Wangting Town, Suzhou City, sent a team there to study investment promotion and capital introduction methods and local economic development. The background to this was the earlier model being used to develop village enterprises in southern Jiangsu had met with insurmountable difficulties. Southern Jiangsu’s economy, however, had the good fortune of catching up with the prd in a short period using its powerful grassroots organizational capability.

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The prd took advantage of its geographical proximity to harbors already in the 1980s to promote not only domestic investment but also foreign investment through the “three supplies and one compensation (sanlai yibu 三来一补)” model (i.e., material processing, sample processing, parts assembling, and compensation trade). Within a short time, the core area of the prd was industrialized, and almost all of the rural land was covered by factories, thus making the prd into one of the world’s leading manufacturing centers. Large numbers of standard factory buildings with strong manufacturing capacity were quickly built. The entry of large manufacturers generated enormous employment opportunities, attracting a corresponding inflow of migrant workers. At one time, the number of migrant workers in the prd’s core area was ten times that of the local registered population, elevating the value of every inch of land in that area. Of course, the rural land in the prd was also collectively owned. Peasants had been allocated collectively owned land for their homesteads (zhaijidi), so they built houses on this land that were far larger than what they needed for themselves and then rented out the excess for rental income. Many factory buildings were also built on collective cultivated land and collective wasteland, also for the rental income. Besides the various profit opportunities available to the local peasants, they could receive large dividends from rents paid to their collectives. It was precisely because of the huge economic interest in the homesteads and the dividends paid to the villagers with household registration that local governments in the prd have long had to deal with issues such as what happens to women who marry outside of their villages, and what qualifies a person for membership in the village community. The prd was the first region in China to begin conducting the pilot programs for equity consolidation and for the separation of politics and economics in villages. The most important aspect of these pilots was responding to peasants’ demands concerning collective interests. This response consisted basically of quantifying collective resources and stocks so that they could be allocated to individual persons in the village community. The prd invented the so-​called shareholding cooperative system (gufen hezuozhi 股份合作制), established shareholding cooperatives, held shareholders’ meetings, and appointed shareholders’ representatives and presidents of shareholding cooperatives. The presidents are elected by and responsible to the shareholders’ meetings and are supervised by shareholders’ representatives. In this way, village collectives in the prd have gradually become shareholding systems in which privileges are quantified and accrue to individual persons. Public village collectives have been privatized. The end result has been a distancing of the shareholding cooperative community from the villagers’ committee and

214 Chapter 31 village Party committee. Of particular importance is the fact that the shareholding cooperative community holds the ownership rights, use rights, and income rights to collective land. This separation of politics from the village collectives produced a powerful force within rural society that could enter into opposition against the grassroots government. Perhaps the Wukan Incident may have been only one of the special warning signs. Before equity consolidation and the separation of politics and economics, the collective economy of the villages in the prd had become a space for strengthening national capabilities. However, the latter reform may breed a strong opposing power against the grassroots government. If this oppositional power is based on profiteering (shili 食利), it may result in a worst-​case scenario of a merger between corrupt and reactionary forces. For this reason, we must adopt a more cautious attitude with regard to the ongoing reform to separate politics from the economy in the prd.

6

At present, Suzhou City is drawing lessons from the prd’s experience with equity consolidation and the separation of politics from economy, and from top to bottom it requires village and community collectives to distribute dividends to villagers. If this continues, the result may be that corrupt and reactionary rentier groups may appear from thin air in coastal China’s most developed villages. In the future, these groups may use their occupation of immovable land resources to confront the grassroots regime and even threaten the state. In that event, it would not be just a problem of weakening capability of grassroots governance, but a major problem—​the loss of the state’s basic governance capabilities. Present-​day villages in Suzhou are trying to incorporate autonomous village collectives into the more administrative grassroots governance system through township and village integration (xiangcun yitihua 乡村一体化) in order to promote village governance by the capable, rather than village governance by the rich, and to modernize grassroots governance. Although villages in the vast central and western areas of China still cannot or need not learn from the experiences of grassroots governance in Suzhou City, the experiences of Suzhou City deserve to be emulated and promoted by villages in the developed industrialized coastal areas. In which direction are developed coastal areas heading, given that they have already completed industrialization by utilizing village collective land resources? The prd’s ongoing political-​economic separation steers in a dangerous direction. Suzhou City’s approach—​replacing autonomy

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with administration through township and village integration –​transforms villages’ collective resources into a powerful force in grassroots governance and can effectively improve the state’s governance capability. This, then, should be the main approach for modernizing grassroots governance in China’s developed coastal areas today.

7

Earlier conceptions about the collective economies of southern Jiangsu were largely misguided by the example of Huaxi Village. In fact, around 1995, southern Jiangsu’s collective township enterprises had already been privatized, so that the area was left with almost no collective village enterprises at all. The transformation can be traced back to the early 1990s, when China bid farewell to the shortage economy and entered the buyers’ market. The local collective township enterprises at the time could not compete against Zhejiang’s private economy and the foreign-​invested enterprises in the prd. In a sense, southern Jiangsu started a second entrepreneurship wave in 1995, partly by restructuring the existing businesses as private enterprises and partly by promoting and attracting investment based on its good industrial foundation and market infrastructure. Thus, within a short time, it was welcoming rapid economic development. The rapid economic development that occurred in southern Jiangsu’s second wave of entrepreneurship was due mainly to having learned from the prd how to attract investment. Southern Jiangsu’s advantages over the prd were its high degree of organization and good industrial foundation from the earlier development of township enterprises. In southern Jiangsu, investment promotion was done by the villages, and since the state at that time had relatively lax controls on land use, almost all of the villages had construction and development projects going on. Village collectives would lease out their land and collect 3,000 yuan per mu. A small number of villages with substantial funds on hand built standard factories and then leased those out. This situation, when any kind of project could be done on village land, came to a sudden end in 2008 when the state imposed strict land use controls. However, the revenue of Suzhou City’s village collectives is still directly linked to the amount of land they lease out to businesses, and the more land a village collective leases out, the more rental revenue it collects each year. There is now a specific term to refer to this land, which village collectives had used for investment promotion and project construction without it being first expropriated by the state: it is called “rural collectively-​owned commercial

216 Chapter 31 construction land (nongcun jiti jingyingxing jianshe yongdi 农村集体经营性 建设用地).” Originally, according to the Law of Land Administration, “Any entity or individual who needs to use land for construction can only apply for state-​owned land.” However, the Law of Land Administration was released rather late and not very strictly implemented, since the need to encourage local economic development led villages to wink at the use of agricultural land for non-​agricultural purposes. As a result, there are about 30  million mu of rural collectively-​owned commercial construction land nationwide. The Law of Land Administration, though implemented in 2008, did not apply retroactively. During the Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee in 2008, it was proposed that the same rights and prices should appertain to rural collectively-​owned commercial construction land and urban construction land. When the village collectives were promoting investment and leasing out farmland to outside businesses, most of the factories that were built were rather coarse, and over time they developed many problems, not the least of which was fire safety. Moreover, after some of these businesses went bankrupt and stopped leasing the land, the village collectives hoped to build standard factories on this rural collectively-​owned commercial construction land and then solicit enterprises to lease them, since leasing out factories generates far more revenue than leasing out land. The problem now, though, was that according to the Law of Land Administration, construction on any land that was not state-​ owned was illegal. The village collectives would demand the Development and Reform Committee to approve their projects to build standard factories on collective land, but the various land resources and planning departments did not dare approve these projects—​nor could they, and this put a halt to the construction of standard factories. Some daredevil village Party secretaries went straight ahead with the construction without getting formal approval from the government, thus enriching the coffers of village collectives. However, if anything happened, and the higher-​ups started investigating, the village government would bear the brunt of the responsibility. Thus, the more timid village Party secretaries would start getting anxious merely at the sight of a project drawing. The Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee in 2008 put forward a solution to the problem of the use of rural collectively-​ owned commercial construction land (activation), but the situation remains unresolved to this day. One of the reasons is that many people pile up too many of their fantasies on this rural land. The reality however remains: figuring out how to deal with these legacy issues surrounding the use of this roughly 30 million mu of rural collectively-​owned commercial construction land.

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When doing my field research in southern Jiangsu, I constantly heard talk about land expropriation, demolition, and resettlement, but on investigation, almost all of these cases had to do with the Ministry of Land and Resources’ “policy to link the increase in land used for urban construction land with the decrease in land used for rural construction (chengxiang jianshe yongdi zengjian guagou zhengce 城乡建设用地增减挂钩政策).” Before 2008, as long as there were projects, local governments and villagers’ committees could freely mark off farmland for construction. Since southern Jiangsu already had a good industrial and organizational foundation, it had already experienced rapid economic development and growth and a successful second wave of entrepreneurship. But after building on farmland was no longer permitted after 2008, the villages could not implement those projects. Each year, the state issues Suzhou City (like urban areas throughout the country) limited quotas for new urban construction land, and most of this is in development zones at the city and county levels, but there is basically no such quota for the township and village levels. This has constrained rural economic development. It was in 2008 that the Ministry of Land and Resources issued and put into effect the Measures for the Administration of the Trial Work of Linking the Increase in Land Used for Urban Construction with the Decrease in Land Used for Rural Construction (《城乡建设用地增减挂钩试点管理办法》), i.e., it wanted to link the reduced amount of rural construction land with the increased amount of urban construction land. To increase the one, it had to reduce the other, and it wanted the built-​over rural land to be converted back to farmland. However, the only way to reduce the area of rural construction land was to demolish peasant houses, let peasants free up their homesteads for reclamation as farmland, and make up quotas for new urban construction land. The demolition of peasant houses requires the resettlement of peasants, but no matter which form of resettlement is used, the costs are very high. Based on my experiences in southern Jiangsu in recent years, the cost of resettling a single peasant household, which releases approximately 0.5 mu of homestead land, is around 500,000 yuan. In other words, if a local government wants a quota for new urban construction land, it has to spend around a million yuan per mu in releasing the same amount of rural construction land. At present, town and township governments in southern Jiangsu generally have a certain level of economic strength, and they all expect to obtain more land revenue through land development. The problem is that the state’s quotas for new construction land basically cannot be assigned to the town and township level, so that town and township governments generally have to turn to peasants’ homesteads. Only by demolishing peasants’ houses can they

218 Chapter 31 obtain quotas for new urban construction land. Thus, in recent years, one of the main tasks of town and township governments in southern Jiangsu has been to demolish peasant’s houses, in order to obtain the quotas for new urban construction land. Even so, the quotas for new urban construction land come at a high price. The town and township governments have two ways to make use of these quotas. The first way is to build a development zone. The problem with this approach, though, is that ordinary manufacturing industries cannot afford the high land costs in these zones, which is why all of these development zones have to vigorously promote new hi-​tech industry. However, due to the limited resources available for new hi-​tech development, the town and township governments’ efforts to attract investment for hi-​tech industry in their local development zones get trapped in a dead end. The second way is to engage in real estate development, but a similar problem exists. Dismantling one peasant’s house is basically a one-​for-​two exchange (chaiyi buer 拆一补二). Every peasant household owns at least two houses, but migrant workers will rarely buy houses in the towns of Suzhou City. This dampens the prospects of real estate development in the area. Consequently, town and township governments in Suzhou City, even the whole of southern Jiangsu, may fall into a huge debt trap as a result of the linkage between the increase in land used for urban construction land with the decrease in land used for rural construction. It is truly a case of success and failure both due to the same cause.

chapter 32

Village Governance in Shanghai An Outlier Village Type



1

At the end of 2015, I visited Jinshan (金山), Jiading (嘉定), and Fengxian (奉贤) Districts in Shanghai Municipality for half a month, focusing on agricultural and village governance. Let me briefly discuss village governance in Shanghai. In earlier studies, I  had discussed governance of two different interest-​ intensive rural areas—​the villages in the suburbs of Zhoukou City, Henan, where the interests are exogenous, and the villages in Shaoxing City, Zhejiang, where the interests are endogenous. Shanghai Municipality’s villages are also interest-​intensive, but still differ in kind from the Zhoukou and Shaoxing villages. Specifically, the density of interests in Shanghai’s villages are formed by the huge amount of top-​down resources being transferred to them, which leads to the different characteristics of village governance in Shanghai Municipality. Apart from the interest-​intensive villages along the east coast, most villages across the breadth of China’s central and western regions are clearly declining—​hollowed out due to the outflow of people, capital, and resources. These ordinary villages in the center and west are not interest-​intensive, so the characteristics of village governance in these regions differ completely from interest-​intensive areas. However, since the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the increased amount of top-​down transfer payments to the villages from the central government combined with the outflow of people, capital, and resources have impacted village governance in the central western areas. Studying village governance in Shanghai’s villages, where the density of interests is formed by the top-​down transfer of resources, will therefore help to deepen our understanding of village governance in the central and western villages, where the same kind of top-​down transfer of resources is occurring. The most important thing shaping village governance in Shanghai is the top-​down transfer of resources. Generally speaking, there are four kinds of top-​ down payments. The first are village collective funds, which are directly transferred to villages as public resources. Shanghai Municipality normally regards villages with less than 700,000 yuan annual collective income as economically weak villages eligible for directly transferred resources as compensation from higher-​level government. The second are the numerous projects that provide

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220 Chapter 32 peasants with convenient facilities for their agricultural production and everyday lives, such as irrigation, road construction, and other public infrastructure. Third are a large number of projects offering job opportunities instead of sheer relief (yigong daizhen), as well as various welfare benefits and guarantees for villagers from the government. Fourth are the various resources that village collectives may receive through the finances of higher levels of government. These will be further illustrated in the section below where I discuss a village that I investigated. Many of Shanghai’s rural villages are rather ordinary in terms of their industrial and commercial development, especially with regard to their village-​run industries, but compared with their counterparts in Zhejiang, it can be said that their level of development is quite unsatisfactory. One of the reasons is that Shanghai Municipality exercises strong control of its rural areas, so that there is little room for the development of village-​run industries, and especially for private economic development. In the 1980s, even into the 1990s, China still had a shortage economy, so basically it was a seller’s market for industrial goods, and everyone was worried about production and not at all about selling what was produced. The peasants in Zhejiang set up private enterprises, and enforcement of regulations on land use, environmental impact, taxation, labor, and so on was lax, so private enterprises developed rapidly. Within a short time, they not only expanded production scale, but also upgraded their industries. Then when the buyer’s market formed, those upgraded private enterprises could survive. Unlike Zhejiang, however, private enterprises in Shanghai’s villages were subject to strong controls in terms of land use, environment impact assessment, taxation, employment, and so on, so that they remained for a long time at the family workshop stage. Once the buyer’s market formed, the family workshops that could never grow went out of business, which left only a limited number of family enterprises in the villages. The peasants’ income thus came chiefly from those who went to the cities as urban migrant workers. For this reason, many of Shanghai’s villages today lack industry, commerce, and hence a wealthy stratum. Peasants’ income comes mainly from working in cities, and in China’s unified labor market, their household income is directly related to the number of workers each household has, which will vary according to the life cycle of each family. This also means that in Shanghai’s ordinary villages, the ones that lack commerce and industry and are not in a district where land expropriation, demolition, and resettlement are under way, the income gap among peasants is quite small. Shanghai’s villages lack the wealthy groups commonly found in Zhejiang’s villages, but they also have very few truly impoverished households.

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In the next section, we will use Lianhe Village (联合村), located in Shanghai’s Jinshan District, to show how its interest intensity is formed by top-​down resource transfer, and on this basis we shall discuss the characteristics and logic of its village governance.

2

Lianhe Village is a remote suburban village in Shanghai Municipality with a population of 1,600 and 2,400 mu of farmland, 900 mu of which has been converted to conservation forest, and another 1,100 mu is back-​leased by the village collective from the peasants and then leased out at the same rate to three companies. The village collective also manages 300 mu of its own farmland, made up of filled-​in fishponds, where rice is cultivated; it is not contracted out, so there is no income to speak of, nor any loss. There are eight enterprises in Lianhe Village, the largest of which is a machinery company. Originally it was a village-​run enterprise that had been privatized in 1990. None of these eight enterprises are large in scale. Their total output value is approximately 200 million yuan, and they generate several million yuan in combined profit and tax revenue. Together they employ 50-​plus persons, all local residents, and occupy approximately 50 mu of land. Only the machinery company is a local enterprise. The other seven factories, left from the collapse of the earlier village-​run enterprises in the 1980s, are leased out by the village collective to generate an annual rental revenue of 150,000 yuan. Five of them are run by people from Zhejiang. In Lianhe Village, except for the machinery factory, there are no more local bosses. All of the villagers earn roughly similar incomes, mainly by working in factories that offer similar wages. This means that a peasant household’s income depends mainly on the number of workers in the family. For instance, a peasant household with four workers can generally have an annual income reaching 100,000 yuan. If there are only two workers in the family, the family income can still easily exceed 50,000 yuan, but if there is only one worker, it may be less than 50,000 yuan. The village Party secretary estimated that among the 500 households in Lianhe Village, only a few dozen households, or less than 10 percent, earn an annual income over 200,000 yuan. About one third of the households have annual incomes over 100,000 yuan. Most households’ annual incomes lie between 50,000 and 100,000 yuan. Very few households register annual incomes below 50,000 yuan. Only four households belong to the low-​income families, with

222 Chapter 32 monthly income below 790 yuan per capita, and there are only 10 low-​income households with monthly income below 1,580 yuan per capita. In other words, the income structure in Lianhe Village has the classical bell curve, centered in the middle and tapering off on both sides, with similar incomes and not too obvious social and economic stratification. Besides working in factories, peasants in Lianhe Village have two main sources of income: one is land rent. As in other villages in Shanghai City, most of the peasants’ contracted land in Lianhe Village is back-​rented by the village collective at a rate of between 750 and 1,000 yuan per mu. Since the villagers in Lianhe have an average of 1.5 mu of farmland per capita, that means that every household has several thousand yuan of land rental income every year. The second income source is insurance. Rural endowment insurance for the elderly is in line with the urban one, but one difference in Shanghai Municipality is that Shanghai has set up a “town endowment insurance” program, so that peasants who reach the age of 60 and above will receive 1,500 yuan per month. Around 600 villagers in Lianhe Village whose contracted farmlands are occupied by conservation forest qualify for “town endowment insurance.” Villagers over 60 years old who receive neither “town endowment insurance” nor urban workers’ endowment insurance enjoy the “new rural social endowment insurance,” which may be as high as 800 yuan per month, an amount far above the national average of 70 yuan. Because of this relatively high level of endowment insurance, there is a saying in Shanghai’s villages that “an elderly person in the family is a treasure.” If there are two elderly people in a household receiving the “town endowment insurance,” they may get 3,000 yuan of endowment insurance per month, when their actual living expenses may be only 500 yuan per month. Furthermore, villages in Shanghai still have sufficient agricultural and side industries, so elderly people in good physical health can continue to work part-​time. The rather small income gap and lack of obvious social and economic stratification make Lianhe Village fairly typical and representative among Shanghai’s villages. Our survey found that the situation in Jinshan, Fengxiang, Jiading and Songjiang Districts is similar, for two reasons. First is the general underdevelopment of rural industry in Shanghai, with the corresponding non-​existence of a wealthy group or stratum comprised mainly of the bosses of private enterprises. Second is Shanghai’s good social security system, which provides a minimum income for rural families, hence eliminating the truly poor households. This is an important difference with other villages in China: although they all have the same new rural endowment insurance, the benefits received by peasants in Shanghai are ten times the national average.

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Although Lianhe Village may be typical and representative, that does not mean that all villages in Shanghai are the same. Since Shanghai is China’s biggest city, it is possible to describe at least four types of villages there: (1) the urban villages, which are rather small in number; (2) suburban villages, which are wealthy either because of land expropriation, demolition, and resettlement, or because they are receiving huge returns from renting out their residences; these account for only a certain small percentage of the total; (3) industrial villages, which have well-​developed industry and commerce, another less common type; (4) the ordinary, typical, representative villages like Lianhe Village. This type of ordinary village, compared with their counterparts in Zhejiang, lack an active private economy and a wealthy group or stratum composed mainly of the bosses of private enterprises. However, compared with rural villages in the central and western regions, they also lack large impoverished and disadvantaged groups, because of their high levels of social security and more convenient conditions for employment. In this sense, although there are certain differences between villages in Shanghai and other villages in China, the overall difference is not big. Due to the formation of a unified national labor market, peasants in Shanghai, like those elsewhere in China, have achieved value and earned income in that market.

3

While villages in Shanghai Municipality are generally similar to other villages in China, that does not mean that their governance is also similar, chiefly because Shanghai’s powerful financial capacity enables its villages to enjoy a quantity of transferred payments entirely beyond what villages elsewhere can even imagine. The example discussed above, of the new rural endowment insurance benefits being ten times the national level, is just one example. It is precisely the powerful, high-​level, top-​down transfer of payments that underlies the interest intensity of Shanghai’s rural governance. Let us take Lianhe Village as an example again. Lianhe Village’s main revenue comes from rentals, 150,000 yuan per year; other collective income is relatively small. However, in 2015, higher levels of government transferred to it public funds amounting to 1 million yuan, compared to only around 40,000 or 50,000 yuan on average for villages in the central and western regions. Shanghai City started to increase dramatically the amount of transferred payments to villages around 2010, and one of the direct consequences was that village cadres’ salaries greatly increased. In 2010, the main village cadres received remuneration of only 20,000 to 30,000 yuan, but by 2015, it skyrocketed to 134,000 yuan

224 Chapter 32 for the village Party secretary, the village head received almost the same, and ordinary cadres received around 70  percent that of the main village cadres. The 134,000 yuan remuneration for the Lianhe Village Party secretary consisted of two parts: a basic salary of 36,000 yuan and bonuses of 98,000 yuan for completing various tasks. In addition, the local government also pays into the urban workers’ social endowment insurance for the village cadres; the village cadres themselves pay 20 percent of the insurance fees. In recent years, Lianhe Village has had two sources of collective income that can be used for collective undertakings. The first is based on Shanghai Municipality’s policy of balancing cultivated land occupation and compensation (tudi zhanbu pingheng zhengce 土地占补平衡政策), under which it can receive funds for stocked fish ponds that have been occupied. Shanghai Municipality regulations stipulate that villages can receive 75,000 yuan in supplemental funding for each one mu increase in occupied arable land. Lianhe Village had 400 mu of fish ponds, 300 mu of which have been filled and converted back to collective farmland; in return, it receives over 10 million yuan of the quota fee as compensation. The village collective receives a net income of more than 10 million yuan even after deducting the costs. The second source comes as the result of Shanghai Municipality’s 2014 demand that villages reduce their quantity of construction land by demolishing or relocating village enterprises and converting the land they occupied back to farmland. For this the villages receive compensation from the municipal-​and district-​level governments. Thus in 2015, all eight of Lianhe Village’s enterprises were dismantled, which released 50 mu of land for reconversion to farmland. For this the village received 35 million yuan in compensation, based on the rate of 700,000 yuan per mu. Lianhe Village in turn spent 15 million yuan to compensate the demolished enterprises and convert the land back to farmland, which means that the village collective received a net income of 20 million yuan. In other words, these two sources of income have generated 30  million yuan for the village collective funds. Shanghai Municipality also supports various people-​friendly projects that offer job opportunities instead of sheer relief, based on financial capacity. In Lianhe Village for instance, there are more than 40 persons on staff who take care of the forests and another eight who provide home care for the elderly. These people are paid the minimum wage plus the minimum premium for the urban workers’ endowment insurance fund. At the village level, line cadres receive a salary paid by higher levels of government. They work mainly in the villages, and they include staff who provide assistance on employment or assistance for the disabled, and who handle

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general administration. Although the workload is light, they must be punctual about showing up and leaving their posts each day. Shanghai Municipality has also provided its villages with far better infrastructural facilities for residents’ production and daily needs than those of other ordinary villages. Shanghai villages also have far more social assistance channels bringing in resources than ordinary villages do. While they have powerful mobilization and management skills, there are also plenty of resources available from higher levels of government that they can apply for, through village-​level organizations, during difficult times or disasters. Shanghai Municipality stipulates that all villages with weak collective economies should receive supplements from the municipal and district finances in order to maintain a minimum income. In addition, Jiading District has stipulated that villages with weak collective economies will be subsidized 300 yuan per mu for rice cultivation. Thus, if a village has 1,000 mu of farmland growing rice, the village can receive an additional 300,000 yuan of this special subsidy. Of course, Shanghai Municipality also provides an extremely large amount of agricultural subsidies. Most of its counties and districts provide free seed, pesticide, and fertilizer to peasants who grow rice. Subsidies for the purchase of agricultural machinery can amount to as much as 80 percent of the total price. This is far higher than the national average of 50 percent. All in all, Shanghai Municipality’s financial support for villages far exceeds that received by other villages in China, and this leads to the formation of a highly distinctive kind of interest intensity based on the top-​down transfer of resources.

4

The strong influence of so many payment transfers on rural governance in Shanghai is manifested in several areas. First, powerful finances nourish a strong, capable organization system. In Lianhe Village for example, the following groups of people are receiving salaries or wages from the government or from collective resources: (1) Village cadres. There are four official village cadres: the village Party secretary, the village head, a village Party committee member, and a villagers’ committee member. A university student also serves as a village official-​cum-​assistant to the village Party secretary. (2) Line cadres, who work in villages but receive salaries from higher levels of government. They take charge of various tasks in the village and are called

226 Chapter 32 the “three members (sanyuan 三员)”: employment assistants, assistants for the disabled, and persons handling general administrative tasks. (3) Villagers’ group-​level cadres. Lianhe Village includes three natural villages, with six villagers’ groups, so there are six Party member group leaders, six villagers’ group leaders, and three women group leaders, one of whom is a Party member group leader cum villagers’ group leader. In sum, there are 14 villagers’ group leaders, each receiving remuneration of 4,000 yuan per year. (4) Various unionized accountants, electricians, and irrigation station workers, who are all paid at different salary levels. (5) More than 40 conservation forest rangers. (6) Eight elderly care workers, who take care of the elderly at home. These elderly care workers, along with the forest rangers, are also part of the villagers’ group staff and part of the Shanghai Municipality project to offer job opportunities instead of sheer relief. (7) More than ten workers who pick up garbage and clear roads and riverbanks. The positions above employ nearly 100 people in total. This large number of people whose salaries or remuneration are paid from government finances or village collective resources forms a part of the mobilization capacity of the villagers’ group, and thus forms a strong organization system at the village level. Secondly, precisely because of the intensive interests formed by the top-​ down transfer of financial resources, the higher levels of government will of course decide how those financial resources will be used. In 2015, the remuneration for the Lianhe Village Party secretary was 134,000 yuan, of which his salary was only 36,000 yuan, but bonuses for completed tasks were as high as 98,000 yuan. These tasks were assigned by the higher levels of government at the beginning of the year, and then his performance was evaluated by those higher levels. With this sort of income structure, the work of village cadres must necessarily be subject to the demands of their higher-​ups. Thirdly, higher levels of government not only evaluate the tasks accomplished by village cadres, but also guide and regulate how to complete the tasks and how to carry out village governance. To prevent corruption among village cadres and reduce conflicts, Shanghai Municipality requires village cadres to follow procedures and rules and abide by democratic decision-​making and supervision. Hence, every village has a vasc elected by the representatives in the villagers’ assembly, and the vasc director participates in the decision-​ making of the “two committees,” i.e., the villagers’ committee and village Party committee. Major village decisions must be proposed by the village Party branch, discussed by the two committees, reviewed by the village Party

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members’ meeting, and resolved by the villager representatives’ assembly in what is called “the method of decision-​making via four discussions (siyi juece fa 四议决策法).” From the village cadres’ perspective, they must follow procedure when making decisions. The village Party secretary said, “If a decision is made by one person, he has to take the responsibility. That’s why there will never be one person making any decision.” Decision-​making that follows rules and procedures not only carries out what higher levels of government stipulate, but also serves as a mechanism for disclaiming responsibility. As long as village cadres are being adequately compensated, there is absolutely no need for them to risk profiting through corruption and getting investigated for it. In more than a decade of researching villages, I have seldom seen the kind of regulated, orderly village governance found in Shanghai. Fourthly, in Shanghai, the strong, powerful top-​down transferred payments and the mode of governance required by higher levels of government have resulted in an unequal relationship between towns or townships and villages in rural governance. The towns or townships have complete authority over the villages, while the villages have no bargaining power vis-​a-​vis the towns or townships. Fifth, in Shanghai Municipality, because village collectives and villagers can tap the abundant financial resources of higher levels of government, most of their problems can be solved by the transfer of resources, so the work of the village cadres has changed. It used to consist mostly of dealing with villagers face-​to-​face, but now it consists mostly of office paperwork, including compiling statistics, writing reports, processing applications, and so on. In Lianhe Village, all of the five main village cadres (including the university student) are young and well-​educated, and four of them are women. Most of their work is office work, and this applies to all village cadres in Shanghai. It is entirely natural for them to report to work and leave the office on time every day. The village cadres have been professionalized. Sixth, the professionalization of village cadres is not limited to keeping regular office hours, but more importantly, it is also reflected in the change of their mindset, making it very different from that of village cadres in the central and western regions, who still work part-​time and receive work-​loss compensation. Village cadres in Shanghai Municipality show great stability. Though elected, they basically stand for the villagers’ group’s aims, and few change arbitrarily. Village cadres in Shanghai have to pass examination and vetting by the district and township Party organizations before becoming assistants to village Party secretaries or village heads. Then they will work in the villages as reserve cadres—​an indication of the intention of upper-​level government—​ and eventually be promoted later on as a cadre in one of the two villagers’

228 Chapter 32 committees, and then as a village head or village Party secretary. This is the usual career trajectory. An assistant to the village Party secretary does not need to come from that particular village, but an assistant to the village head does. Chief village cadres who are male and 57 or older or female and 52 and older are no longer eligible for re-​election. No provision in the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committee relates to village cadres’ retirement, but Shanghai Municipality has this rule and enforces it well. Since village cadres’ payments for social endowment insurance are covered by the government, their retirement is thus affected by this. In the past decade, the township where Lianhe Village is located has experienced only two cases in which the village head candidates arranged for by the Party organization were not elected. In each of the two cases, a candidate for village director lost the election to another person on the villagers’ committee. But given the scarcity of such cases, the stability and predictability of the composition of the village cadres team is guaranteed. It is also impossible for vote-​buying to occur. The stability and professionalization of village cadres have led to their standardization. It is expected that in the long run they will become highly capable and work responsibly. When working, they will definitely follow the rules.

5

Village governance in Shanghai has some notable features. A typical one is the absence of vote-​buying at the village level. The election results for the villagers’ committee and village Party committee can basically represent the Party organization’s intentions. Village governance is regulated and orderly. The village cadres are serious and responsible, and they get good results. Villages are not significantly politicized, and the position of village cadre has become professional and depoliticized. Public decision-​making in the villages chiefly concerns distribution, not mobilization. Village cadres can govern villages well, though they are less authoritative. They no longer work chiefly face-​to-​ face with the masses but now concentrate mostly on paperwork in the office. We shall briefly discuss these features of village governance below. Village Governance Centered on the Allocation of Financial Resources In Shanghai village governance, there is basically no collection of fees from peasants. Shanghai Municipality has the financial resources to meet any proven public need. The village level also usually manages a lot of economic

5.1

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resources. Thus, whenever the Party members’ meetings or villager representatives’ assemblies meet to discuss and decide on village affairs, there is basically no mobilization of villagers to contribute money or labor. The issues rather concern how resources should be effectively and fairly allocated, which is why we call this a distribution democracy instead of a mobilization democracy. For the village cadres, this distribution democracy is an important mechanism for disclaiming responsibility, and for the villagers, it is a mechanism for achieving a balanced allocation of interests. Decision-​making and supervision mechanisms in village affairs as characterized by “four discussions and two disclosures” have been well implemented in Shanghai’s villages. Holding Party members’ meetings and villager representatives’ assemblies to make decisions has become routinized. Village governance centered on democratic decision-​making and supervision differs greatly from that centered on competitive elections. When village cadres’ work has become routinized, using mainly the financial resources from higher levels of government, and sitting in the office doing mostly paperwork assigned from higher levels of government, then any village governance that becomes over-​political would not only be pointless but also harmful. Why There Is No Vote-​Buying in Shanghai’s Villages 5.2 Compared with their counterparts in Zhejiang, the members of the villagers’ committees and village Party committees in Shanghai’s villages have fewer fiercely competed elections, and one of the reasons for this is the absence of a wealthy stratum in the villages. Even if some villages might have produced individual entrepreneurs, those will have long since moved out of their home villages, and they rarely get involved in village affairs. In Zhejiang Province, however, villages commonly have a group of wealthy people who are enthusiastic about getting elected, participating in village politics, and then finally reap the social and political benefits. On the surface, Zhejiang’s local governments are highly capable, especially in dealing with private enterprises, because the private enterprises must present themselves in a positive light before their local government and various departments in terms of taxation, environment assessments, getting bank loans, and construction if they are going to function smoothly. They hence need to strengthen their relationships with the local governments by participating in the village cadres’ elections. It is even better if they manage to become People’s Congress representatives or members of the cppcc via this route. Since there are many private enterprises in Zhejiang’s villages, many wealthy people run

230 Chapter 32 in the village elections, and the competition is fierce. As a result, vote-​buying has become rampant. However, Zhejiang’s local governments do not have the financial strength as those in Shanghai and cannot transfer such large amounts of resources to the villages. The remuneration of Zhejiang’s village cadres is so low that ordinary villagers cannot afford to become village cadres. Such low wages would not meet their families’ basic needs. In Shanghai, by contrast, being a village cadre has become a decent career, due to the large amounts of funding from the municipality. An ordinary villager who becomes a cadre can keep his or her family’s living standards above the medium level. There are no wealthy groups of private entrepreneurs and bosses who engage in vote-​buying and get elected because they need political protection. It was impossible for that kind of thing to develop in Shanghai’s villages in the first place. Village Cadre as a Profession 5.3 Without vote-​buying or even competition in the village elections—​a situation which basically reflects the organizational intentions of the higher-​level Party organization—​the position of village cadres in Shanghai has become very stable. As long as they make no major mistakes, do the work conscientiously, and gradually improve their administrative ability, they can remain in this profitable position for a long time. Their professionalization has made them into specialized administrators, which in turn ensures that the stability of their positions, their expertise, and their working abilities are far higher than village cadres elsewhere. In this sense, villages in Shanghai are de-​politicized and administrative, which makes it easy for local governments’ administrative powers to extend into village society. The real autonomous space for a village is very small, since everything is based on the accomplishment of tasks and the performance criteria set by higher levels of government. This is key to understanding rural governance, especially village governance, in Shanghai. Here the village cadres will do their utmost to ensure food safety, food production, the management of non-​residents, and so on. This is easy to understand only within this context.

6

The key to understanding village governance in Shanghai is the nature of its dense interests, which are neither from exogenous factors such as land expropriation, demolition, and relocation, nor from endogenous factors such as the development of village industry; they rather accrue from the huge quantity of

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payments being transferred to the villages from higher levels of government. This powerful stream of transferred payments is the decisive factor behind the main characteristics of village governance in Shanghai. In a sense, where the resources come from decides where the rules come from, which determines where the use of institutions comes from. The almost unidirectional top-​down transfer of resources entails that the allocation and use of those resources must be carried out in accordance to rules set by higher levels of government, which assuredly results in the villagers’ autonomy becoming an administrative matter. Village autonomy is only a method to promote administration, following the logic of the distribution democracy as discussed above. The huge resource capability and resource advantages of Shanghai’s local governments inevitably amount to an advantage of the local governments over the rural grassroots (village cadres and villagers). However, in the villages of Zhejiang, where private enterprises are well-​developed, those enterprises always have various demands on local governments in relation to taxation, environmental impact assessments, financing, illegal construction, and so on, because the local governments wield advantage over them, but the local governments do not necessarily wield an advantage over the grassroots (village cadres and villagers). The differences here are well worth pondering. In sum, rural governance in Shanghai centers on the allocation of resources transferred from higher levels of government, which has given rise to strong government and strong norms, but a weak society and weak economy. In Shanghai village governance, politics and mobilization have been greatly reduced, while villagers’ autonomy has become highly administered. The main work of village cadres has become management and service, a matter of uploading and issuing things. It has become administrative work catering to the local government’s demands.

pa rt 5 The Social Foundation of Village Governance: Class, Faction, and Clan



chapter 33

How Peasant Differentiation Affects Village Governance In the 1990s, the practice of village autonomy was being promoted nationwide just as the large-​scale migration of peasants to cities was occurring. By the first decade of the present century, nearly all the young people in villages in the central and western regions had gone to the cities to work or do business, which resulted in dramatic changes in rural society. These changes in rural society, especially peasant differentiation, also impacted village autonomy.

1

Based on population inflows and outflows, rural areas in China today can be divided into the central and western agricultural regions, where there is a population outflow, and the developed eastern coastal region, where there is a population inflow. In the east, thanks to the developed economy, there are plenty of opportunities for migrant workers to work and do business. Economic development and the influx of migrant workers have elevated the value of land and real estate, which resulted in the eastern coastal region becoming so resource-​ and interest-​intensive. There are two regions in the developed east that are typical and representative. The first one, the Pearl River Delta (prd), has focused mainly on attracting foreign investment, and the local peasants obtained rental income by building factories and renting out their properties. Since the business enterprises were not local, and the vast majority of people working in them were migrants from elsewhere, only the villages could lease out the factories; the local peasants would receive rental income by leasing out their residential property. As a result, peasants in the prd increasingly acquired the characteristics of a rentier stratum, obtaining income without labor. They are neither responsible for how the market performs, nor for working to earn their keep. The second region is the Yangtze River Delta (yrd), which is characterized by its endogenous rural industrial development. This development has produced a wealthy group of entrepreneurs, while most ordinary peasants have become ordinary workers. In the yrd, both entrepreneurs and ordinary peasants must be responsible for

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_034

236 Chapter 33 their own actions. The entrepreneurs must face huge market risks, and ordinary workers can only live off the fruit of their labor. Compared with the developed eastern coastal regions, the situation in the central western regions is much simpler. The basic logic is that more and more young people and even the middle-​aged have gone to the cities to work or do businesses, leaving behind two large groups in the village. The first group consists of the old, weak, sick, and disabled—​those unable to find work in cities, even though most of them will have much experience and skill in agricultural production. This group of middle-​aged and elderly people who remain in their villages are among the left-​behind peasants (liushou wunong renyuan 留守务农人员), who do the work of agricultural production. They form the core of the Chinese small-​scale peasant economy characterized by the phrase, “half-​farming and half-​working, based on the intergenerational division of labor.” The other subgroup of left-​behind peasants is the “middle peasants,” those who remain in the village to earn income from various agricultural operations. They do not leave for the cities to work often because either their parents are too old, or their children are too young (there are various other reasons for staying). If a young couple can operate between 30 and 50 mu of farmland through the transfer of land use rights from other peasants or engage in animal husbandry, supplementary work, or fishery, they can often earn an income similar to that of peasants who have gone to work in the cities. Thus, a middle peasant stratum with income on par with those working in the cities and whose social relations are mostly kept within the village has formed. Although this stratum is not large, accounting for only 10% to 20% of the current rural population, its existence is extremely important as it has kept villages in central and western regions in order despite the outflow of people, capital, and resources.

2

The central and western regions also differ greatly from the developed coastal regions in terms of peasant differentiation. In the central and western regions, there is a mechanism that does away with this differentiation. Specifically, almost all of the peasants here derive their family income from the “half-​farming and half-​working, based on the intergenerational division of labor” mode. The elderly members of the peasant family will be the ones who farm, and they will earn incomes similar to those of other peasant households farming plots of roughly similar size. For those working in cities, the income level will not vary greatly among households due to the

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establishment of a unified national labor market. For this reason, the largest family income gap is related only to the family cycle: a family’s income reaches its maximum when its number of workers is at a maximum, and conversely, the family becomes poor when there are too many non-​working people in it. Some people from the central and western regions who leave to work or do business in the cities earn a far higher than average income and become wealthy. These people quickly leave the village for good and blend into the city. In this sense, they are no longer peasants or villagers. Therefore, with regard to peasant differentiation, the population outflow areas in the central and western regions may be divided into two main groups: the first comprises the aged, weak, sick, and disabled who remain in the village, and the second comprises the “middle peasants,” or young and middle-​aged couples. The former group is larger in number, while the latter has greater earning power. Let us now reexamine the situation in the developed coastal region, where the rural areas differ greatly from that of the central and western regions. Villages in the developed coastal region are very different from those in the central western region. While people and resources are constantly flowing out of the center and west, it is the opposite in the developed east, and land and housing constantly increase in value as a result. Villagers there are reluctant to give up their membership in the village community and will not casually leave their villages. Even if they have made a tidy sum, bought city houses, and run their own businesses, they are still unwilling to give up their peasant identity and often continue to participate in their villages’ public affairs. As a consequence, various groups with diverse income gaps participate in the game of village politics. As mentioned earlier, in the developed coastal regions, there are significant differences between the prd and yrd. The prd thrives mainly on rental income, and land management has become the most basic practice. Land ownership belongs to village collectives, but peasants have the right to contract and operate land, and the right to use their homesteads for free. When more and more of the collectively owned land for which peasants have the land use rights was used for the construction of industrial and commercial facilities, which earned for them profits far greater than what did by farming, a fierce game emerged between the village collectives and the villagers. Village cadres, who have decision-​making powers, can capitalize on loopholes in characteristically vaguely-​defined property rights to reap profits and even become extremely rich. Ordinary villagers, meanwhile, can profit by building and renting out housing illegally on their homesteads, but the profit-​making potential of renting out such housing is limited, unless the property is demolished. This led

238 Chapter 33 to the formation of economic differentiation in the villages, whether caused by the cadres or by political stratification. In the yrd, both the individual private economy and the township enterprises have their roots in local family workshops. Always market-​oriented, they gradually expanded to form economies of a certain scale, and some evolved into large-​scale enterprises. As a result, many entrepreneurs and wealthy persons have emerged in the aforementioned villages, while ordinary villagers continue to earn their family income mainly through labor. Once these entrepreneurs surfaced, with their enterprises still inextricably linked to villages, it was virtually inevitable that their economic advantages also shifted to the realm of village politics.

3

Village autonomy today is based on these forms of peasant differentiation, which we can use to discuss the differing logic by which village autonomy operates in different areas. In the central western regions, village autonomy arose against the background of an outflow of people, capital, and resources. Village resources were limited, and there was little room for rent-​seeking by village cadres. After the abolition of agricultural taxes, the state began to transfer financial resources to villages instead of gathering taxes from peasants. Some of these resources have had to be allocated by the village cadres, so that one cannot say that these cadres have no resources at all. Meanwhile, the state provides them with relatively stable income. Although it may not be enough to let them maintain a decent living, it still makes a good supplementary income. In the central and western regions, the “middle peasants” become the best candidates for village cadres because their income sources, social relationships, and various interests are all still within their villages. Some of them stay in villages precisely because they have become village cadres, so they continue working in agricultural production, doing supplementary work, and running businesses, and consequently they have become the few young, capable villagers. Therefore, in these villages, the elections are generally not fiercely contested. On the one hand, the village cadres already have some resources at their disposal, and the remuneration is not bad, so that staying in the village has a certain appeal. On the other hand, the position does not generate the kind of huge profits that would attract those who have left to work in cities to return and enter into fierce competition with the existing “middle peasants.” As a result, the village elections are rather uneventful, in stark contrast to the fierce competition that had existed before the abolition of agricultural taxes. There

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are two reasons for this change. First, many of the former elites have left the village, since they no longer consider it a field of intense competition. Second, before the abolition of agricultural taxes, the village collectives still had vast powers to control the village collective resources, including the authority to collect the fees and taxes from peasants. After the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, almost all of these powers of village cadres were redefined or even abolished. Because the village cadres’ powers have been either regulated or abolished, the central and western regions lack the basic resources and conditions for village autonomy. Village collectives basically have no resources, since they are not permitted to collect any from peasants, and the state’s top-​down transferred resources are not channeled to their level. As a result, village autonomy has lost its economic foundation. It is true that the village cadres can no longer engage in corrupt and underhanded dealings, but at the same time, it has become impossible for them to provide villagers any practical services. Thus the current status of rural village autonomy in the central and western regions is that the villagers’ committees have become maintenance committees (weichihui 维持会). The situation is much different in the developed eastern coastal regions. Neither the prd or yrd have the problem of people, capital, and resources flowing away. On the contrary, population inflows and economic development have greatly elevated the value of village collectively owned land, and village collective resources, being rather vaguely defined, have become the target over which the village elites compete against one another. Thus vote-​buying has become rampant—​virtually normal—​everywhere in these regions. There is a positive correlation between the amount of vote buying and the level of economic development and of land development. There have even been cases in which business owners sponsor villagers’ committee election candidates. A  single candidate may even spend several million yuan to buy votes. Vote-​ buying is common and severe not only in the villagers’ committee elections, but also the village Party committee elections. There are also differences between prd village autonomy and yrd village autonomy. Since there is a lack of endogenous entrepreneurs in the prd, the village cadres become rich off of village collective resources, but because they lack any legal resources for suppressing ordinary villagers, all of the latter feel that their participation in village politics would be effective. Therefore, the main line of competition in each election is between the group in power versus the opposition group. The ruling group is generally capable of maintaining the status quo, but whenever the opposition group raises its level of vote-​buying, the group in power must always match it.

240 Chapter 33 Entrepreneurs who had grown up in yrd villages were not necessarily village cadres in the past, but as their enterprises grew, so did their status in the village. They could also transform their economic resources into personal relations, and to transform them also into political resources, they could participate in villagers’ committee elections and easily defeat the traditional empowered elite groups in their villages. Thus, already by the mid-​and late 1990s, all of the traditional village cadres had been replaced by entrepreneurs in the yrd. Entrepreneurs-​turned-​village cadres do not necessarily have the time and energy to devote to the new job, but they do have resources, prestige, and capital. Thus, a division arose in the yrd between the main village cadres, most of whom were entrepreneurs, and the ordinary village cadres, who functioned as clerks. The main village cadres make the decisions, the ordinary village cadres handle the routine office work. The entrepreneurs-​turned-​cadres can use their huge economic resources to make their opinions heard and settle village issues, so they become the most suitable election candidates for the village cadre positions—​a situation welcomed by both the township and villagers. The outcome is that the villages in the yrd are now governed by the wealthy. It is impossible to become a village cadre if you are not. This irreversible trend toward plutocratic village governance and the economic stratification within the village have resulted in the vast majority of villagers lacking any sense of political efficacy. Villagers no longer have the ability to care about village politics and village affairs, though a few dissatisfied villagers may show their resistance against the existing order by becoming nail households and petitioners, but such efforts are mostly ineffective. Generally speaking, in the developed coastal regions, village autonomy has turned into village plutocracy; ordinary villagers do not really achieve their aims or accomplish their wills through elections. Village autonomy in these regions is moving in a direction that is very different from what had been expected in the past. Considering the regional differentiation among villages and the stratification that has emerged among villagers today, it is no longer adequate to discuss village autonomy in a general way. We must first gain an in-​depth understanding of the practices and logic of the village autonomy system in order to determine how basically to improve it.

chapter 34

From the Rural Community of Interests to Profit-​Sharing Order

1

The division of fields among households (fentian daohu) greatly boosted peasants’ enthusiasm for agricultural production, so that within a short period of time, the rural situation had fundamentally improved:  food production increased significantly, there was an abundant supply of agricultural products, peasant incomes quickly increased, and signs of prosperity began to appear. Regrettably, in the past few years the rural situation has reversed. In the late 1980s, oversupply made it difficult to sell grain, and by the 1990s, the three rural issues (i.e., those pertaining to agriculture, the countryside, and peasants) became a major cause for concern, and they continued to deteriorate. By the turn of the century, peasants’ burdens became extremely heavy, cadre-​peasant relations extremely tense, rural debts piled up dramatically, and the three rural issues became extremely severe. Addressing the three rural issues became the Party’s top priority. Rural tax and fee reform began around 2002 and ended with the complete abolition of agricultural taxes in 2006. After this, the central government gradually increased its transfer of payments to rural areas, and the three rural issues were finally alleviated. Why is it that in the brief span of ten or so years, the status of the three rural issues had gone from well-​governed to chaotic? Why did work in this area go from good to bad, and why did the achievements turn into problems? An important cause of the deterioration of the three rural issues was the very success of the division of land among households. This broke the People’s Commune system of collective production and allocation based on “ownership shared among the three levels of commune, brigade and production team, with the production team as the basic unit of everyday production and management,” and collective land was contracted out to peasants who could now operate land independently. Furthermore, peasants who had the right of managing the land were required to “pay enough to the state, leave enough for the collective, and keep the rest for themselves.” Because the peasants had the right to claim the surplus, they became extremely enthusiastic about agricultural production, doing their work with care and producing much more.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_035

242 Chapter 34 This not only satisfied society’s demand for agricultural products, but also increased peasants’ income. However, the happy days did not last long. Peasant enthusiasm led to an oversupply of agricultural goods. Supply exceeded demand, and higher output no longer generated higher peasant income. Meanwhile, the peasants had increasing difficulty bearing the heavy tax and fee burden. They were not willing to “pay enough to the state” or “leave enough for the collective.” Unable to sell their produce or to increase their income, peasants were unwilling to pay agricultural taxes and fees. However, the development-​oriented local governments depended on revenue from agricultural taxes and fees paid by the peasants in order to maintain their daily operations and conduct public affairs, so the cadres began forcing the collection of taxes from peasants, who would then either passively or actively resist. As a result, the relationship between cadres and the masses rapidly deteriorated. Theoretically, after the allocation of land to households, the institutional design of “paying enough to the state, leaving enough to the collective and keeping the rest for themselves” could greatly arouse peasants’ enthusiasm for agricultural production, because peasants would have the right to claim the surplus. It would be a positive incentive system. It was precisely for this reason that in most of China’s thousands of years of history, the land system was arranged to allow peasants the right to claim the surplus. However, this institutional arrangement was based on the premise that the state and collective (or the landlord) would not take too much. If they took much, the peasants would have too little surplus and would begin to resist actively or passively. In socialist countries, because the contracted land is closely linked to peasants’ basic subsistence rights, even if the peasants did not “pay enough or leave enough,” the state or collective could not deprive them of their contractual right to the land. In traditional Chinese society, the state generally extracted less than five percent of agricultural harvest, leaving peasants with most of the agricultural surplus. Of course, that surplus was also distributed between the agricultural producers themselves and the land owners (landlords). Because the low tax rates had made the relationship between the state and peasants more relaxed, the traditional state governance could maintain stability, and a dynasty could last for two or three hundred years. In modern times, China began to transform from a traditional state to a modern one. The cause of modernization requires resources extracted from the countryside for the building of modernity, and so the state’s demands for rural resources rapidly increased.

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Although the state’s demands for agricultural resources rose rapidly, the organizational system through which the state traded with peasants remained unchanged. The state’s absorption of resources increased so rapidly that it crushed the earlier traditional system of state-​peasant transactions, as reflected in the grassroots governance system. As Prasenjit Duara described it, this was when many “entrepreneurial brokers” replaced the earlier “protective brokers,” and when the grassroots regime underwent an increasingly severe involution process until it finally caused strong resistance of peasants against the state. In a situation in which the peasant population is very large and extremely scattered and agricultural surplus is very small, if the state needs to draw more resources from the countryside, the transaction costs will prove to be too high to bear—​this is Wen Tiejun’s (温铁军) classic summary of the three rural issues. In other words, any increase in resources absorbed by the state from the countryside usually comes at the cost of even more rapid increases in taxes and fees. To some extent, the cost of taxation will outweigh the revenue from taxation. Under the pressure of the “catching-​up” form of modernization, when the state could only draw resources from the countryside by accumulating them, virtually the only way the state could do this was by changing the structure of rural society. The new China completed this change first by eliminating the landlord class through land reform, so that the agricultural surplus that had gone to the landlord class went instead toward the state’s accumulation of capital. Secondly, the state completely rebuilt the peasants’ organizational mode of production through the People’s Commune system, which enabled the state to smoothly absorb agricultural surplus and apply it for industrialization and the building of modernization. It should be said that the People’s Commune system had been successful in extracting agricultural surplus for the accumulation of capital needed for building modernization. The problem with the People’s Communes was that under their collective production and distribution system, peasants’ individual contributions to labor were not directly linked to their eventual incomes, so that it became difficult to arouse their enthusiasm for agricultural production. Laggardly behavior became a serious problem in some underachieving production teams. For this reason, after reform and opening up, peasants’ enthusiasm for production was aroused once more through the allocation of land to households, which gave peasants the right to claim the surplus again. However, after the land was allocated to households, the peasants’ renewed enthusiasm for production did not fundamentally change the existing pattern whereby the peasants were widely scattered and generated little agricultural

244 Chapter 34 surplus. Meanwhile, the state was still in its rapid development stage, and from top to bottom it was a development-​type government, still needing the rural countryside to provide a lot of resources for construction. Since it was still extracting many rural resources, and the peasants still had little surplus and were still extremely scattered, the collection of taxes and fees from peasants became a huge problem.

2

Within the hierarchy of “paying enough to the state, leaving enough for the collective and keeping the rest for themselves,” i.e., the state, the grassroots regime, the villagers’ group, and the peasants, the villagers’ group occupied a very important position, because it was the villagers’ group cadres, or village cadres, who dealt with the peasants directly. The grassroots regime, meanwhile, which represented the state, had no means of directly facing the peasants, who were scattered far and wide. Village cadres were members of this village acquaintance society and did not leave productive agricultural work. They had dual identities as the state’s agents in the countryside and as members of the peasant family. Village cadres could distinguish between the genuinely impoverished households and the nail households in their villages; they could have an accurate grasp of the situation of each peasant household in their village and could report that situation to the state. The state also used the village cadres to complete the task of extracting resources from those widely scattered peasants who had very little surplus. When the peasants were still willing to pay taxes and fees, the village cadres’ tax-​collection duty was easy. On the one hand, the village cadres were providing managerial services for the peasants, while on the other hand they were performing the duties of state agents. Even if those two roles came into conflict with each other, such conflicts were still not severe—​a balance could still be easily reached. However, as the peasants’ burdens increased, they became more and more reluctant to pay taxes and fees, the village cadres had greater difficulty collecting them, and peasants grew increasingly dissatisfied with the village cadres. The village cadres were thus caught in the growing rift between the grassroots regime and the peasants, and their work became difficult, unrewarding, and thankless. Village cadres who formerly could balance their dual roles found it increasingly difficult to do so, and those who were unwilling to offend the villagers withdrew from their positions. Meanwhile, the town and township governments resorted to more and more incentives to push village cadres to go on

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collecting taxes and fees at the risk of offending their fellow villagers. The harder it became to collect taxes and fees from peasants, the more vigorously the town and township governments had to encourage village cadres to collect them, because if they did not do so, they could not build infrastructure, develop the economy, maintain basic government operations, and pay the primary and second schoolteachers’ salaries. In other words, if the town and township governments’ task of collecting taxes and fees was not accomplished, any work they wanted done would face the higher-​level government’s “one vote veto.” When the town and township governments had to incentivize the collection of taxes and fees and the kindly village cadres who were unwilling to offend their fellow villagers had withdrawn from the village cadres’ team, the only people left to fill the village cadres’ positions were precisely the ruthless sort who were out for their own benefit and not in the least afraid of offending their fellow villagers—​the sort with massive physiques and a lot of triad brothers, who had evil intentions to begin with, and who spoke with their fists. The villagers, fearing those fists, had no choice but to pay up. These ruthless village cadres were rewarded by town and township governments because they could collect the taxes and fees on time. The rewards included tax and fee deductions, monetary prizes, easy reimbursements on entertainment expenses, and so on. As the conflict between the cadres and the masses grew more severe, it became more and more difficult to collect taxes and fees, so the incentive measures adopted by the town and township governments became more and more extreme, and the village cadres became even more ruthless. The cadres went from bad to worse, but nothing they did could escape the villagers’ gaze, so this intensified the villagers’ dissatisfaction and resistance. Thus, in a very short period of time, villages in some regions of China (first and especially in the central region) saw a rapid deterioration of the relationship between the cadres and the masses. For a time, the government could find no solution to the “three rural issues,” and villages fell into chaos. This extremely short period of change in the triangular relationship among the town and township governments, village cadres, and villagers deserves careful analysis. Before the situation deteriorated, the village cadres—​the middlemen between town and township governments and peasants—​were simultaneously the honored managing members of the rural acquaintance society and also the agents of the town or township governments, accomplishing tasks that were not particularly difficult (including tax and fee collection). As peasants’ burdens increased, the rural situation grew tense and village cadres had more difficulty coordinating the conflicts between their dual roles. As a result, under the strong inducements of the town and township governments,

246 Chapter 34 the kindly village cadres withdrew from the village cadres’ team and were replaced by the ruthless ones. These ruthless village cadres were what Prasenjit Duara described as “entrepreneurial brokers,” who formed communities of interest with their township governments, which had detached themselves from the norms of the earlier acquaintance society. These communities of interest became recklessly oppressive factotums and tools for collecting taxes and fees, with license from state and society to use violence. They became structures making no distinction between impoverished families and nail households, pushing the genuinely poor families who could not afford the taxes and fees into life-​and-​death struggles. These structures were also extremely self-​ interested, using the taxes and fees for their personal gain. During this process, any earlier village collective resources were sold off, the village collectives borrowed money at usurious rates of interest, and debts piled upon debts. Tax and fee collection became even harder, and the village communities of interest even more tightly knit. The tensions spread and reached a breaking point. Even though the situation was still confined to parts of the country, it was rapidly expanding. Against this background, the state decided to reform the agricultural tax and fee system and finally abolished agricultural taxes entirely in 2006; it also began to make large-​scale transfer payments to the countryside. Since the need to collect taxes and fees from peasants no longer existed, it became impossible for the ruthless village cadres to profit from tax collection, and the town and township governments no longer needed ruthless people to extract funds from the villagers. The ruthless cadres withdrew, the tight communities of interest disintegrated, rural relationships relaxed again, and a few good people returned to their village cadre positions.

3

After the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the loose relationship between townships and villages resulted in an unanticipated problem. Before the abolition, while the collection of taxes and fees resulted in tense relations between cadres and the masses and the formation of rural communities of interest, a large portion of what was collected had been returned to peasants in the form of public goods and their building. While constantly cajoling and threatening peasants when collecting taxes, the village cadres also understood very well what the peasants’ complaints were (irrigation difficulties, poor roads, bad cadres, the various hardships of life, etc.). In the off-​season, villages and towns did their best to provide peasants with most basic public goods

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for maintaining their agricultural production and everyday lives, but after the state no longer collected taxes and fees from peasants, the town and township governments no longer cared about their needs, and the peasants, being widely dispersed, had difficulty cooperating on solving their difficult problems. Hence, although the peasants’ burden was lightened, the conditions for agricultural production deteriorated. To deal with the problem of inadequate supply of rural public goods, the state increased its top-​down transfer of payments and resources to the countryside, which alleviated the shortages and facilitated agricultural production and everyday life. However, since China’s rural areas are vast and diversified, and demands for agricultural public goods extremely varied, it is impossible for the state to use any single standardized format for the provision—​the resources must satisfy the diversified local conditions. This diversity means that the resource allocation process must combine flexibility, particularity, and autonomy, i.e., enable the local governments to seek their own interests during the allocation process. How should the top-​ down resources be allocated? Ideally, of course, the resources should go to those who need them most, but in reality, virtually all the villages and peasants regard themselves as being the ones most in need. This being the case, the resources are allocated on the basis of power, connections, and return on investment. Local governments that have their hands on these resources may use them for political vanity projects or demonstration sites, as discussed earlier, and some local officials may channel resources to their own hometowns or to people with whom they have good connections. More generally, since the resources can be distributed anywhere, everyone clamors for them through connections, and the people who have their hands on the resources will allocate them through these connections, and in ways they consider safest and most convenient. In this way, bottom-​up networks of relationships competing for these top-​down resources have been formed. As these relationship networks stabilize through the sharing of resources, they tighten even as they grow ever larger. Thus, a new kind of community of interests, unlike the earlier one, has been formed. It includes a wider range of personnel, but besides being more tightly-​knit, it is more hidden. This stable community of interests amounts to a profit-​sharing order (fenli zhixu).

4

The earlier rural communities of interest that formed and self-​inflated by extracting rural resources and collecting agricultural taxes and fees were fated to

248 Chapter 34 burst because of the need to deal with peasants face-​to-​face. The more tightly-​ knit they became, the stronger the peasants’ dissatisfaction, the tenser the cadre-​masses relationship, and the three rural issues (relating to agriculture, rural areas, and peasants) grew more and more severe. In the end, that basic rural order was not sustainable; the time for reform had come. Those rural communities of interest were thus destroyed by the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees. Then the state began transferring vast amounts of resources to the countryside, which also nourished and strengthened increasingly larger yet more closely-​knit new communities of interest and profit-​sharing order quite distinct from the previous kind:  they were established based on the top-​down sharing of resources instead of preying directly on peasants. These new communities of interest strive for national resources in the name of the peasants and gain profits both for themselves and, more or less, for the peasants. So the peasants not only do not oppose them, but also feel grateful to them! Therefore, the profit-​sharing order formed from the top-​down transfer of national resources differs from the endogenous self-​destructive mechanism of the previous order, which had formed by collecting agricultural taxes and fees from peasants. The new profit-​sharing order has become quite secretive and stable because it receives the steady input of national resources. The only problem here is that this new community of interests not only demands the sharing of resources but is also becoming more and more self-​ centered, and their demands are separate from what the villages actually need. They have departed from the reality of effective distribution; instead, they increasingly allocate resources to places most beneficial to themselves, thus greatly lowering the efficiency of national resources allocation. The formation of a profit-​sharing order has formed a huge barrier between the state and rural society, which makes interaction between the two more difficult. While the state is transferring more and more resources to the countryside, their efficiency of use continues to decline. Everywhere in China there are plenty of examples of ineffective state resource allocation nowadays, and of course, this is not just accidental.

chapter 35

Land Expropriation and Demolition Breed Factional Politics China’s rapid economic development has accelerated urbanization in its wake. Formerly rural areas have now been delineated as urban construction areas, and land expropriation, housing demolition, and resettlement have become the most common phenomena in almost every city’s suburban areas. Expropriation, demolition, and resettlement require compensation and involves the distribution and adjustment of interests. Earlier institutions that had been established for agricultural operations have shown signs of becoming outmoded, given the need to dispense huge amounts of compensatory payments for the expropriation of land and demolition, and the vast opportunities for reaping profits during the expropriation and demolition process have attracted all kinds of people. In village governance, its most typical manifestation is the intense competition in village elections and the emergence of factional politics—​all aimed at gaining those profits. Once the process of expropriation and demolition comes to an end, however, this form of factional politics will die out. Land expropriation and housing demolition have two important features:  huge interests and the immobility of land. Since urban construction must be carried out in accordance with plans, the peasants in particular locations hold some leverage for demanding for high prices. Nail households are those that stop at nothing in their quest for higher compensation. The more these nail households emphasize that expropriation and demolition must not be coerced, the more they cling to an opportunistic mindset, demanding high prices, and they tend to use radical means of gaining more profit. Rapid economic development and urban expansion have weakened local governments’ ability to stand off against nail households over prolonged periods of time. The huge interests, the immobility of land, and expropriation and demolition deadlines make the entire process a nexus where dilemmas are most concentrated, where conflicts are fiercest, and the likelihood of vicious crimes most likely to occur. It must be noted here that by “nail households” I do not refer to those households that ask for reasonable compensation for expropriation and resettlement, but to households that demand more than is reasonable. A local government cannot yield and give out such compensation, because as soon as it does, it would have to do the same across the board to other households,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_036

250 Chapter 35 and that in turn would produce a new round of nail households to deal with, so that in the end, the dilemmas and conflicts remain, no matter how high the compensation becomes. Local governments must complete the expropriation, demolition, and resettlement tasks within a time limit, so a basic method for achieving its goal is to use the asymmetrical distribution of power, responsibility, and profits. This “asymmetrical distribution of power, responsibility, and profits” means that people in the higher levels of government demand their subordinates to finish the tasks, but leave it up to the latter to figure out how to complete them, as long as they follow the law and satisfy the masses. Some tasks are very difficult to accomplish by following conventional methods, but under the higher-​ups’ “one-​vote veto” pressure, the subordinates have to take the initiative to think up the right methods and study the “advanced experiences” of other localities. This relationship between the higher-​ups and subordinates exists only within the civil administrative system. Because village cadres are not salaried civil servants but part-​timers receiving work-​loss compensation, this asymmetrical distribution of rights, responsibilities, and interests has no effect on them. If village cadres have great responsibilities but no benefits, they will simply not pro-​actively carry on with their work. It is almost impossible for local governments to accomplish the task of expropriation and resettlement without the aid of village cadres who understand village situations. The easiest way to arouse village cadres’ enthusiasm for assisting in expropriation and resettlement is to reward them at the completion of the process. There are three kinds of rewards or benefits: (1) rewards on completing tasks; (2) using a system allowing discretionary use of unused budgetary funds (baoganzhi), which gives cadres the right to claim a share of the surplus; and (3) letting the cadres benefit from the grey areas, for example, letting them land earth-​moving projects after expropriation and demolition take place. The only way the village cadres can get those benefits are by assisting the local governments complete the tasks of expropriation, demolition, and resettlement, and virtually all of these are ruthless men with triad connections, because they are the ones most capable of handling nail households. The local governments fear nail households, but the latter fear gangs and thugs, who in turn fear the government. Indeed, “When vice rises by one foot, virtue rises by ten” (mogao yichi, daogao yizhang 魔高一尺,道高一丈). Thus, ruthless people with triad backgrounds have a natural advantage as village cadres in areas where expropriation, demolition, and resettlement is underway, because they can assist the local governments to accomplish these tasks. They can also profit by landing earth-​moving and other projects. They are both motivated and able.

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There are two ways a ruthless person can become a village cadre: become the village Party secretary or get selected for the post of village head. The prerequisite of becoming a village Party secretary, however, is to be a Party member, and for ruthless persons with triad associations to become village Party secretaries would not look good at all, so towns and townships are unwilling to appoint people like this to the post. That leaves open the post of village head. Local governments are not too concerned about who becomes village head—​ anyone with the ability to get elected can be one. Because there are many profit-​making opportunities from expropriation and resettlement, many villagers hope to get elected as village cadres. The pre-​ election is based on “recommendation by the masses (haitui),” but the official election is competitive, usually between two candidates with considerable ability. The village head position gives access to many profit-​making opportunities from expropriation and resettlement, so that intensifies fierce competition in the villagers’ committees. In an election with two candidates for village head, the competition will soon become a competition between the two election teams. To win, both sides will use all kinds of methods to win villagers’ support, so the two campaign teams will analyze the situation, devise strategy, and mobilize people. Traditional and modern relationships are also put to service in campaigning. To win villagers’ support, vote-​buying emerged as a matter of course; the campaign teams themselves also need to meet expenses. Therefore, village elections in for areas with much land expropriation, housing demolition, and resettlement, it is impossible to join the election without money. Generally, neither of the two candidates for a village head meeting will have many “iron” or assured votes, but there are plenty of people with “interests” in the election. Hence the villagers often can be divided into three groups: the approximately one-​third who firmly support one candidate, the one-​third who support the other, and the one-​third who are swing voters. The competition between the two candidates consists mainly of attracting the swing voters by pulling all possible connections and even vote-​buying. Swing voters do not care about who become village cadres, but if a vote can be sold at hundreds or even thousands of yuan, it shows that the person who buys the vote cares about them very much. After intensive mobilization, it becomes quite clear who the villagers will vote for, so both candidates can begin calculating the number of votes they are likely to secure. At this point, an election loss would mean that all one’s previous efforts will come to naught, so on the eve of the election it is quite normal for each side to make a last-​ditch effort to buy the other side’s assured votes at high prices. The candidates will need to spend money again after the election to thank their assured voters for their support.

252 Chapter 35 For a single election, hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan are given away to villagers, and in the process, almost all of the villagers are divided into different factions. Various means used during the intense campaigns and intensive mobilizations create highly emotional states and huge amounts of psychological energy, which then divide the villages. Regardless of who wins the election and becomes village head, the other side will form a united front whose team and groups will not disappear after losing the election. They will bide their time, objecting to everything the other side says or does, and waiting for any opportunity to put up a resistance. Because of his election victory, the village head will have greater mobilization ability than the village Party secretary. He may have a position stronger than that of the village Party secretary in the village power structure, and he will be actively involved in assisting the local government with expropriation, demolition, and resettlement, looking for profit-​making opportunities in order to recoup the funds he invested in the election. Local governments are glad to see village cadres helping them with expropriation, demolition, and resettlement and earning some profit from the grey areas. However, within their villages, the opposition, led by the losing candidate in the last village election, may express their opposition through petitions to higher levels of government. In normal circumstances, the local governments will protect village cadres who are actively assisting them and ignore the petitions. However, petitioners who have clear and specific proofs and show strong determination cannot be ignored. In that case, even after they have spent huge sums of money in the election and actively assisted the local government with expropriation, demolition, and resettlement, the village cadres are jailed. However, this does not mean the opposition has scored a victory. Because of the sharp divide between the two factions, the affected faction will send a substitute to compete for the village head position in the next election, even if their man has been sentenced or dismissed. As long as the conflicts from expropriation, demolition, and resettlement and the attendant profiteering exist, there will always be fierce competition for the positions of village cadres, as well as mobilized and factionally divided villages. Each triennial election causes a rift, and such rifting accumulates through the years, to the point that elderly women from different factions will not even worship Buddha together. Village elections and village governance are thus continuously influenced by village factions and factional politics. However, this kind of factional politics disappear in a village when expropriation, demolition, and resettlement are finished, since there are no more profits to be gained.

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I should note that factional politics are atypical for developed regions and normal villages. In the central and western regions, where interests are few, villagers’ committee elections cannot arouse enthusiasm, and mobilization is minimal; in villages with clans or small kinship groups, factional politics will surface as traditional blood ties still play a role. In the developed coastal regions, villages where the expropriation of land and resettlement are completed are often highly divided between ordinary people and a small number of business owners. There is also little opportunity to profit through violence. Politics in these villages is not factional but oligarchic, i.e., the wealthiest reach a consensus and balance in the villages’ political decision-​making.

chapter 36

The Unaffordability of Village Governance for Poor Village Collectives The quality of rural grassroots organizations relates to whether issues relating to agriculture, rural areas, and peasants can be resolved smoothly, and whether China’s modernization has a stable rural foundation. At present, grassroots organizations are plagued with problems. How to build sound grassroots organizations will require careful consideration. Building rural grassroots organizations is generally a part of Party-​building, because the village Party branch is the most important grassroots organization. Thus grassroots Party-​building (jiceng dangjian 基层党建) is an important function for the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Zhongguo gongchandang zhongyang weiyuanhui zhuzhi bu 中国共产党中央委员会组织部; abbreviated Zhongzubu 中组部) and all of the Organization Departments of the provincial, municipal, and autonomous region Party committees. Hubei Province even requires villagers’ groups throughout the province to have an annual collective income of 50,000 yuan, to ensure they each have greater fighting spirit. Meanwhile, the rural grassroots organizations clearly do not just mind their own business—​they touch on everything else—​so building them must be a multi-​pronged, collaborative effort.

1

After the division of fields among households, and especially after the 1990s, more and more problems emerged in rural grassroots organizations. Before the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the main jobs of villagers’ committee and village Party committee cadres in most villages of China were collecting crops, distributing funds, and enforcing family planning. Because peasants had a heavy tax burden and there were no low-​cost means of collecting agricultural taxes and fees, the collection of crops and distribution of funds had become the “most difficult job in the world.” As the peasants’ tax burden increased, the relationship between cadres and the masses grew tenser by the day. Meanwhile, even as the task of collecting agricultural taxes and fees had to be completed, rural grassroots organizations also had to “mix completely (dacheng yipian 打成一片)” with the peasants, so they really understood the peasants’

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_037

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problems. But the peasants would often use village cadres’ inability to solve their difficulties as bargaining chips, with which they would dicker over the amount of taxes and fees to be paid. Therefore, the grassroots organizations could not ignore these problems and had little choice but to think of ways to solve peasants’ difficulties (inconvenient production facilities, inadequate provision of public goods, etc.). To do this, when the village cadres went out collecting payments, the village cadres would also take the opportunity to collect “common production fees (gongtong shengchan fei 共同生产费).” They could also mobilize peasants to contribute “voluntary labor (yiwugong 义务工)” and “labor for accumulating credits (jileigong 积累工)” toward public projects and public affairs, which could in turn benefit peasants’ basic agricultural production and everyday lives. Thus, even though the overall rural situation was deteriorating and the relationship between cadres and the masses was tense, grassroots organizations still retained their fighting spirit and aggressiveness; they could still organize the peasants for common tasks. Their achievements during this period were mixed. As for accomplishing state-​directed tasks such as family planning, rural grassroots organizations were quite effective. After the state abolished agricultural taxes and fees, it also increased its transfer of funds to the countryside. The severity of the situation before the abolition of taxes and subsequent comprehensive reforms, however, was overestimated, since there was greater focus on the tense relationship between cadres and the masses; the deterioration of the rural situation was attributed to the peasants’ huge tax burden. In the beginning, the reforms sought only to reduce and regulate the taxes and fees, but the difficulty of collecting them remained, which led the central government to decide to abolish them entirely. The central government believed that if the peasants were relieved of the tax burden as well as the two “voluntary” or “for credit” labor obligations, there would be no more conflicts and tensions between cadres and the masses. The deterioration of the rural situation was thus stopped. The abolition of agricultural taxes and fees completely changed the state-​ peasant relationship that had existed for thousands of years. The reforms that began with the present century were historical but had to be done. But why was it that the rural society of the past, with its millennia of agricultural taxes, could maintain such long-​term stability? Of course, by 2000, China had become a highly industrial and commercial society—​the conditions for abolishing the taxes were already in place. The central government also believed that part of the tension between cadres and peasants was because the former had exacted the various taxes and fees maliciously, that they basically lacked integrity, and that once the taxes

256 Chapter 36 were abolished, it would no longer need to support so many of them. Thus, in the subsequent reforms, it abolished the position of villagers’ group leader, integrated villages and merged villagers’ groups (hecun bingzu 合村并组), merged townships into towns (chexiang bingzhen 撤乡并镇), reduced village cadres, streamlined township organizations, and even pushed the “various outposts of governmental bureaus (qizhan basuo 七站八所)” into the market (e.g. the reform in Hubei Province public institutions toward “using money to buy services [yiqian yangshi 以钱养事]”). Grassroots organizations thus withdrew from peasants’ daily lives. The problem that has emerged after the abolition of taxes is that peasants each operate on such a small scale that they basically cannot resolve the various common or public problems of agriculture and daily life, and with the withdrawal of grassroots organizations, things have become more disorderly. A typical example has occurred in Hubei, where rice-​growers who had always relied on large-​or medium-​scale irrigation facilities run by village collectives at low cost no longer can do so. It is left to each individual household to drill wells for irrigation. Rural society has fallen into a spontaneous state. The only grassroots organization left is the maintenance committee. Individual households that need public facilities and services would petition higher-​level governments to demand that the grassroots level resolve their problems. However, by this time, grassroots organizations lack the motivation and ability to do so. The lack of motivation is due to the fact that whether they solve the problems or not, it no longer has any bearing on their work performance. In the past, if the grassroots failed to solve peasants’ problems, the peasants would refuse to pay taxes and fees; now that leverage is gone. Without taxes and fees to collect, what is left of the relationship between the peasants and grassroots organizations? Tax collection had been a hard “one-​vote veto” task that the grassroots organizations had to complete; without it, why must the grassroots organizations do all those miscellaneous things the peasants cannot handle themselves? As for the grassroots organizations’ lack of ability, this stems from their nearly complete lack of resources. Although rural land is collectively owned, the current farmland system has steadily been strengthening peasant households’ contractual and management rights to the land while hollowing out collective ownership, to the point that it has no benefits or power. Even if the grassroots organizations wanted to do something for the villagers, they would have difficulty doing it. Furthermore, during the reforms, the central government demanded that local governments stop collecting any past agricultural taxes and fees that were still owed: it locked up village debts. This was originally meant to be a

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temporary, strategic halt. The outcome, however, is that it remains in place more than ten years later. What this means is that the basic relationship between obligations and rights in rural areas was messed up: the honest and law-​ abiding peasants who supported their grassroots organization suffered the losses, but the cunning people and those who opposed the grassroots organizations gained. It turned out that listening to the cadres’ advice and following the Party’s directives was the wrong thing to do. As a consequence, problems began to surface for the entire team of grassroots organizations. What worsens this further is the lock-​up of village-​level debts, a considerable portion of which consisted of money that the villages had borrowed from peasants. If the village collective borrowed 10,000 yuan from villagers, then after more than ten years, neither the principal nor the interest has been repaid. Is the value of 10,000 yuan today the same as it was more than ten years ago? And there is still no plan to return the money. Some of the peasants are now old, on death’s doorstep, or even passed away, and still they still have not been repaid. There may be dozens of households in a village who have never recouped their loans, so they seethe with anger, and whenever their village’s grassroots organization carries out a public project, they become nail households in opposition to it. This sort of resistance is effective. Even if grassroots organizations are ready to provide public services and have the resources, then how can they succeed without the support of the masses, and with determined opponents in the way?

2

Before the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, rural grassroots organizations were more actively involved in peasants’ agricultural production and looked into the peasants’ daily needs, since this would make it easier for them when they collected the taxes and fees. They could be seen everywhere in the village working hard with peasants and “blending in”—​but not after the abolition. They lack the ability or motivation to “blend in,” let alone connect with or be concerned about the peasants. So now the question is whether individual peasant households can handle the various problems they encounter in their work and daily lives. Whither will all of this spontaneous force lead China’s rural society? The expansion of all of this rural disorder will not only leave the countryside in a mess, but also seriously damage the foundation for China’s modernization. The abolition of agricultural taxes did not immediately resolve the “three rural issues.” Instead, they manifested themselves in other forms. First to appear

258 Chapter 36 were in the common or shared aspects of agricultural production. Peasants would appeal to higher levels of government, for instance, for assistance in irrigation, asking the state to resolve issues that could not be solved by individual households. Second, whereas the grassroots organizations had formerly collected fees from peasants to support the “five guarantee households (wubao hu 五保户; the five guarantees included basic food, clothing, housing, healthcare, and funerary expenses),” this task now had to be covered by the state. Fortunately, the central government had money, so it started making transfer payments to the villages. By now, its annual financial outlay for supporting agriculture has long exceeded a trillion yuan per year. For thousands of years, rural society had been relatively autonomous and self-​sufficient. The state rarely had to send funds to rural areas; instead, it collected them from rural areas. Quite the reverse is happening now. How are the transfer payments used? Wherever they are needed most. But since the money is freely given, one may be sure that every locality claims to need it. Does anyone ever complain of having too much money? Thus, judging solely on the basis of need is not enough; it also depends on who can best express that need, and what kinds of need are expressed. Thus, after the abolition of agricultural taxes, an express-​and-​response (biaoda huiying 表达回应) form of distributing state funds has emerged, in which the state increases payments in areas where peasants express strong demand, and whoever is best able to express a strong demand will obtain more resources. A good way to obtain state resources is to submit a petition. This has resulted in more and more “petitions for assistance (qiuyuanshi shangfang 求援式上访)” and even “profit-​seeking petitions (moulixing shangfang 谋利型上访).” In this way, the state has gradually lost its control of resources being transferred to the countryside. They became like emergency firefighting resources, or the proverbial “milk” for “the kids who cry loudest get the milk.” All kinds of forces are doing their utmost competing with one another over this “milk,” whether going through private connections to “strive for capital and projects (zhengzi paoxiang 争资跑项)” or petitioning higher levels of government to “safeguard rights (weiquan 维权)” and gain some profit. Large numbers of petitioners are flocking to Beijing, making safeguarding rights a problem. The earlier “one-​vote veto” tasks of collecting agricultural taxes and monitoring family planning have given way to figuring out how to maintain rural stability and reduce the number of petitions in Beijing. “No incidents (bu chushi 不出事)” has become the grassroots organizations’ goal—​obviously a more passive strategy than what they had in the past. The indiscriminate use of national resources to appease petitioners has turned the relationship between obligations and rights upside-​down, which is certain to generate even more issues.

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The central government is certainly not satisfied with peasants’ petitions and the disorder in their work and life, so it requires that local governments do their best to solve the problems. Since the grassroots organizations are so incapable and unmotivated, the central and local governments stress the importance for themselves to improve their attitude in serving the peasants and opening channels for the peasants to express problems, and when it is difficult to clarify these problems, pressure is exerted on the grassroots organization to solve the most urgent ones, despite their limited resources. Mayors’ and county chiefs’ hotlines and mailboxes, consistent with the smooth channels set up for submitting petitions, have been set up everywhere for peasants’ appeals, and the peasants demand that the government solve every kind of problem, including arguments between husbands and wives. As a result, as described earlier, we see local cadres rushing out to drain the fields in a downpour while peasants sit by playing mahjong and complaining about how the cadres are so inefficient and how they have failed to save their crops. The peasants no longer have any obligations, and villages lack rules and regulations pertaining to obligations and rights. The state just wants to solve problems or issues raised by peasants one at a time, but it does not really let grassroots organizations fully explore their potential in adopting strategies that would enable them to independently deal with issues. While it goes on solving things on a case-​by-​ case basis with limited resources, it has inadvertently switched rights and obligations at the grassroots level, so that peasants are becoming or are being replaced by trouble-​makers, and no matter how many resources it sends to the countryside, it cannot solve the problem of grassroots governance.

3

A typical example of the grassroots organizations’ unwillingness or inability to respond to peasants’ legitimate demands is in the matter of land reallocation. Agriculture has changed a great deal after the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees. One of the things that peasants hope for the most is to have their small, scattered plots of land plots combined into single large plots. In hilly rice-​growing areas especially, they would be able to reduce their labor input by nearly a third and production costs by a fourth if they were to farm contiguous plots. Shayang County (沙洋县) in Hubei Province has made effort in this direction by confirming the use rights of collectively owned land, but the move met with little enthusiasm from village cadres, since “dividing and contracting the land (huapian chengbao 划片承包)” takes a great deal of effort, especially when the current central land policy emphasizes stability and greater land

260 Chapter 36 contract management rights. “Dividing and contracting the land” also needs the consensus of every peasant in the village; a single dissatisfied peasant can put all of their massive background work to waste. Why make an effort when it is likely to be wasted? If the grassroots organizations cannot respond to peasants’ legitimate demands, they cannot be effective. Conversely, if policies were to support grassroots autonomy and allow the grassroots organizations to reallocate land in line with peasants’ demands, grassroots organizations with any enthusiasm would be able to respond. This response would win strong peasant support, and grassroots organizations would be empowered to boost their capability in maintaining a self-​regulating order. In other words, whether the current rural grassroots organization succeeds or not depends on its institutional design. If the basic design merely emphasizes peasants’ contract management rights while hollowing out the collective ownership of land, then individual peasant households, with “1.3 mu of land per person and not more than 10 mu per household,” and that bit of land scattered over as many as 10 plots, will have great difficulty forming any production order on their own. Conversely, if collective ownership is well implemented and granted certain authority, then there is hope for grassroots organizations and self-​regulating order in village society. During a field trip to Qianjiang, Hubei, the head of the municipal Economic Management Bureau said that whenever a village has land for flexible purposes (jidong di) and collective resources, the village cadres will take initiative and have problem-​solving ability as well as a sense of honor. The village will then be well-​governed. Whenever a village has no land for flexible purposes, its village governance will almost always be a mess. Since Qianjiang City is part of the Jianghan Plain, village collectives have few resources apart from land. Why does land for flexible purposes make such a great difference in village governance? The reason is simple. In a village with 2,000 mu of farmland, the village collective will have 200 mu or 10% of land for flexible purposes, which rented out will bring 100,000 yuan of collective income. As rental income from land is stable and the rental amount is made public, it is impossible for village cadres to personally profit from that land. The rental income can be used to pay past collective debts year by year, or to deal with public issues in peasants’ farm work and daily lives that urgently need resolution. Peasants will then take the initiative to discuss how to effectively use the funds through the assembly of villagers’ representatives, and village cadres can also consider how to use this income to deal with various important issues. In short, with this stable rental income, village autonomy has a certain economic foundation, and the self-​regulating order of the village collective becomes possible. Without rice in your hand, you can’t call the chickens. With

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stable income, village collectives can implement projects and have a starting point for concentrating forces to form a consensus. In the past, Party-​building required village collectives to earn collective income by establishing enterprises and eliminating empty-​shell villages (kongkecun 空壳村), but in the current buyers’ market, where everyone is looking for opportunities to make money, village collectives wield no advantage in establishing enterprises. Instead, since there are huge uncertainties in the market and moral hazard in village cadres cannot be overcome, the collective enterprises collapsed one after the other. Profound lessons were drawn from this, but comparatively speaking, since the rental income from land for flexible purposes is open and stable, with no chance of fluctuating sharply, it has become the economic foundation for village collective development and the building of grassroots organizations. Village collectives hope to use land for flexible purposes to provide land for any population increase and to induce villagers to pay attention to the collectives’ activities. By keeping 10% of the arable land as land for flexible purposes without contracting it out, the village collectives have removed 10% of every household’s contracted land, but without seriously impacting peasants’ agricultural income or family income. With land for flexible purposes and the rental income that comes with it, village collectives can respond to peasants’ legitimate demands, solve the kinds of difficulties that cannot be handled by individual peasant households, and in the process, reduce production expenses and increase incomes. In Qianjiang City, all of the grassroots organizations with collective land for flexible purposes are well developed, while the opposite is true for those without land for flexible purposes. However, the Law on the Contracting of Rural Land (《土地承包法》) clearly states that village collectives cannot keep more than 5% of farmland for land for flexible purposes. Later on, the state has repeatedly stipulated that village collectives should not keep land for flexible purposes. The rural policies of the recent ten-​plus years have constantly emphasized strengthening peasant households’ contractual management rights and weakening village collective land ownership, with the result that they have steadily eroded the clause in Article 8 of the Constitution, which stipulates, “Rural collective economic organizations implement a two-​level management system characterized by the combination of centralized and decentralized operations on the basis of household contracted management.” The institutional basis of rural grassroots organizations has gradually weakened, and villages have lost their ability to maintain a self-​regulating order, putting the state in a dilemma. The greatest advantage and foundation of China’s rural grassroots organizations is the collective ownership of rural land. Without it, China’s villages

262 Chapter 36 cannot maintain their own order, and their problems will eventually shift to the cities, thus undermining China’s modernization. China’s great size and regional differences are such that the state cannot solve the problem of providing public goods for every peasant household in every village. Only if it were truly to let the villages have agency and initiative can they develop themselves, and only then would its rural investment be effective. Building motivated, active grassroots organizations is the most urgent task of current work on agriculture, rural areas, and peasants. The method is simple: just let villages keep 10% of their farmland as land for flexible purposes and ensure that collective land ownership is well implemented. It would be a mistake not to make a fuss about collective ownership and just let individual peasants try to solve public problems affecting their production and daily life on their own and to deal with the market freely. But the current rural policy seems to be heading in this wrong direction.

chapter 37

Clan Power and Village Governance in Southern Jiangxi Province 1

Family Planning in Southern Jiangxi Province

1.1 My immediate impression when doing field research in the villages of southern Jiangxi was how many people there were, especially students. When I was in primary school in my village in Jingmen (荆门), Hubei, there were only two classes, with around 100 students in each grade. Now the four village primary schools have been consolidated into one central primary school; each grade has only one class with less than 50 students each. In other words, the number of births each year is only 1/​5 or even 1/​10 of the number of births each year during my childhood. However, in southern Jiangxi, every village primary school is still full. In one village that we visited, the state is investing 3 million yuan to build extensions on the village primary schools, which indicates that these village schools are prospering. The census data on southern Jiangxi villages is also a mess. For instance, there are 4,048 people in S Village according to the official statistics, but the number of people who are participating in the New Rural Cooperative Medical System (hezuo yiliao) is 4,100, and the village Party secretary estimates that the actual number of people is approximately 4,300 to 4,400. In Y Village, the number of people who participated in farmland allocation was 3,790, while the number registered in the New Rural Cooperative Medical System is 4,700, but the actual population exceeds 5,000. L Village, the largest administrative village in southern Jiangxi has a registered population of 8,837, but the actual number may exceed 10,000. The excess population comes from people whose illegal births were never registered. The most noticeable thing about the peasant households of southern Jiangxi, of course, is the number of children being born. Peasants here do not have only one child except for very special reasons, and it is very common to see three or four children in the family. Almost every peasant family has at least one son. There are even instances in which peasants have nine children so they can have at least one son. In each of the four villages I studied, since the implementation of family planning, there were at most only two to three households with only daughters. In these cases, having no son was not due

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_038

264 Chapter 37 to unwillingness to have another child, but to an unexpected loss of fertility, whether because of illness or unanticipated tubal ligation. Because these peasants have many children, with at least two and commonly three and even four or five children, there are many children in southern Jiangxi’s village schools, and every household has a group of elementary school-​age children taking meals together. The problem is that, starting in the early 1980s, the state had imposed the compulsory one-​size-​fits-​all family planning policy throughout the country, but when implementing the policy in Jiangxi, the province was allowed the so-​called “one-​and-​a-​half child (yihaiban 一孩半)” policy; households that had a son as the eldest child were not allowed to have a second child, but those who had a daughter as the eldest child could have a second baby after five years. Family planning is a national policy, which applies the “one-​vote veto” nationwide. Under the strong pressure of the one-​size-​fit-​all policy, the family planning policy was fully implemented throughout the vast majority of China’s territory. So why are extra births so common in southern Jiangxi? Why has the family planning policy had virtually no effect here? 1.2 The effect of any policy is constrained by its object and the way it is implemented. Nationally, the family planning policy has been rather well implemented—​ except for southern Jiangxi, so we shall focus our discussion on the policy’s object (southern Jiangxi peasants) and the way it was implemented there in order to determine the reasons. Southern Jiangxi is a typical clan-​dominated area, populated mainly by the Hakka. Most of its clan-​centered villages have several hundred or even more than a thousand years of history. In L Town, there is a total of 60,000 people and 16 villages, and most of the population has one of four predominant surnames. In other words, the towns I studied had formed large cross-​village clans. These super-​large local clans co-​exist with one another as the result of hundreds of years of fierce competition among them. In this competition, over hundreds of years, they would ally themselves with distant towns in order to attack a neighboring one. This powerful clan structure thus has an influence on family planning in two ways: the peasants’ concept of fertility, and the ability of the clan to take action. Regarding the concept of fertility, peasants in southern Jiangxi strongly believe in carrying on the ancestral line. They say they are most fearful of seeing the Chinese character of “stop (zhi 止)” on the clan chart—​households without a son “stop” continuing the line; they “have no male descendant (duanzi juesun 断子绝孙).” To “have no male descendant” means that the family cannot

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continue to worship the ancestors or complete their “life mission (rensheng renwu 人生任务).” Its members will have done a great disservice to the ancestors, will not be able to reunite with them, or be able to rest in peace after death. Life would have no value or meaning and not be worth living. In religion, this is what we call the ontological value level, something on the level of peasants’ life dynamics. On the social level, people with no son will feel inferior to others; they are pitied and looked down upon. In southern Jiangxi, if an elderly person dies, then the pallbearers, called the “Eight Immortals (baxian 八仙)” are paid as much as several hundred yuan each time. However, the only people who can become an “immortal” are young married men who still have no son. Although the high rate may indicate some empathy and concern about families without sons, more often it reflects contempt. The “Eight Immortals” are unclean, untouchable, and not allowed to visit others throughout the Chinese New Year period up to the 15th day of the first lunar month, because their visit would bring bad luck and baleful influences. Only sons in southern Jiangxi can help to provide care for elderly parents, because daughters are married off. Daughters are thought to belong ultimately to other families, and one proverb compares a married daughter with spilled water (jiachuqu de nüer, pochuqu de shui 嫁出去的女儿泼出去的水). This idea is heightened by the fact that most villages are single-​clan villages, but intermarriage between people with the same surname is not allowed, so that daughters usually marry men in other villages and other clans. During my field research, I met a man in his eighties who had four daughters but could only live alone in a welfare home. He knew he could only be cremated after death, that it would be impossible for him to be put to rest underground. One day before the end of my visit, he passed away in the middle of the night, with no family member at his bedside. His four daughters and sons-​in-​law came late the second day, even though they lived nearby and had been notified immediately by the director of the welfare house. The month before his passing, none of his daughters, sons-​in-​law, or relatives came to visit him. Putting all these factors together, one can understand that peasants in southern Jiangxi will do their utmost to have a son. Members of a peasant household that is no longer capable of producing a son do not even dare to look at others directly. Their whole mental state becomes negative, shrunken, and given over to despair. One peasant household in S Village has two daughters, and the wife will not be able to give birth to a son because she had a forced ligation. The whole family is trapped in negativity, and the breadwinner, who is only in his 50s, has been included in the minimum living security system. In another village, a peasant’s wife had given

266 Chapter 37 birth to two daughters, so one night she was forced to have her tubes tied by the Town Family Planning Office. She was no longer able to have any son. All of the villagers thought that the village Party secretary had reported her to the Town Family Planning Office. This put great pressure on the village Party secretary, and he constantly felt ill at ease about it, because he could not figure out why such an accident could have occurred. He soon resigned but continued to investigate how it had happened. More than ten years later he finally determined that the informant had been a cadre from a higher level of government who had been stationed in the village at the time. The person saw the pregnant woman and directly reported her to the Town Family Planning Office, which then forced her into induced labor and tubal ligation. Another clan-​related factor that affects family planning is the ability of the clans themselves to take action. 1.3 Under the powerful, top-​down, one-​size-​fit-​all family planning policy, southern Jiangxi’s villages must enforce family planning just like everywhere else in China. First, the state’s strong policy propaganda is evident everywhere. The slogan likewise is the same:  “Three minutes to think it through, and if not, the tornado (tongbutong sanfenzhong, zaibutong longjuanfeng 通不通三分钟,再不通龙卷风.” This means that the policy can be explained in three minutes, and if you do not understand it, compulsory measures will be used. If villagers do not obey, the family planning work team will adopt coercive measures, the most common of which is collective punishment:  if the wife flees, they find her husband; if the husband flees, they find his parents and siblings; and if no one can be found, then in line with the proverb, “The monk can run away, but not his temple (paodeliao heshang, paobuliao miao 跑得了和尚跑不了庙),” they dismantle the house, since that stays put. Of course, the purpose of “dismantling” the house is not to demolish it completely but to use it as a threat, so they will always remove a few roof tiles or push down the walls of an annex. Almost all villages have houses partly dismantled in this way. As long as they do not go to great extremes, the family planning work teams are all rather steady. If a woman targeted for ligation escapes and secretly gives birth to a child, it will angrily remove her roof tiles. In general, family planning work is considered so vastly important that it has a great deterrence effect on everyone. However, southern Jiangxi has clans that will act in unity. Even if they are carrying out national policy, grassroots work teams cannot overdo it. Moreover, the village cadres themselves are clan members and village residents, and

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if they want to continue living in their villages, they cannot go overboard; they can assist higher-​level work teams only within a certain limit. In 1994, the deputy Party secretary of the town committee in L Town brought the family planning team to conduct inspections of family planning in one of the villages and to issue fines for violations. They found violations and issued fines of 3,000 yuan on several households. The village Party secretary believed the purpose of the fines had been achieved, so that the no-​holds-​barred enforcement of the compulsory measures should not continue. The town deputy Party secretary asked a village cadre to lead the family planning team to the peasant households that needed to pay the fines, but the latter was reluctant to do so, so the town deputy Party secretary and the work team went ahead without the village cadre. They reached one household where there were too many children, and only a few days earlier the town had confiscated several packs of rice from them, but the family had already bought the rice back. When the family planning team saw it and wanted to confiscate it again, the family was unwilling to give it up. The village Party secretary rushed to the scene to explain the situation and stop the work team, but the town deputy Party secretary shouted expletives about the former’s mother. It so happened that several of the village Party secretary’s brothers were watching, and his mother was also nearby. She rushed to the town deputy Party secretary demanding that he explain why he had insulted her. Many villagers took the opportunity to shout out slogans to the effect that the work team was even worse than the Kuomintang (the old Nationalist Party) and demanding, “Kill the work team!” Soon the work team was surrounded by thousands of villagers, some holding kitchen knives and threatening to kill the town deputy Party secretary. One made several attempts to hack at the man’s head, but fortunately the village deputy Party secretary parried the blows. The standoff continued for a long time, and for a time the situation became extremely chaotic and dangerous. The members of the work team suffered a heavy beating, and they and the town deputy Party secretary were all frightened out of their wits, feeling their situation was hopeless. In the end, thanks to the strong intercession and arguments of the village Party secretary, the standoff ended, and the work team was let go. The fines and confiscated rice were left behind in the village, but their car had been vandalized. After that, the family planning team never dared to re-​enter that village, and if they heard that someone from this village had been arrested for a family planning violation, they would call the village Party secretary to fetch the person back home. In another incident in 1995, a town family planning work team that went to another village on a family planning assignment was so annoyed for failing to find a target that they not only toppled the walls of a peasant’s house, but

268 Chapter 37 also took away his tv and burned the clothes of a man in his seventies. This enraged the old man so much that he grabbed a hoe to fight the work team, which ran off when they saw he meant business. By this time, hundreds of villagers had also gathered and gave chase until they reached the neighboring village, several kilometers away. The village Party secretary of the neighboring village was very familiar with the work team, so he helped to dissuade and pacify the villagers. Only after much persuasion did the work team manage to escape with their lives. Family planning was not the only cause of such mass incidents. In 1996, in the town adjacent to L Town, tens of thousands of peasants besieged the town government building on account of the collection of the Slaughter Tax (tuzai shui 屠宰税). They burned official vehicles and meted out beatings. Another incident involving taxes occurred in 1997. It can be said that in the mid-​ 1990s, the collection of agricultural taxes and fees and enforcement of family planning was carried out with great strength, but the peasants resisted just as strongly. If this kind of resistance also made use of the clans’ ability to act, the resistance could reach an extraordinarily high level and create a national incident. Of course, such capacity for action is something that local governments have to worry about. If family planning work throughout the country were to be carried out following the “one-​vote veto” system, it would be bound to fail. Hence, the family planning work in southern Jiangxi differs greatly from the “one-​vote veto” approach used elsewhere. Under the national policy, it is forbidden to give birth to more than the stipulated number of children. A woman whose first child is a girl can have a second child after five years; any violation of this gets a fine, and the grassroots cadres get punished for it, too. If in a village there are several cases of women becoming pregnant a second time after having given birth to a son, the village Party secretary will definitely be dismissed, and the town Party secretary must also receive a punishment, even a dismissal. Family planning records in southern Jiangxi are kept in a general ledger. That is, the higher levels of government will stipulate that each administrative village achieve a certain rate in terms of iud insertion, ligation, and induced labor, all of which can be checked by quantitative means. Theoretically, if the rates of iud insertion, ligation, and induced labor increase, there definitely will be a drop in the fertility rate. iud insertion, ligation, and induced labor are directed at women of childbearing age, a large proportion of whom have not come under control by higher levels of government. They give the administrative village level more room to fulfill tasks that the higher levels require it to do.

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The village cadres’ main work, then, consists of filling the “three quotas (sanlü 三率)” in family planning—​iud insertion, ligation, and induced labor—​mandated by higher levels of government. Under this tremendous family planning pressure, peasant households without a son will do their best to give birth in hiding. Peasant households with two daughters still want to try for a son. If the third child is a daughter again, they would rather give this daughter away and continue to have a fourth child, and so on, until they give birth to a son. Furthermore, peasant households with two sons or one son and one daughter still hope to have more, based on the local custom, which holds that two sons and two daughters are best. However, the village must fulfill the “three quotas,” so the village cadres will want to persuade the households with a son to go for ligation or induced labor. The reason they cite in their arguments is, “If you don’t have it done, isn’t that like preventing another family from having any male heir?” This is usually enough to persuade a peasant household still thinking of having a third child to give up the idea. Thus, given the circumstances of the strong national “one-​vote veto” policy of family planning, the peasants’ strong belief in having sons, and the clans’ strong ability to take action, family planning work in southern Jiangxi has changed from preventing violations of the family planning policy to compulsorily fulfilling the three quotas, effectively controlling population growth. However, this control only changes the earlier standard of one couple with four children to one couple with two and a half children. Although there is still a big gap between southern Jiangxi and the vast majority of Chinese villages, where “one-​and-​a half children” is standard, it still vigorously promotes family planning work. 1.4 Considering that peasants are steadfast about having sons and will resort to large-​scale clan protests, implementing the “one-​vote veto” measure in family planning in southern Jiangxi would be virtually impossible. Hence, family planning here has changed from the “one-​vote veto” policy, by which village cadres could be dismissed, to the fulfillment of the “three quotas,” and as a result, the peasants throughout the region violate the family planning policy. Violations of family planning policy should be punished, especially fined. Being fined is acceptable, relatively speaking, because the national policy is there, and the peasants’ sons, after all, have already been delivered. Village cadres also have had a positive attitude towards family planning fines, because 15% of the fines are kept for use in the village as part of their working funds. The amount of family planning fines collected in southern Jiangxi has always been huge. For example, in one village of 4,000 persons that we visited during our

270 Chapter 37 survey, more than one million yuan in family planning fines had been collected each year between 2012 and 2014. These fines have become the village’s main source of revenue, used to defray not only village expenses but also to cover the working funds for the grassroots government. Starting in 2015, however, compulsory measures to collect family planning fines have been disallowed. The practice of forbidding the residency registration of children for failure to pay family planning fines has also been disallowed—​which means, basically, that it will be impossible to collect family planning fines in the future. At present, grassroots-​level government in rural southern Jiangxi has fallen into financial difficulty due to the loss of income from family planning fines. Originally in the clan villages, the village cadres were members of their villages’ acquaintance society; they were protected elites. When they fulfilled the “one-​vote veto” national policy of family planning, as verified by the “three indicators,” they had protected the peasants’ desire for fertility while lowering the birth rate at the same time. However, because they could also benefit by collecting family planning fines, they had gradually become entrepreneurial (yinglixing de 赢利型的) elites. Profiting from the family planning fines had become their motivation to carry out national tasks, and this had worsened their relationship with peasants. In any case, the implementation of the national top-​down, one-​size-​fits-​all family planning policy in southern Jiangxi villages contributed greatly to reduce the average number of children per couple from four to approximately two and a half in only 20 years. Even a one-​size-​fits-​all policy can be very flexible when it encounters local reality, and the practice of family planning in southern Jiangxi is a good example. 2

Peasant Burden and Cadre-​masses Relationship in Southern Jiangxi

2.1 When conducting field surveys in southern Jiangxi villages, I asked about the peasants’ tax burden before the agricultural taxes were abolished. The village cadres and the villagers replied that the peasants’ burden was so heavy that it had caused several large-​scale mass incidents. Two in particular were the Huangpi (黄陂) Incident in 1996 and Shangyou (上犹) Incident in 1998, which triggered widespread concern and social repercussions. The Huangpi Incident especially involved several townships, tens of thousands of peasants besieging the township government, and vandalism, which greatly impacted the state-​ peasant relationship in the region.

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Peasants’ tax burden in southern Jiangxi had begun to increase in the early 1990s. It was triggered by cctv news, which had called out every day for lessening peasants’ burden. Only then did the local cadres find that the peasants’ burden in southern Jiangxi was really too light, and that it should be increased to promote local development. When farmland was first allocated to households, the peasants’ tax burden was very light in southern Jiangxi, like everywhere else in China. Collecting agricultural taxes and fees was not an issue. It was “pay enough to the state, leave enough for the collective, and keep the remainder for yourself,” and the relationships among the state, village collectives, and peasants were smooth. Around 1990, the problem of increasing taxes on peasants began to appear; the most important burdens came from various fundraising schemes that local governments directed at peasants in order to speed up infrastructure building. The “three deductions and five charges” (santi wutong 三提五统; that is, three deductions for public reserve funds, public welfare funds, and management fees, and five charges for rural education, family planning, militia training, rural road construction, and subsidies to entitled groups) also increased each year. Already in the early 1990s, the central government was calling for an alleviation of peasants’ tax and fee burdens. However, the increased taxes did solve the problem that some local governments had with insufficient funding. Accelerating local economic development, especially through infrastructure building, was also useful in satisfying peasants’ increasing demands for public services. Throughout the country, villages relied on the peasants to help finance rapid progress in infrastructure building, but the peasants’ burden in southern Jiangxi was still comparatively light. This led to moves to increase their burden, so within only a short span of three to four years, their burden changed from light to heavy, with new taxes and fees added and the existing ones becoming heavier. Apart from the state agricultural taxes, the heavier expenses came from rapid increases of the “three deductions and five charges,” plus the Slaughter Tax, Special Agricultural Product Tax (nongye techan shui 农业特产税), and Vehicle and Vessel Use Tax (chechuang shiyong shui 车船使用税). The latter taxes had basically not been collected before, but now their burden on villages became heavy. Then there were various fundraising activities, especially fundraising for the “two basics (liangji 两基)” of education (implementing nine-​ year compulsory education and eliminating teenage illiteracy), which collected large sums and were in place for an extended period of time. Fundraising for road and railway construction also came in an endless stream. By 1995, the average peasants’ burden in southern Jiangxi had reached 200 yuan per mu, or

272 Chapter 37 more than 100 yuan per person. Even so, their burden was far lower than in my hometown in Hubei Province.1 The most controversial burden on peasants was the Slaughter Tax, which stipulated that peasants had to pay 50 yuan in tax for every slaughtered pig. However, peasants usually raise pigs by themselves but ask others to slaughter them, so the state was never able to tell how many pigs each household raised or slaughtered. Moreover, after the pig was slaughtered, no one wanted to pay the tax, since 50 yuan was a large sum of money at the time. In the 1990s, when the number of peasants “going out” to work in the cities was still small, peasants’ main income came from growing crops. Their grain was usually sold to state-​run grain stations. Township and village cadres often urged peasants to submit grain, but peasants were not paid on the spot. Instead, via the “peasants sell and villages settle (humai cunjie 户卖村结)” practice, their payments came in the form of tax and fee deductions. For this reason, another term for the collection of agricultural taxes and fees at that time was “urgently collecting grain and levying tax payments (cuiliang paikuan 催粮派款).” Also, the village collective could easily make the deductions on taxes and fees that were assessed per person or per household, but they could not do the same with taxes and fees on physical items. For example, the Slaughter Tax could not be collected from peasant households that did not slaughter a pig at New Year, but the work of going door to door collecting information on who was doing it was too tiring and too difficult a task to be done accurately by the local finance department. In practice, though, a higher level of government could assign a village the task of estimating the amount of Slaughter Tax to be collected in the village on a per household basis, such as one or two slaughtered pigs per household per year. When that happened, the village would average out the amount of Slaughter Tax per household, which effectively changed the Slaughter Tax to a poll tax. Some households that did not slaughter pigs were thus required to pay tax for it. This further intensified resentment in the villages. In 1996, on a market day in Huangpi Town, where I was doing field research, one peasant wrote the Chinese character “resentment (yuan 怨)” and placed it on the ground, thus drawing many bystanders. When town cadres came to take it away, a conflict broke out between the peasant and cadres, to the dissatisfaction of the crowd of onlookers. All of a sudden, shouted slogans could be heard 1 In the same period, the peasants’ tax and fee burden in Hubei exceeded 200 yuan per mu and more than 500 yuan per person. The differences per mu and per person in different regions were related to per capita arable land in those regions. Every peasant was allotted less than one mu in southern Jiangxi but as much as two mu in most places in Hubei.

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everywhere, and thousands of peasants chased down and beat the town cadres and laid siege to the town government building. A work team was sent by the municipal and county governments to deal with the issue, but the peasants still refused to disperse and even burned a police car. The Huangpi Incident caused a chain effect on four to five nearby townships where peasants besieged township government buildings. The peasants’ slogans were quite fierce, mainly targeting the Party secretary of the town committee, the head of the town government, the Family Planning Office, and the forestry station. These were imposing the heaviest charges and were regarded by peasants as “head criminals” or thorns in the flesh. On the second day of the Huangpi Incident, the municipal and county governments immediately notified all township and town governments to return various overcharged agricultural taxes and fees immediately to peasants. After the Huangpi Incident, the county where I was conducting field research stopped collecting flat rate payments of the Slaughter Tax, Special Agricultural Product Tax, and Vehicle and Vessel Use Tax, instead requiring collection based on each peasant’s individual situation. This was, in fact, too difficult to be accomplished, so it was equivalent to canceling the collection of those three taxes. Due to the “Huangpi Incident,” the county where I  did the field research did not increase taxes on peasants from 1996 until the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees. The year 1995 became the year that registered the highest peasants’ burden. However, in the central areas of China such as Hubei, Hunan and Anhui Provinces, peasants’ tax burden continued to climb from 1996 to 2000. During this period, the main media focus throughout the country was the tax burden on peasants and cadre-​masses relations. Finally, in 2001, the central government started a pilot reform of agricultural taxes and fees, and in 2006, it abolished them completely. 2.2 In 1998, when I conducted field research in Chongren County (崇仁县), Jiangxi, another region where clans are powerful, I learned that two years earlier violence had occurred there, because of the excessively heavy taxes. Peasants had besieged and burned several township government buildings. Almost every such clan area had at least one mass incident resisting agricultural taxes and fees. During my research there, in southern Jiangxi, several mass incidents occurred, involving thousands of peasants mobbing family planning cadres and smashing their official cars. Precisely because of peasants’ strong capacity for action in clan-​dominated areas, the local governments had difficulty even apportioning the funds collected from peasants for local economic development,

274 Chapter 37 since that could easily trigger mass incidents. A  single mass incident was enough to warn leaders at the county and municipal levels to adjust part of the peasants’ tax and fee burden. This meant that areas that were prone to or had mass incidents because of taxes tended to be more regulated but have a lighter tax burden, while areas with no mass incidents tended to be less regulated but have a greater tax burden. In his book, I Speak Truth to the Premier (Wo xiang zongli shuo shihua 《我向总理说实话》), Li Changping (李昌平), who comes from Jianli County (监利县), Hubei, said that the tax burden in his home village was much higher than in southern Jiangxi, but there had been no mass incident of resistance. Instead, the peasants were doing their best to escape their hometowns and work or do businesses in the cities. The economic conditions of the two areas were about the same. In southern Jiangxi, however, the clans—​a natural organization for peasants, one based on blood ties—​were powerful, and so they were more regulated but had lighter taxes. In Hubei, where the villages are more atomized, they were less regulated but had heavier taxes. 2.3 Most villages in southern Jiangxi are highly closed, clan villages, and any policy implementation has to depend on village cadres who are members of this village acquaintance society, work on a part-​time basis, and are not official cadres of the state. Of course, they do not have to strictly follow the state’s bidding on everything, or unconditionally complete various tasks assigned by higher levels of government. When I was doing field research in the 1990s, one of the systems used in the towns and townships that I  investigated was for assigning capable people as village Party secretaries in different villages, and the only standard for evaluating these village Party secretaries’ work was whether they completed state tasks. These village Party secretaries, coming from other villages, would be neutral to local peasants’ sentiments. However, since they were still peasants who were only receiving work loss compensation and no salary, they were unlikely to complete state-​assigned tasks with any great enthusiasm. For village Party secretaries who could accomplish national tasks well, the town or township government would make further arrangements, such as assigning them to township state-​run institutions, so that they could go beyond the future expectations of the village acquaintance society. More importantly, however, village cadres were rewarded for completing state tasks. For instance, if they completed the collection of taxes and fees on time, they could receive 5% of what was collected for work expenses. If the village collected 400,000 yuan in agricultural taxes and fees, the village cadres could share and enjoy

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20,000 yuan to cover work expenses; if the village had five cadres, that meant each of them could get 4,000 yuan per year, a generous amount in the 1990s. There were other rewards for collecting taxes and fees on time. The more difficult the state task, the greater the incentives the county and township governments would offer. As a result, communities of interest—​similar to those of the highly atomized villages in Hubei—​were produced in areas where clans had strong mobilization capability. However, a slight difference was that if the southern Jiangxi village cadres thoroughly enmeshed themselves in village communities of interest and became unable to achieve a balance with local peasants’ interests, they would easily be rejected by the villagers, and their relationship with the villagers would be full of tension.

chapter 38

The Downward Shift of Villagers’ Autonomy in Qingyuan Village

1

In 2104, Qingyuan City in Guangdong Province launched a pilot of comprehensive rural reform centering on the “three integrations (sange zhenghe 三个整合)” and “a downward shift of three core tasks (sange zhongxin xiayi 三个重心下移).” “Three integrations” referred to the integration of land resources, agriculture-​related funds, and agriculture-​related service platforms, while “a downward shift of three core tasks” meant that the establishment of Party organization, villagers’ autonomy, and public services would shift downward to the village level. Qingyuan’s large-​scale, comprehensive rural reform and its extensive exploratory scope were on a level rare in the entire country. In the discussion below, I  shall focus on the issue of the downward shift of villagers’ autonomy (cunmin zizhi zhongxin xiayi 村民自治重心下移的问题). Qingyuan’s “downward shift in villagers’ autonomy” in its comprehensive rural reform refers to shifting villagers’ autonomy from the administrative village level to the natural village level. The administrative villages will then become rural comprehensive service stations, providing various services to peasants, and natural villages will be given free rein to function autonomy; the natural villages will exercise agency and initiative, which will enhance the vitality of rural society. Each natural village is a small-​scale acquaintance society with close neighbors and interconnected interests, so expressing demand for public goods or handling things in general are all more easily done at the natural village level. This is especially true of the vast majority of villages in rural Qingyuan, which are closely-​knit clan villages. Traditionally, clan organizations have played a large role in social governance in this area, and still do in terms of building public goods and organizing peasants’ lives. If villagers’ autonomy can be implemented in natural villages by taking advantage of traditional organizational resources, then it can be implemented to a greater extent by stimulating people’s enthusiasm for improving their villages. Moreover, many natural villages in Qingyuan City have already spontaneously developed their autonomy, built themselves up, and made improvements far more than they would have with state investment alone. Therefore, in 2014, Qingyuan City chose to conduct the pilot for the downward shift of villagers’ autonomy in

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three of its townships and towns, and it plans to implement it throughout the city beginning in 2017. This Qingyuan pilot is highly consistent with the history of villagers’ autonomy originating in Hezhai Village (合寨村), Guangxi. After the land was allocated to households, grassroots organizations had become lax, and problems emerged in social security and various basic public goods provision. Peasants in the natural villages of Hezhai Village spontaneously organized themselves to form villagers’ committees that made decisions on governance and providing public services. The Hezhai villagers’ pioneering work on villagers’ autonomy became a part of the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committee, which became the guiding document for establishing grassroots organizations in China. When this law was first implemented on a trial basis in 1988, it explicitly stated that “the villagers’ committee shall ordinarily be at the natural village level.” However, after the land allocation to households, the function of villagers’ groups at the natural village level in most areas in China had shrunk, and even the importance of the administrative village level greatly declined. The main functions of the administrative village level were to collect rice or wheat, taxes, and fees from the peasants, and to implement family planning policy as assigned by higher levels of government. Organizationally, village cadres were retained at the administrative village level, but the villagers’ group level usually kept only one villagers’ group leader, who generally did not play any role, so it seemed completely unnecessary or even impossible to implement villagers’ autonomy and elect villagers’ committees at the natural village level. Thus, when the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committee was piloted nationwide, most provinces and autonomous regions, except for a very few (like Guangdong, Yunnan, and Guangxi), implemented villagers’ autonomy at the administrative village level and conducted elections of villagers’ committees, a shift up from the natural village level. Because of this, the officially promulgated and implemented Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committee in 1998 stipulated the administrative village level and required even Guangdong, Yunnan, and Guangxi to do likewise. Before 1998, the term used for the administrative village level in Guangdong Province was “management area (管理区),” and its cadres were assigned by the township and town governments. After the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committee came into effect, these management areas in Guangdong were renamed villagers’ committees. Then the elections of the villagers’ committees and implementation of villagers’ autonomy were officially launched at the administrative village level. From the legal perspective, from 1988 to 1998 (the ten-​year pilot period of the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committee), the establishment of management areas at the administrative village level and villagers’ autonomy at the

278 Chapter 38 natural village level by Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan Provinces did not violate the Organic Law at all. In practice, these three provinces implemented villagers’ autonomy at the natural village level, unlike most other provinces in China, because their administrative villages were rather large, and their natural villages had always retained the tradition of autonomy. Traditionally, villages in Guangdong and Guangxi had relatively powerful clan organizations, and most villages were clan villages. Natural villages clustered around clans often possessed a large quantity of public, clan-​held property, so the clans played a very important role in village public goods provision. Implementing villagers’ autonomy at the natural village level was thus very natural. Most Yunnan villages, meanwhile, are ethnic minority villages, also with very strong autonomous governance ability at the natural village level. This is why, during the pilot period of the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committee, Yunnan implemented villagers’ autonomy at the natural level.

2

The natural villages of Qingyuan City, Guangdong have very strong autonomous governance ability, and this is closely related to clan identity, activity, and organization. In one of the towns where we conducted field research, Jiulong Town, in Yingde City, all of its more than 300 natural villages are clan villages, and almost all of them have repaired or rebuilt their ancestral halls since the start of reform and opening up. Some even spent more than a million yuan on building ancestral halls despite having populations between only 200 and 500. Raising 10,000 yuan per household to build the ancestral hall was quite common. In Xiniu Town, one of the pilot sites for Qingyuan’s downward shift of villagers’ autonomy, the natural villages’ clan organizations and action capacity were entirely the same as in Jiulong Town. The natural village of Louzai in Jiulong Town has about 500 people with the surname of Wu. It has a nearly 300-​year history and is in its fourteenth generation. After reform and opening up, since the old houses were too narrow, all of the villagers decided in a meeting to move from old to new houses, and they built a new village surrounding the ancestral hall. In the present century, Louzai villagers thought that the ancestral hall built only 30 years earlier was too old compared with the newly-​built halls in surrounding villages, so they decided to build a new one; construction is expected to begin in 2017. In 2015, villagers began a three-​year fundraising effort, with everyone contributing 2,000 yuan each: 700 yuan in the first year, and 600 yuan in the second and third years. Funds are to be submitted on the twenty-​fifth of the twelfth month

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of the lunar calendar. Households with particularly poor economic conditions can postpone payment, but are not exempted or allowed to pay less, since this is a major event pertaining to the ancestors. In 2015, Louzai Village started mobilizing villagers to rebuild the village environment, mainly to remove weeds from the grounds of the village entrance and repair the village square and basketball court. That year, 4,000 villagers volunteered labor and contributed funds for this. In 2014, to prepare for redevelopment, the villagers voted to establish a council based on the heads of households and elected 13 members to the council. The post of council director is undertaken by a 67-​year-​old retiree, Wu Yaji (吴亚记), who had formerly worked outside of the village. Besides the council, the natural village also appointed a village head and two deputy village heads, who were both members of the council. Louzai Village also established an economic cooperative and is an independent legal entity (duli faren 独立法人). The post of village head of the natural village and director of the economic cooperative are held by the same person. Currently, Louzai Village is in the midst of two major projects: preparing for the renovation of the ancestral hall and continuing with the redevelopment of the village environment. This mainly consists of the construction of a square at the entrance of the village; 4,000 villagers have already volunteered labor. The building of the ancestral hall, environmental redevelopment, and the integration of agriculture-​related funds by the village economic cooperative were all implemented under the leadership of the Louzai village council (the one based on heads of households). To keep the accounts clear, the council appointed three separate and independent treasurers to take charge of the bookkeeping of each of these three projects. Funds for the renovation of the ancestral hall and building of the entrance square were kept separate, with special funds for special purposes and payments made separately. Official funds of the economic cooperative came from higher-​level government allocations and integrated agriculture-​ related funds—​mainly general agricultural subsidies and payments from the Forest Ecological Benefit Compensation Fund (shengtai gongyilin butie 生态公益林补贴) directly allocated to households. The total funds received by Louzai Village can amount to 20,000 yuan per year. Louzai natural village belongs to Jinji (金鸡) administrative village, which was not a pilot village where the downward shift in villagers’ autonomy was implemented. However, it obviously had very strong capacity for autonomy. Since the establishment of the village council and Wu Yaji’s election as council director in 2014, Louzai Village has shown strong mobilization capacity, which changed the village’s appearance in a short period of time.

280 Chapter 38 Xiniu Town, in Yingde, is the pilot for this downward shift to the natural village level in Qingyuan City. Our field research in Xincheng natural village, in Xiniu Town, proved to be very interesting. Xincheng natural village has 128 households with 573 people, all surnamed Zeng (曾). It has 560 mu of farmland (300 mu of wet and 260 mu of dry farmland) and 1,228 mu of mountain woodland. In 1985, villagers proposed rebuilding the decrepit ancestral hall, but after it was torn down, they only got as far as laying a foundation when they ran out of money. That year, Xincheng contracted out its collective fishpond and earned more than 10,000 yuan in contract fees every year. By 1997, it had accumulated over 100,000 yuan in collective income, and after raising funds again from each household, it raised a total of 240,000 yuan for rebuilding the ancestral hall. In 1997, to ensure the project’s completion, Xincheng established a special ten-​member council of representatives, based on heads of households, and assigned council members to serve as production team leaders, deputy leaders, and finance and accounting personnel. The ancestral hall was soon completed, but the village now had external debts of more than 70,000 yuan. In 1998, the council still had not disbanded—​it began planning the building of a new village. The representatives’ council decided in 1999 to take back all of the mountain woodland that had been allocated to households and re-​distribute it among villagers. Altogether 1,000 mu of mountain woodland were repossessed and reallocated to households at a rate of 40 yuan per mu per year, thus raising 40,000 yuan of funds annually. From 1998 to 2009, the representatives’ council held two or three meetings per year to discuss important issues and make various decisions and proposals. When the full villagers’ meeting was held on the 26th day of the twelfth lunar month, the representatives’ council would summarize the work accomplished the past year and discuss proposed plans for the next year. After ten years of preparation, Xincheng Village began to implement a five-​ year new village construction plan in 2009. First, the representative council based on heads of household was expanded from the previous 10 members to 15. In 2010, the construction of new houses began, and by 2014, almost all of the 97 new two-​story houses, which were built of reinforced concrete and were far better than old brick houses, were completed. Meanwhile, the representative council started work on supporting public facilities, such as paving village roads, building a running water system and sewer system, going green, building a square, cleaning up the pond in front of the village, and so on. During this period, in addition to the limited collective income, the representative council had raised funds and mobilized labor from villagers several times.

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In 2012, higher-​level government officials held a meeting in Xincheng and praised the representative council for their excellent methods and suggested establishing a village council. Thus the representative council, which had operated for over ten years since 1998 without any specific name, changed its name to “village council (cunzhuang lishihui 村庄理事会),” and from it sprang positions like village head, treasurer, and accountants. In 2014, when Qingyuan City conducted its pilot downward shift of village autonomy to natural villages in Xiniu Town, Xincheng elected its natural village-​level villagers’ committee through an election. The former village head (villagers’ group leader) and those in charge of finance and accounting were reappointed as villagers’ committee head, treasurer, and accountants respectively in 2014, and each is paid an income of 600 yuan each per year, but other members of the representative council (and the renamed village council) do not receive any income. Since the construction of the ancestral hall in 1998, Xincheng Village’s cumulative public investment, not counting the funds invested by peasant households toward the construction of their own houses, amounted to approximately 3 million yuan. Higher levels of government helped to invest approximately 500,000 yuan only for a very limited time starting in 2012. After 20 years of construction, Xincheng natural village has become a village well known for its beauty, with good infrastructure, and a well-​planned, orderly, clean, and beautiful environment. Based on the examples of Xincheng Village in Xiniu Town, Louzai Village in Jiulong Town, and the situations that we observed in several other villages in Qingyuan City during our field research, the grassroots level of Qingyuan’s natural villages, which are clan-​based, have very strong capabilities in resource mobilization and social construction. These capabilities were first manifested in the renovation or reconstruction of the village ancestral halls since the beginning of the reform and opening up period. Jiulong Town and Xiniu Town each have around 300 natural villages, and almost all of them renovated or rebuilt their ancestral halls around 1990, having each raised more than a million yuan through mobilization. Nearly every household participates in worshipping ancestors during the annual Qingming Festival, and most villages have developed the custom of using either the Qingming Festival or New Years’ Festival to hold all villagers’ meetings. Some villages have even spontaneously integrated collective mountain land and unallocated ponds and then rented them out to obtain collective income. The Qingming (ancestor worship) and Spring Festivals (third day of the first lunar month, the tianding 添丁 feast for having a baby, especially a son) have also become the basis for the formation of the household-​to-​household rotation system, a tradition still observed in many natural villages.

282 Chapter 38 Building ancestral halls or rebuilding the village environment involves fundraising and mobilizing labor, so villages generally set up a temporary representative deliberative body based on head of households to coordinate things. This institution is very different from the villagers’ group leader and his administrative office at the level below the administrative village. The main difference is that the representative deliberative body has extensive representation and authority and can make proposals and decisions on major issues in the village. In some villages, the representative deliberative bodies have been institutionalized, since they may have major issues through the year, and as a consequence they have genuinely realized villagers’ autonomy at the natural village level. Because of this, Xiniu Town, for example, has good synergism, and its people can easily be brought to work together. Through a higher-​up institutional arrangement for villagers’ autonomy, the former heads of the household-​based representative council with no official name was renamed as the village council, and on its basis, a regular, elected villagers’ committee was formed. In other words, the earlier representative council was smoothly admitted into the series of institutionalized grassroots organizations. Consequently, this has further promoted the autonomy of the natural village level, regulating autonomous activities and guiding the direction of autonomy.

3

Qingyuan is a mountainous area with limited farmland, so natural villages here are generally small, with populations usually between 200 and 400, or 500 at most and 100 at least—​exactly the size of production teams during the People’s Commune era. Administrative villages in Qingyuan are somewhat larger (between 3,000 and 5,000 people) than the national average (between 1,000 and 2,000). Therefore, the number of natural villages in each of Qingyuan City’s administrative villages is often high. In Yingde City’s Jiulong Town and Xiniu Town and Yangshan County’s Jiangying Town, there are generally 10 to 20 administrative villages in each town or township and about 20 natural villages in each administrative village. Because the administrative villages in Qingyuan City are too big, with too many natural villages under their umbrellas, and because most villages are located in mountainous areas and cover large areas, the administrative villages are always far larger in scale than any acquaintance society. When village autonomy is implemented at the administrative village level, efficiency is compromised to a large extent. However, villages in Qingyuan have a tradition of autonomy (the clans), and collective ownership of land was formed under the

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socialist system. The natural village is also the unit of this collective ownership. Thus, given the clans’ capacity for organization, the production team tradition from the People’s Commune era, and the collective ownership of land, it is very easy for natural villages to organize their own construction, management, and service provision. Village autonomy at the villagers’ group level has reduced pressure at the administrative village level, so that the latter has become more service-​oriented instead of management-​oriented. When Qingyuan City shifted village autonomy down to the natural village level, efforts were made at the both the administrative and natural village levels. Village autonomy shifted to the natural village level, while the administrative village level shifted to becoming a rural community comprehensive service station for the peasants. The function of natural villages’ autonomy was strengthened, while that of the administrative village was weakened, to the point that “administrative village” changed to “rural community (nongcun shequ 农村社区).” For villages in Qingyuan specifically, since the natural village level has very strong endogenous organization capability and abundant endogenous organization resources, conditions are well-​suited for village autonomy, so the chances for success are high. However, from an overall national perspective, the situation is more complicated. As China is currently in the midst of rapid urbanization, the rural population is swiftly flowing out of the villages and into the cities. This is true in Qingyuan as well, but the pace of emigration is much faster and more thorough than in most of the country, since most of Qingyuan’s villages are in mountainous areas. In each of the three towns we surveyed, several natural villages have been severely hollowed out; in one case, a natural village that had a population of more than 400 had only a dozen or so elderly people left at normal times, and this situation is not uncommon. More such examples are expected in the future. Nationwide, the natural village or villagers’ group level has very limited resources and a serious lack of capacity for autonomy, which will make it completely impossible to shift village autonomy to the natural village level. In other words, Qingyuan City’s downward shift of village autonomy may be said to be taking place just at the right time. In particular, natural villages with a few tourism resources and convenient transportation may use the downward shift of resources as an opportunity for beautifying their villages. This would give the natural village level to play a greater role in village autonomy. Nationally, the system whereby “means of production and products of labor were owned by three levels of collective organizations—​communes, production brigades, and production teams—​with the production team as the basic unit for everyday production and management,” which had formed during the

284 Chapter 38 People’s Commune period, is still manifested today in the township, administrative village, and villagers’ group (natural village). A town or township normally has about 20 administrative villages, each with about 10 villagers’ groups, making around 200 villagers’ groups (natural villages) under a township. If a natural village has strong self-​governance capability, the administrative village level mainly plays a connecting, organizing, and coordinating role between higher levels of government and the village. If the natural village lacks self-​ governance ability, the administrative village will have to take up the task of organizing villager governance. Qingyuan’s downward shift of village autonomy stimulated natural villages’ self-​governance ability and greatly reduced pressure on administrative villages to handle self-​governance and services, freeing them to play more of a connecting role between the higher levels of government and villages. Having the self-​governance and service roles filled at the natural village level is like having them done by members of the family. However, self-​governance at the natural village level makes hardly any difference with regard to national administration and completion of state tasks. Where natural villages are clan-​based, they are a kind of unit that combines the clans’ “big private interests” with the villagers’ groups’ “small public interests.” Village autonomy at the natural village level has strengthened the power of the clans’ “big private interests,” based on the heads of households, and to the corresponding degree it has excluded the “small public interests” of the villagers’ group. During my field research on the villages of Qingyuan, I could clearly sense the closed quality of the village brought on by village autonomy, not the expected openness. Village autonomy has been effective in dealing with villagers’ affairs, but it is ineffective in fulfilling national tasks. Therefore, the administrative village level cannot simply provide services or links between higher levels of government and villagers but should also play a managerial role in the true sense. The administrative village has two functions—​management and service—​so even though village autonomy has shifted downward, the administrative village level should not be eliminated. In fact, its service and managerial functions should be strengthened. Since a town or township has 200 to 300 natural villages, it would be impossible for it to manage them all directly. Therefore, the autonomy shift in Qingyuan City’s comprehensive rural reform was the right decision, based on the actual situation of its villages. It has had an important effect in establishing the status of peasants and stimulating their enthusiasm for building up their villages. However, shifting village autonomy to natural villages does not mean the weakening of the administrative villages, nor does it mean that the administrative village level should be

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eliminated. The best way is to keep the administrative village level as well as its system, establish villagers’ committees through elections, implement “democratic elections, democratic decision-​making, democratic management, and democratic supervision,” and completely retain the “three selves (sange ziwo 三个自我)” while shifting part of the functions of village autonomy to natural villages. Relatively speaking, village autonomy at the natural village level can be more flexible in form and more diverse in its operations in order to adapt to the diversified practices of natural villages. In Qingyuan City, the current downward shift of village autonomy has left the institutions of the administrative village level intact. Village autonomy at the natural village level has focused on actual effectiveness but can be flexible in form. This kind of comprehensive rural reform easily maintains unity with national institutions while it adapts to the uniqueness of Qingyuan’s rural areas. In form, little seems to have changed, but in reality, the reform has stimulated traditional organizational resources of the villages and played a big role in village rebuilding.

chapter 39

Small Kinship Groups and Village Politics in Central Shandong Province

1

During my research in Maqiao Town in central Shandong, I noticed that factional struggles were common in villages there. The village Party secretary in Kangyang Village (康杨村) said, “How can a village have cadres without opponents or factional struggles?” while the village Party secretary in Xishi Village (西史村) said, “Villages only have forever interests, no forever friends.” In Maqiao Town’s 52 administrative villages, virtually all the villages had seen fierce election competition. Moreover, village cadres’ terms in office have often been short. Most of the current main village cadres lack relevant experience as cadres, since most had formerly been businessmen. The villages have been under plutocratic governance. Whenever a village cadre has been in office for two terms, a powerful opposition forms, which makes it difficult for village cadres to get another term. Then a new batch of village cadres comes to office. Central Shandong is an economically developed area, and with development comes a concentration of benefits, providing not only employment opportunities for local peasants, but also profit-​making opportunities in secondary and tertiary industries, which resulted in the emergence of a group of rich and capable people whose incomes were far higher than those of ordinary peasants. These rich villagers gradually developed the ability and the desire to realize their own interests via village politics. The main village cadres in particular not only grasped certain resources, but also greatly expanded their networks, increased personal credit, and to a larger extent realized personal interests. For this reason, around 2000, the old type of village cadres was gradually replaced by the new rich village elites in central Shandong. Most of these economic elites entering the village political arena had no experience as village cadres but switched directly from the economic sector to politics. The social basis for the constant replacement of village cadres is the clan system of villages in central Shandong. We call it the small kinship group (xiaoqinzu 小亲族) system. It provides the social foundation for all of village politics in central Shandong. Maqiao Town has around 50,000 people in 52 administrative villages, so the average is around 1,000 people per administrative village, but the population

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actually varies greatly. The largest administrative village has almost 3,000 people, but the smallest has only around 200. This difference existed already in the People’s Commune era. They have not been integrated because administrative villages were often based on natural villages, so if the natural village is big, the administrative village is also, and likewise for small natural villages. Village integration involves not only administrative villages, but also two or more natural villages, which in the past were under different systems, and this makes the task of managing them much more difficult. Thus most villages in Shandong have never been integrated on a large scale, and the systems established by the administrative villages have been kept very stable. Administrative villages in Maqiao Town are rarely single-​surname villages, but are usually multi-​surname villages with one or two big surnames in each village. However, in people’s daily lives, the surname does not make much of a difference—​what does are one’s blood relationships within the traditional five degrees of mourning (wufu) as specified in ancient ritual texts, and only on the paternal side (benjia 本家). This usually amounts to as many as 30 households with 150 members, or as few as 7 or 8 households with 30 or 40 members. Some kinship groups may be so small that they extend the division to include blood relationships within six or even seven degrees of mourning. The people within these kinship groups not only conceptually regard themselves as one family with blood ties, but also maintain close and substantive mutual interaction, especially in weddings and funerals. In weddings, relatives within the five degrees must not only participate but also act as hosts to entertain the guests, while in funerals, all of the younger generations must wear mourning, kowtow, and wail. During big events or festivals, especially the Chinese Spring Festival, the younger generations within the five degrees are expected to kowtow to the elder generation. The interaction that occurs during weddings, funerals, and big events and festivals provide the real foundation for identification within the group. A strong group of paternal relatives not only can help one another but can also form a strong competitive force against outsiders. The small kinship group with more paternal relatives will inevitably be dominant in the village, so the main village cadres normally have to be people from the larger of the small kinship groups. Kinship groups with too few sons or too few households within five degrees of paternal relatives tend to extend themselves to the sixth and seventh degrees for weddings, funerals, festivals, and other major events, which builds up a sense of group identity. The small kinship group becomes the unit of identity and action. Paternal relative groups that are too large tend to split earlier into smaller groups, and relatives beyond the fifth degree are not expected to attend weddings, funerals, or big events and festivals. Eventually, the sense of

288 Chapter 39 identity naturally fades away, so that their ability to engage in concerted action no longer exists. Even though the separated groups may still share the same surname, and they may have separated not too long before, each kinship group independently competes in the village arena. As soon as the internal cooperation disappears, the internal sense of identity among paternal relatives also disappears, along with the capacity for concerted action. Consequently, a village of around 1,000 people often accommodates ten or more small kinship groups that are independent of other. These kinship groups, which cooperate internally and compete externally, become the active basic units of the village’s political arena. This is key to understanding village politics in central Shandong, even the whole of northern China. A group of paternal relatives within the fifth degree must strive to cooperate especially closely on weddings and funerals, since these major rural family events cannot be managed well by individual households. The extended group is best, since too few or too many people are not right for such events. An appropriate size is about 20 to 30 households with 70 to 80 people. This is why large groups of paternal relatives eventually need to break up and small groups tend to combine. A paternal relatives’ group usually needs someone who coordinates and arranges things at weddings, funerals, and other gatherings, so usually a respected elderly person of higher generational ranking who is also enthusiastic about such things naturally emerges. Other relatives will ask him for advice whenever there is a big event, or he will voluntarily appear and make arrangements, coordinate things, propose ideas, and think of solutions. This kind of elderly person has to be civil-​minded, highly capable, and cleverly resourceful. Every small kinship group has to have such a highly respected elder.

2

Beginning in the 1990s, economic differentiation in villages has increased, and more and more capable people are emerging in the villages who got rich by working elsewhere. These bright, capable economic elites in their prime years, with high incomes and extensive personal networks, help their relatives to establish outside connections, sort out relationships, and find jobs; they also extend loan support. The members of a small kinship group can connect well with the outside world through these figures, who can in turn coordinate relations within their own group of relatives. Thus, a group of elites has appeared, based on the internal cohesion of the small kinship groups in central Shandong villages, who are keen about their relatives’ affairs, fair, socially adept, and good at talking. They coordinate their

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relative groups’ internal relationships, deal with problems, moderate affairs, arrange weddings and funerals, and represent their paternal relatives’ groups in village competition. Each group has at least one representative actively playing a role in the village, and each of these have been selected from within their small kinship group to represent their interests. The way these village elites interact with one other in the political arena has structured the political characteristics of villages in central Shandong, and even the whole of northern China. In general, since village politics, especially village elections, depends on votes, it is virtually impossible for small kinship groups with only 20 or 30 people to compete for a village cadre post. Village elections are usually competitions among large kinship groups that have garnered support from small kinship groups via connections and alliances in their bids to win. The making of these alliances is obviously not done by all villagers—​only among the village elites who represent their kinship groups. An elite from a large kinship group who is good at making compromises and distributing benefits is more likely to become a village cadre. A good personal economic situation, superb communication skills, and a power base from a big kinship group are the basic prerequisites of village cadres (especially main village cadres). Without economic power, an elite person would not be able to represent his kinship group or transfer to them the benefits from his interactions in village politics. This is why only the rich can become main village cadres. After someone becomes a village cadre, the power of his own kinship group is obviously not enough to form a stable base for staying in office. It is possible to offend villagers in the course of dealing with various difficult issues in a village; and, offending one villager often means offending that villager’s entire small kinship group, which consequently forms a strong opposition. Meanwhile, the representatives of other relatively large kinship groups who lost the previous election are at every moment waiting for the elected village cadre to make a mistake. As soon as he does, they pounce on it and try to devise means to split the earlier elite alliance and support from small kinship groups. Consequently, it is usually difficult for elected village cadres to remain securely in their positions for long. Villages are often divided into two factions: one headed by the incumbent, and one headed by the defeated elites. Each faction has its own supporters and a mass base of small kinship groups. Since villages usually have a dozen or so small kinship groups, whose representatives are always forming and splitting strategic alliances, the competitive strategies between the two opposing factions in village politics are complex. All sorts of startling yarns are spun from the political struggles in villages. In areas with small kinship groups, the differentiation between insiders and outsiders within a village is somewhat complex. Since they are all living

290 Chapter 39 together in one natural village, village political strategies become very important, and because every villager has also become highly politicized, so that whenever they talk with someone, they have to know that person’s affiliations and watch their own lips. In the areas in central China with atomized villages, everyone outside of the family is considered an outsider, but the outsiders are not highly organized, so everyone can talk freely. In the clan areas, villagers are basically clan clusters, so the people inside the village are insiders who can converse with one another without needing to think too much about strategies and calculations. But in the small kinship group areas of northern China, where insiders and outsiders both live in the same village, a person has to examine who’s present before saying or doing anything; strategy and calculation are always needed. The people who are best at using strategies and calculations and have good economic conditions become the representatives of their kinship groups, so when they start participating in village politics, the resulting politics inevitably show a dramatic side.

3

The factional struggles in central Shandong villages show an essential difference from those in Zhejiang villages. We have seen that the basis of factional struggle in the villages of central Shandong is the small kinship group, while the basis in villages of Zhejiang is economic and social stratification. Specifically, most villages in Zhejiang are atomized, and the wealthy groups in the villages have marginalized ordinary villagers through public competition, in their personal connections and so on, so that village factional struggle has become a competition for village political power among the rich. The lack of support through traditional blood relationships means that wealthy persons in Zhejiang have two ways to get the support of their fellow villagers: the first is to use their own economic capacity to secure the political support of ordinary peasant households through some sort of economic exchange. The second is flagrant vote-​buying. In this process, villagers become more and more depoliticized, and village politics becomes the struggle or game of the rich. In central Shandong, villagers enter village politics through small kinship groups, which further politicizes them rather than depoliticizes them. In Zhejiang, only the most completely marginalized individual villagers will file appeals to higher levels of government, but in central Shandong, peasants will gather to file an appeal to higher levels of government if village cadres have offended their collective interests.

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Understanding the structure of small kinship groups is the key to understanding village politics in central Shandong and even all of northern China. The density of economic interests and the rural social stratification formed by economic development have further promoted the active performance of small kinship groups in village politics.

pa rt 6 The Drivers of Village Governance



chapter 40

The Need for More Varied Modes of Village Governance in China One of the major advantages of the Chinese system is its ability to adjust and adapt. Reform is politically correct in China. As a late-​developing, exogenously modern country, China has been undergoing rapid transition in recent decades, which is why China’s grassroots governance system could not remain unchanged. Any attempt to establish a sound and stable grassroots system that lasts for all time is doomed to fail. Different eras, stages of development, central tasks, and different groups all working toward different goals have determined the different grassroots governance systems and mechanisms over time. Comparatively speaking, the grassroots governance system is a structural factor that cannot change freely over time, so appropriate adjustments or innovations in the governance mechanism need to be made. These adjustments or innovations represent the process of modernization in grassroots governance.

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In the process of China’s rapid modernization, rural grassroots governance is being confronted with hugely different situations and tasks. Merely discussing the situation since the reform and opening up of the 1980s would require dividing grassroots governance into several periods or types, each with different central tasks, target groups, and governance mechanisms. The main task of grassroots governance before 2006 was to collect agricultural taxes and fees, especially in the central and western agricultural regions where these taxes and fees were the main source of local government revenue. If the taxes could not be collected on time, the local government would not be able to disburse education funding on time, the operation of administrative organs would be disrupted, and so on. Collecting these taxes were the foremost task of counties, townships, and villages. Since the rural population was scattered and had little surplus in production, and peasants were unwilling to pay because their financial burdens were already heavy, it was “the most difficult job in the world.” To do it on time, local government needed to arouse the enthusiasm of the grassroots organization, deal with “nail households,” set up work teams, and even go into peasants’ houses to haul away grain, tv

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296 Chapter 40 sets, and plow oxen. But the more kind-​hearted village cadres obviously had difficulty resorting to such means when dealing with their fellow villagers, so soon their places were taken over by the ruthless, who formed interest communities at the town and village levels. The new cadres, united by interest, dealt more strongly with nail households and were less willing to distinguish between poor households and nail households, which led to extremely tense cadre-​villager relations and a rapid deterioration of the rural situation. Eventually the state defused the tension by eliminating the agricultural taxes and fees and changed the main objectives and tasks of grassroots governance. After that, it began the processes of using industry to promote agriculture and using urban development to boost rural development (yi gong fu nong, yi cheng dai xiang 以工辅农、以城带乡). It also began injecting resources into villages on a large scale. The first kind comes in the form of universal benefits, based on population, field size, or other standardized conditions. These would include New Rural Social Endowment Insurance, low-​income family supplements, health care under the New Rural Cooperative Medical System, and comprehensive agricultural subsidies. The second comes through projects that local authorities apply for and get approved by higher-​level departments. This second type of funding is more flexible, leading inevitably to competition for funding and projects (zhengzi paoxiang 争资跑项), and “running to the ministries for money (paobu qianjin 跑部钱进).” Since the standards for receiving these resources are not objective, it is easy for a “profit-​sharing order” to form. The outcome is that grassroots organizations are always keeping their eyes on higher levels of government and are becoming relatively alienated from rural society. They begin to present a situation of “suspended political power (xuanfu zhengquan 悬浮政权).” A second outcome is an involution (neijuanhua 内卷化) in the use of project resources. The greatest effect of such rural projects, however, is the gradual decoupling of interests between grassroots organizations and rural society. Thus, the grassroots organizations’ main job after the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees is maintaining social stability. “No incidents” is now the goal of grassroots governance. The two outcomes described above are occurring in the central and western regions. In the developed coastal region, because of earlier economic development, the village collectives before 2006 usually had industrial and commercial income, so the peasants’ tax burden was lighter. After 2006, the focus of grassroots governance in the coastal areas has also been very different from that of the central and western regions. Before 2004, land management in the coastal areas was rather loose, which led to rampant construction and the phenomenon described in the slogan, “Every village lights fire, every chimney belches smoke.” There was basically no

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restriction on collectives putting their farmland to non-​agricultural use. The region was quick to capitalize on its location to industrialize the villages. In nearly every village, large swaths of farmland turned into factories as a rural industrial economy developed. Peasants disengaged themselves from farming, and their main employment no longer came from agriculture but from secondary and tertiary industries. Since farmland could be freely converted to construction land, the division between agricultural land and construction land became vaguer; construction land thus could not fetch high prices, so conflicts over land expropriation were rare. On the other hand, the non-​agricultural use of farmland improved the added value of land output. Even though private enterprises had taken over the economy previously dominated by collectively owned township enterprises, employment in the villages was (and still is) dominated by industry and commerce, and as the village collectives collected rent from enterprises using collective land, they were receiving far more revenue than villages in the central and western regions. While village cadres in the central and western regions needed to assist county and town governments collect agricultural taxes and fees from thousands of peasant households, those in the developed coastal areas were relieved of this task. Since villages in the coastal areas could freely build over their farmland, this formed the current 30 million mu of what is termed rural collectively-​owned commercial construction land. According to the Law of Land Administration, such a term should not even appear, because Article 43 explicitly states: “Any unit or individual that needs land for construction purposes should apply for the use of land owned by the State according to law.” However, rural collectively-​owned commercial construction land and the secondary and tertiary industries built on it have enriched coastal villages with a stable flow of income. A current problem in village governance in the coastal areas, then, is how to allocate collective land resources and other resources that have obvious property attributes. For example, homestead land in these areas has obvious property attributes: a single parcel of rural homestead land can privately change hands at a price of hundreds of thousands of yuan. However, according to policy, homestead land is allocated at no cost to peasants: one parcel of homestead land to one peasant household. Since homestead land is so valuable but comes for free, there are people who resort to owning homestead land through an artificial household division (renwei fenhu 人为分户). Considering that the collective usually has only a limited amount of homestead land that it can allocate, then who should be allocated that land? Since village collectives have resources, who can have a share of these resources? Is a daughter-​in-​law who marries into the village from elsewhere entitled to a share? Can women who

298 Chapter 40 marry outside the village take a share with them? Can children whose birth violates the family planning policy fight for a share? Can an illegitimate child claim a share? Can a divorced woman have a share? Because of the huge interests involved, the earlier system, which was rather simple and rough, has started to show various vulnerabilities. How should these vulnerabilities be overcome? Through village rules and regulations? However, if someone has already petitioned higher-​level government, sought assistance by law, and directly appealed to the court, and the court has even granted a decree, then do village rules and regulations still play a role? In other words, one focus of village governance in the coastal region nowadays is how to resolve the issue of sharing village collective resources. Since there have been too many petitions, the state has attempted to solve it through asset and capital verification and the quantification of equity. Around 2004, the negative consequences of the earlier “Every village lights fire, every chimney belches smoke” industrialization model, with its resulting overcapacity problems and other contradictions, became very obvious. One of the negative consequences that drew attention, wasted farmland, led to the revision of the Law of Land Administration. This imposed controls on land use and rapid rural industrial development, and it became a national consensus to direct industry to the industrial parks, which mushroomed throughout the whole country. The construction of industrial parks or development zones must be carried out as a whole process—​it does not follow the scattered approach of the past. Whole villages now had to go through the land expropriation and demolition process, and this still continues in the suburbs of China’s large and medium-​ sized cities. Two typical scenarios have emerged in this construction process. One is the inevitable appearance of nail households, which demand sky-​high compensation for the unmovable land. Removing them has thus become an important task for local governments in the context of land expropriation and housing demolition. The second is the redistribution of vast economic interests that occurs through land expropriation and housing demolition, which generates intense gamesmanship, even collective petitions and group incidents. Consequently, other major tasks in rural governance center around compensation, preventing petitions, and resolving the various disputes fairly. In recent years, the central government has been raising plans to build a beautiful countryside. In Zhejiang Province, this mainly includes environmental improvement, the “five waters co-​treatment (wushui gongzhi 五水共治),” meaning wastewater treatment, flood prevention, field drainage, water supply protection, and conserving water usage, and the “Three Improvements and One Demolition (sangai yichai 三改一拆)” program (2013–​2015), which

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involved rebuilding or renovating old rural housing, industrial areas, and urban villages and tearing down illegally constructed buildings. Moreover, Zhejiang’s efforts, unlike the national ones, are realistic and practical, leaving no dead corners behind, and apply the one-​vote veto. In some sense, the building of a beautiful countryside has become one of the core tasks of grassroots governance in Zhejiang. The key to building a beautiful countryside is to involve thousands of households, because the first requirement is that each farming household has a beautiful home:  let the peasants live in a tidy, orderly, clean, hygienic, and tree-​lined environment. “We need mountains of gold and silver as well as a green landscape (jiyao jinshan yinshan, youyao lüshui qingshan 既要金山银山,又要绿水青山).” Since the work involves thousands of households, the local government must “mix completely” with the peasants and mobilize them. Meanwhile, the local government has to meet the demands of higher-​level government, based on the “one-​vote veto,” to leave no dead corners behind. Zhejiang seemingly hopes to complete this central task through “grid management” and the introduction of third-​party assessment. Results still remain to be seen. In addition to the five stages of rural development discussed above, each with its own sort of core task, there is another category that should be discussed. In Chengdu City, the problems of village governance are being resolved by letting peasants, through village councils, make decisions on, manage, and use the funds being transferred down to the village level. In contrast to the allocation of national top-​down agricultural resources, whether directly to peasant households or via bottom-​up competitive project applications, Chengdu City since 2000 has been setting aside a certain amount of funding each year (200,000 to 300,000 yuan per village) to be directly allocated to the village level. Villages then decide how to use that funding via their councils. Chengdu stipulates that the money should not be divided and can be used only for village public construction and public welfare projects. It has even specifically listed several large and small categories of construction items that villagers can choose from through democratic discussion in the villagers’ council, before the resources can be used. This top-​down mode of resource allocation to the village level is called the “Chengdu model.” It lets village collectives use their own initiative to utilize the top-​down resources to meet peasants’ diverse public goods demands, and it has created a new possibility in competent village governance. We can present our analysis of the six development stages or types of rural development in the following table:

Attracting investment

Rural construction Rural construction

Development zone

Beautiful villages

Chengdu model

Established enterprises

Develop economy

Environmental management Infrastructural facilities

Land​ expropriation, demolition​

Resource allocation

Maintain stability

Allocation of resources to villages Village-​run enterprises

All households All villagers

Nail households​

Higher-​ levels of government Marginalized​ groups

Collect grain and Nail households​ fees

State task

Agricultural tax and fee era

Consultative​ democracy​

Mobilization

Force

Competing for funding and projects Competition​

Force

Target group Work method

Central task

Work objective

Development stage or type

Allowing discretionary use of unused budgeted funds (baoganzhi)​ Responsibility system Sense of responsibility​

Profits

Allowing discretionary use of unused budgeted funds (baoganzhi) No incidents

Incentive measures

Decisions made by a select few Decisions made by the majority

Villages governed by the capable Gangs and thugs

Profit-​sharing order

Collusion between townships and villages

Characteristics

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The table above attempts to explain that at different developmental stages or in different types of rural areas, the grassroots administrative system will have different central tasks and focuses, with different target groups. At the core of the governance mode are the measures adopted to incentivize or excite village cadres’ enthusiasm and to handle their relationship with peasants. China is undergoing rapid development, and as a latecomer to exogenous modernization, development is the last word. The problem is that development has different stages and types, but in a country like China, the grassroots administrative systems are the same throughout the country. How China promotes economic development and adopts the best grassroots administrative system to suit the demands of development, or how to realize the modernization of grassroots governance, is a problem that it needs to face formally. The modernization of grassroots-​level governance always gives people the impression that there exists an ideal, most advanced grassroots governance system or institution, that we must search for it and put it into practice, and that it will be universally applicable. In fact, it might not only refer to a good governance system in the abstract, but also to the way it adapts to and innovates under its different objectives. In this world, there is no everlasting system that is suitable for all environments, and without any preconditions. Since China in particular is at a stage of rapid economic development and social transition, it is impossible for the grassroots governance system to be fixed. China’s economic development and social transition occur with a strong top-​down driving force, delivered through a top-​down administrative system that functions like a transmission mechanism. Besides passing administrative orders, the transmission works via the asymmetrical allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits at different levels in order to mobilize the enthusiasm of the local and especially the grassroots governments. This is an important characteristic of the administrative system in China during the transitional period. This asymmetrical allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits is often carried out by higher levels of government, which require that subordinates fulfill central tasks based on three rules: complete the task, abide by the regulations, and satisfy the masses. In reality, though, because the central tasks are hard to complete, let alone prove satisfactory to the masses, it is extremely difficult to find a means of completing the tasks without violating the regulations. For example, the central government’s requirements for local land expropriation and housing demolition are, first, that the task must be completed, otherwise the economy cannot develop, and the city cannot expand, and second, you cannot force the demolition. However, the more the central government emphasizes

302 Chapter 40 that the land expropriation and demolition cannot be forced, it becomes more likely that nail households will emerge, sitting on their land and asking for a high price, since the land cannot be moved, and if you do not meet their unreasonable demands, they will strongly disagree with the demolition and resettlement. At such times, local administrations must make their own innovations on the mechanism, usually in the gray areas, in order to fulfill the task. The asymmetrical allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits is itself actually a kind of institutional innovation. Specifically, institutional innovation at the grassroots has to be expressed through villages and townships, so they can effectively complete the tasks that must be done during the transition period through strong mobilization. The benefit of such institutional innovation is that, where there is information asymmetry between superiors and subordinates, the subordinates can find various reasons to respond perfunctorily to their superiors. Meanwhile, the superiors can use the asymmetrical allocation of responsibilities, power, and benefits to let the subordinates fully explore their subjective initiative in order to solve problems and fulfill tasks. The asymmetrical allocation of responsibilities, power, and benefits has made it necessary for the grassroots to implement institutional innovation, including innovations in work methods, based on current conditions, in order to accomplish the tasks assigned to them. With the changes in work focus and task pressure, the grassroots will instinctively adjust and make innovations to its governance institutions. When the focus of the work and the pressure from the tasks are very clear, and when the surrounding conditions are very clear, the grassroots under great pressure and anxiety usually can give full rein to their innovative abilities and fulfill tasks with unexpected cleverness. This is innovation in grassroots governance—​only the grassroots often do not know why what happens happens. An innovation that one place makes to complete a central task is quickly studied by other places under pressure from the same task. The innovation then spreads from one place to an entire area. The higher levels of government and even the central government will also finally come to know of these innovations and use them in order to guide the practice of grassroots governance across the country. The problem is that, as discussed above, there are different types of development in rural areas across the countries, and they may also be at different stages of development, so that an innovation in grassroots governance produced at one specific time and place might be completely unsuitable for other places. However, if the central government attaches importance to it and promotes it vigorously nationwide, severe incompatibilities result. This situation typically manifests itself at the grassroots level as increased formalism.

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In theory, we can establish different types of grassroots governance and then compare their systems and institutions—​but real-​life situations are far more complicated. For instance, although the current rural work in Zhejiang Province is centered on building a “beautiful countryside,” in practice, there are at least three basic objectives of grassroots governance. The first is economic development, which includes land expropriation and resettlement and the inevitable dealing with nail households. The second is maintaining social stability, which requires dealing with petitioners, and the third is the need to mobilize thousands of households to build that beautiful countryside. Conflicts may also exist among the three objectives. There is a lot more work to be done in grassroots governance to resolve this relationship between mobilization and oppression.

chapter 41

Endogenous and Exogenous

The Driving Forces in Two Types of Village Governance



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The Hubei Provincial Party Committee Organization Department invited me by telephone to investigate administrative village reforms in D County. The caller told me that D County had integrated all villages with fewer than 1,000 people into villages of between 1,500 and 3,000 people in order to enlarge the pool for selecting talented persons; having fewer village cadres appointed would also mean that the income of each village cadre could be raised. Their jobs would become more regular; they could keep office hours so that peasants could “get things done without leaving the village,” and so on. D County is a mountainous area. Once the small villages were merged into larger administrative villages, the area of each village had expanded to around 10 square kilometers. However, in 2015, I had gone to Anchang Town (安昌镇) in Keqiao District, Shaoxing City on another fieldtrip, and even though Anchang Town had a population of 100,000 (including 60,000 migrants), its area was 18 square kilometers. I realized that the 10 square kilometer villages in D County were too big, because they put a huge distance between the village cadres and villagers and made it more inconvenient for villagers to handle any administrative business. It would become necessary to add another level between the administrative village and villagers. In my opinion, the village merger in D County was completely unnecessary. Then why did D County carry out administrative village reforms and merge small administrative villages to expand their scale? It could well have been the desire to reduce the number of village cadres and raise their income. Where there had once been two villages with five cadres each, now the number of cadres had been halved. The effect would also be seen in the amount paid out for work-​loss compensation:  where each village cadre had received 10,000 yuan per year, now they could receive as much as 20,000 yuan, provided that subsidies from higher-​levels of government did not increase. With income of 20,000 yuan per year, village cadres would be more enthusiastic about their work, and the village would be better able to retain capable people to stay on as village cadres. The earlier 10,000 yuan of work-​loss compensation had paled in comparison with the income of the young and strong peasants who left for

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the cities to work or do business (30,000 to 50,000 yuan per year). If they had no other side income, village cadres would be the poorest people in the village, unable to get anything done or have a say in anything, and any capable people in the village would not want to become village cadres. Even after the merger, however, the doubled compensation for village cadres was still far less than the income of peasants who went to the cities. Thus, the compensation and insurance have to be increased. The problem is that the village cadre’s post is not a formal, full-​time occupation; since they work part-​time, putting them on the same salary scale as formal, full-​time cadres would cause serious problems. Thus, increasing the compensation to increase their enthusiasm might not work. One possible solution would be to select cadres among peasants who have been receiving side income. Because such village cadres have a steady side income, they would remain in service as good cadres despite the low service allowance. D County’s attempt to increase village cadres’ enthusiasm by increasing their compensation deserves discussion; and, doing so by merging administrative villages and reducing the number of village cadres is even more deserving of discussion. The kind of problems that D County faced with administrative village reform and the underlying issues of village cadres’ income and level of enthusiasm are real problems, because touch on the issue of the motivating mechanism or driving force for village governance. That is, why are village cadres enthusiastic about fulfilling their tasks and responsibilities?

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During the 2015 summer vacation, when I did a survey in Taoyuan Subdistrict, Ninghai County, Zhejiang, I  found that the competition in almost every villagers’ committee election was reaching feverish levels. Taoyuan Subdistrict is located in the near suburbs of Ninghai County, and most of the urban development in the county was heading in its direction. In the past ten years, Taoyuan Subdistrict has undertaken many large county-​level construction projects, which involves land expropriation, residential demolition, and resettlement—​ the “most difficult job in the world”—​before construction proceeds. They involve compensation, and the difficulty is not so much about peasants wanting to keep their rights from being harmed, but all the intense game-​playing that occurs when it comes time to figure out how to share the huge profits that are suddenly coming. After the expropriation, demolition, and resettlement comes the breaking of ground on the construction projects, but for that to be done, there is also the need for earth-​moving, which requires almost no technology

306 Chapter 41 or qualifications—​all it takes is organizing a few people to form a construction team, and they are ready to make some money. Who can organize these earth-​ moving projects ahead of construction? Outsiders cannot do it—​even a powerful dragon cannot defeat a snake in its old haunts. This is something that can be done only by strong people who can control village administrative resources, i.e., the village cadres. The powerful and ruthless people who have become village cadres through village elections naturally become the ones who work on these earth-​moving projects, because it is something in which profits are virtually assured. For this reason, the villagers’ committee elections in Taoyuan Subdistrict have always been white-​hot. The same could be said about virtually all of the villagers’ committee elections I studied in the economically developed areas in Zhejiang, the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, and villages in the suburban areas of large and medium-​ sized cities. The elections become white-​hot because the huge profit-​making interests are not limited to earth-​moving projects. In economically developed areas, the identity of village cadres is political. A village cadre in Keqiao District, Shaoxing City said that his income was 88,000 yuan per year, but his “face” (position) as village Party secretary was worth far more than 880,000 yuan, because he could interact with the government using his status to increase his business credit and gain various conveniences far beyond what his income could bring. In the central and western regions, peasants simply abandoned their homestead land after going to the cities, but in economically developed areas, village collective lands have a strong property attribute. For instance, a single parcel of homestead land in Zhejiang villages can sell for 500,000 yuan or even one million yuan, so the village cadre’s power to allocate homestead land is itself a huge benefit. Villages in areas like the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, and suburban areas of large and medium-​sized cities have many profit-​making possibilities due to the developed economy and urban economic spillover. We call these interest-​intensive areas, because the village cadres might not even care about their work-​loss compensation; there are even many cases of village Party secretaries foregoing the compensation because they can still realize huge benefits from their village collectives. This is not to say that village cadres are definitely skimming funds from the collectives, but rather that they can always use their status as village cadres to realize benefits by other means—​for instance, in the gray areas of contracting for earth-​moving projects, or gaining easier business credit for their factories or businesses. Of course, they can also communicate more easily with government departments.

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On further examination, in interest-​intensive areas, the benefits brought by economic development, to a large extent, are usually attached to the land. Determining how to share these interests requires some game-​playing. The competition over the interests or benefits from economic development provides powerful motivation for rural social activity. On the one hand, there are benefits that can be shared, and on the other hand, the rules on distributing those benefits are still being formed through fierce game-​playing. Thus, the game-​playing is an endogenous variable in the way village interests are being distributed. Rural society has strong endogenous motivation. Rural society has a strong endogenous power. Ordinary agricultural central and western villages, meanwhile, are being hollowed out as people and property flow out to the cities. There are few benefits to compete for, so village cadres have difficulty benefiting from their position. Vote-​buying in villagers’ committee elections is nearly impossible. No one cares about who becomes village cadres, and the capable people in the village are unwilling to become village cadres, because they would not be able to realize their own interests, and they would have difficulty realizing the interests of their fellow villagers. Still, some are willing to become village cadres because of the work-​loss compensation and the power to handle the top-​down allocated resources, like the rmlgs indicators and hardship relief. These villages rarely see game-​playing over endogenous interests, and endogenous motivation is severely lacking. Unless the village cadres’ compensation is increased, village elites do not want to become village cadres; they cannot even afford to become village cadres, because the compensation is far less than what they would earn by working in cities. They still have to support their families, and no one wants to become the poorest family in the village. Of course, if the village happens to have “mainstay peasants” who are earning income on the side, they are well-​suited for the village cadre posts. China nowadays is changing fast, and rural society in all its aspects, whether in the interest-​intensive east or the hollowing-​out villages of the west, is being profoundly transformed. It is a planned change—​one part of China’s modernization process. China’s planned modernization must actively adjust and intervene in these changes. The adjustment and intervention should combine with dynamic mechanisms of village governance, provided that we have a deep understanding of those mechanisms.

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The dynamic mechanisms in rural governance come from two different directions:  one is bottom-​up and from the inside out, and the other is top-​down and from the outside in. Both mechanisms in combination provide the driving force behind China’s village governance. However, their manifestations in the interest-​intensive regions of the east and the generally agricultural central and western regions are completely different. Let us examine the bottom-​up, from the inside out mechanism first. In interest-​intensive regions, because village collectives have many allocable interests without specific rules on allocation attached, fierce contests erupt in villages over those interests, and this produces the most basic driving force for village governance. In these regions, economic development has brought economic differentiation and social stratification. The bosses’ group, wealthy from doing business, have interests that tally with their status as village cadres, which only intensifies the competition in villagers’ committee elections, village Party committee elections, and villagers’ representatives’ elections. The village cadres’ competition is only one of the manifestations. Behind this is the competition of interests, which leads to interest struggles, factional politics, coalitions of interest, the assistance that losers seek from the state, petitions, and state interventions through institutional means. The typical case is the 36 articles listing village-​level micro-​powers, issued by the Ninghai County (Zhejiang) Commission for Discipline Inspection, in order to supervise the exercise of power by village cadres, and Zhejiang Province’s Five Conferences Decision-​ making Law on village affairs, which eventually had a broader impact on the whole country. Thus, the powerful driving forces produced over interest allocation becomes an issue of how to control their direction and prevent them from becoming blind or destructive forces. The Five Conferences Decision-​making Law and the 36 articles on small and micro powers at the village level are intended to guide and direct these driving forces into constructive forces that can be harnessed in rural governance. In agricultural central and western regions, lack of profit interest leads to less fierce competition. In addition, the income from working in cities is obviously higher than the work-​loss compensation for village cadres, which accounts for the lack of a driving force. Many strong, young workers have left their villages for the cities, but a small group of village elites remain—​people who can find side income and can survive and thrive in their home villages. These become the natural candidates for village cadres. They have enough side income and primary income that they are not overly concerned about the low work-​loss compensation. Thus, they take up the position mainly from a sense

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of responsibility, Party spirit, trust from the upper-​level government, or even simply for emotional reasons—​for instance, township cadres may have visited them several times for a drink and asked them to take up the position. The lack of driving forces means that there is no need for complicated institutions (like those stipulated in the Five Conferences Decision-​making Law or the 36 articles on village-​level micro-​powers) to regulate power. Even if there were such complicated institutions, they would not be used due to lack of profit interests or competition of interests. They would only become institutions in name, or on paper only, and have no impact on rural governance whatsoever. Because of the lack of an endogenous driving force in rural governance in the agricultural central and western regions, local governments hope to bring village cadres into the official bureaucratic system by raising their remuneration, so that an asymmetrical allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits would result in a driving force for grassroots governance. However, such efforts would change the highly mobile, informal, part-​time village cadres into people who lack mobility, which may lead to severe outcomes. D County has been facing many more problems since it tried to raise village cadres’ income by merging administrative villages. Attempts to create a driving force mechanism for grassroots governance by including village cadres in the official bureaucratic system represent a top-​ down, exogenous approach. Although villages practice village autonomy, this autonomy is not absolute and still an organic part of state governance. The state sets the rules of village governance, local governments decide the income of village cadres, and townships even manage village finance. Strictly speaking, the villagers’ group is not part of the bureaucratic system, but administrative villages are at the bottom end of it, and the village cadres are guided by the township governments. Grassroots governance in China has a very important institutional arrangement to stimulate the enthusiasm of local and grassroots administrations through the asymmetrical top-​down allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits. Specifically, in the top-​down bureaucratic system, the allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits is asymmetrical in that the lower the administrative level, the bigger the responsibility, the less the power, and the fewer the benefits. The higher levels can hold the lower ones to unlimited responsibility, and the lower levels, faced with this situation, have no choice but to make great innovative breakthroughs and accomplish the tasks assigned by higher levels via various institutional innovations. Within the bureaucratic system, the lower levels can only accept and not reject the allocated tasks, because they have been assigned such heavy responsibility. However, village-​level organizations are autonomous, outside of the top-​ down bureaucratic system. In a certain sense, the state cannot stimulate or

310 Chapter 41 regulate village cadres’ enthusiasm (or motivation) via the asymmetrical allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits. In interest-​intensive areas, where villages have immense endogenous driving forces, the top-​down asymmetrical allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits can be used in combination with the endogenous driving forces within the village. However, in the agricultural areas of the central and western regions, the limited solution, naturally, is to increase village cadres’ compensation. As for the large-​scale increase of cadres’ compensation in Shaoxing City’s Keqiao District for the sake of professionalization, it is taking a two-​pronged approach toward stimulating cadres on the task of building a beautiful countryside. One important reason why China has been able to create its “miraculous” rapid development is that it invented various mechanisms to stimulate the enthusiasm of local governments. Understanding the mechanism that drives rural governance is not only an important aspect of understanding the Chinese miracle, but also a prerequisite for more self-​conscious design of innovations in institutions and systems.

chapter 42

Superior and Subordinate

The Asymmetrical Distribution of Responsibility, Power, and Benefits



1

At the 8th County and Township Cadres Forum (2014), many county and township cadres complained that the allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits at the grassroots level was severely asymmetrical: the grassroots had great responsibility but little power and too few benefits. They believed that the levels of responsibility, power, and benefits had to be consistent if the enthusiasm of the grassroots is to be stimulated. The current imbalance is unsustainable. In fact, during the two decades I have spent studying Chinese villages, the grassroots-​level cadres’ complaint about too much responsibility, too little power, and too few benefits is one of the things that has never ceased or changed substantially. This is a problem that deserves study. A basic principle of administration is that the responsibilities, powers, and benefits at each administrative level should be symmetrical and consistent, so that cadres can be really enthusiastic, and administration can be efficient, effective, and sustainable. However, the situation in China seems to be very different: the lower the level, the more unlimited the responsibility, the less the power, and the fewer the benefits. Before the agricultural taxes and fees were abolished, they were an important source of local finance, and if the local government could not collect them in full and on time, it would not even be able to pay teachers on time. However, when agricultural taxes and fees became heavy and peasants were less willing to pay, collecting agricultural taxes and fees from peasants became the “most difficult job in the world.” Local governments had to issue timetables to the village cadres to keep the tax collection on schedule, and those who could not complete it on time would get a demerit or even be “dismissed on the spot (jiudi mianzhi 就地免职).” They began taking forceful measures, which touched off mass incidents, so the local governments demanded of them, “Tasks must be completed without violating the law and without violent incidents.” This left them with only one way to do the job—​persuasion. This did not work, since the peasants were sometimes nowhere to be found, and yet the task had to be completed on time. Then they had no choice but to adopt extraordinary or coercive measures, and as long as these did not trigger violence these were

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_043

312 Chapter 42 considered well worth the effort. If the extraordinary measures did cause violence, the higher-​level cadres would only blame the village cadres, investigate them, punish or dismiss them, and the latter would simply blame it on their own bad luck. Village cadres were thus forced to take their chances. If they were successful, they would avoid blame and punishment and could even be promoted. This was the situation for a long time before the abolition of agricultural taxes. Generally, the chance that violent incidents would be triggered by extraordinary measures may have been 1% or even 0.1%. Even though unusual and coercive means were widely adopted, violent incidents were still relatively rare, so despite the difficulty of collecting taxes, the job still got done. Another “most difficult job in the world” was family planning. There was a common consensus that the implementation of family planning should be implemented, otherwise China’s land would not be able to support an even larger population. For peasants, however, having sons to carry on the family line was the ancestral religion, and what gave meaning to life. Disallowing peasants from having more children (i.e., sons) was devastating to them. When grassroots cadres did their family planning work and forbade peasants from trying to have sons, the peasants would do their best to hide and give birth. When even this was disallowed, they would lay their lives on the line fighting the cadres. In this “most difficult job in the world,” there was no reasoning to speak of. Of course, the state could not tell the cadres, “In doing family planning, you may resort to any means necessary—​tear down peasant houses, collectively punish their friends and relatives, and do forced ligations and forced abortions.” However, the state did apply the one-​vote-​veto on grassroots family planning and would dismiss grassroots cadres when peasants violated family planning policy. At the grassroots level, layers of responsibility can only be separated and applied to individual persons, so the grassroots cadres faced a dilemma: if they did not resort to extraordinary measures, they would certainly be punished or dismissed, but if they did, they could cause violent incidents. Of course, chances were still high that the extraordinary measures would not result in violence, so the cadres tended to use them. At times they would come out with unbelievable slogans, like, “It is better to add a tomb than give birth to one person (ning tian yizuo fen, bu sheng yige ren 宁添一座坟,不生一个人),” and common coercive measures included tearing down peasants’ houses, confiscating their oxen or rice, or seizing their television sets. They were likened to “devils entering the village (guizi jin cun 鬼子进村).” During this critical period, family planning was a core task of the state, so any excessive action by the state on family planning was highly tolerated.

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After about 20 years of this “barbaric” movement-​style approach to the governance of family planning, peasants’ ideas on having children, such as, “More sons, more fortune (duozi duofu 多子多福),” and, “Carry on the family line (chuanzong jiedai 传宗接代),” changed drastically, and so has their fertility behavior. Currently, family planning even in its most general form can achieve the goal of family planning in most areas of China, so the state has started to relax its management of family planning, and it has become much less tolerant of grassroots cadres resorting to extraordinary measures in this regard, so the latter have become more inclined to use regular measures in their family planning work. In China’s rapid urbanization today, farmland is being expropriated as construction land for economic development and urban expansion. Determining how to allocate this huge value-​added income of farmland for non-​agricultural uses has become a focus during the land expropriation process. Peasants living on land designated for expropriation will certainly hope to gain greater profit from that land, so this easily leads to conflicts when the land is expropriated, and their houses demolished. The scale of expropriation and demolition is often very large, and local governments do their best to keep violent incidents to a minimum, and especially to prevent public opinion on such incidents from being directed at higher levels of government. What superiors demand of subordinates, what the central government demands of the local, and the local of the grassroots, is that “tasks must be completed, the measures taken must be legal, and the masses must be satisfied.” As for whether conflicts arise among these three objectives, that all depends on the wisdom of the grassroots level. The grassroots will form much practical wisdom through the expropriation and demolition process, but generally speaking, the process inevitably leads to incidents. If the process were to fail due to the fear of such incidents, China would not be able to complete its urbanization plans, the economy would have difficulty sustaining its development, and the dissatisfied higher-​ups would punish their subordinates for slacking on the job. It is possible that the subordinates resort to extraordinary measures to get the expropriation and demolition done without touching off any violent incidents—​and in fact, this is what generally happens in the vast majority of cases. Local governments can then successfully abide by the three guidelines, even though in reality the guidelines can be mutually contradictory. If the extraordinary measures do touch off a violent incident, it is always pinned on individual local government officials who are blamed for “unauthorized” action. They then get a demerit for violating the law and rules, get investigated and punished. By sacrificing their subordinates, the higher-​ ups maintain their own legitimacy while finishing the necessary tasks. Once China has completed its urbanization, this large-​scale land expropriation and

314 Chapter 42 housing demolition will no longer be needed, and there will also be less need for extraordinary measures. Agricultural tax collection, family planning, and land expropriation, housing demolition, and resettlement were the “most difficult jobs in the world” at three different time periods in recent Chinese history, and each was handled through movement-​style governance. The most intriguing thing running through all three has been a certain logic: the higher-​ups demand of their subordinates, “Not only this … but also that … and also …” That is, “Not only must you complete the task, but also you cannot violate the law, and you must also satisfy the masses.” In short, though the higher-​ups demand the tasks’ completion, they do not give their subordinates the means and authority to do so—​and there is virtually no distribution of benefits upon accomplishing those difficult tasks. This puts the subordinates in a dilemma. They get blamed for any move they make (dong zhe dejiu 动辄得咎). They can only resort to extraordinary measures and hope for good luck in avoiding predicaments. If they do not take initiative and get creative, they will definitely get punished—​so anything is better than passively awaiting one’s fate. But it is precisely this asymmetrical distribution of responsibility, power, and benefits to subordinates by the higher-​ups that has greatly stimulated the subordinates’ enthusiasm and motivation. As a result, they can creatively complete tasks that in almost any other country would be considered unimaginably and unbelievably difficult. China is at an unprecedentedly rapid stage of development and social transition, and on top of that it is a vast territory with unbalanced development across different regions, which complicates the situation even further. It is very difficult to formulate standardized solutions for the whole country to deal with the problems in different regions. Likewise, it is difficult to bring solutions formed at the local level up to the national level. Information asymmetry heightens the difficulty of institutionalizing China’s governance in a period of change. For these reasons, China has adopted the interesting solution of asymmetrical distribution of responsibility, power, and benefits: the lower the government level, the greater the responsibility, the less the power, and the fewer the benefits, while the higher the government level, the less the responsibility, the greater the power, and the more the benefits. This system, in which responsibilities are shifted downward and power and benefits are retained at the top, has stimulated the initiative of local governments by forcing them to think up ways to avoid disaster. So in practice, they devise extraordinary measures, unspoken rules, and gray measures (huise shouduan 灰色手段). These extraordinary measures have solved many otherwise unsolvable problems in national governance. As a result, they have helped China achieve its miraculous economic development.

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At the same time, these extraordinary measures will assuredly touch off violent incidents and leave outstanding problems in their wake. When a bad incident occurs, the responsibility, of course, falls on the local level. The lower the level, the more problems it faces, and the more deviant the measures it takes, making it more likely that further problems result, and responsibilities will need to be borne. The higher the level, the more likely it is to reap the benefits achieved by the extraordinary measures taken, and the greater the likelihood of shifting responsibility for violent incidents downward to the subordinate level. Now the problem is that, to ordinary folks, the people higher up are all good. This is grounded on the inhuman behavior of law enforcers at the terminal end. But if in practice the enforcers on the streets could not be pro-​active or exercise their initiative or even wisdom in response to complex situations, if there were no asymmetric allocation of responsibilities, powers, and benefits, and if there were no pro-​active administration (for fear of punishment), China’s rapid economic development and modernization would not have occurred, and it would have been impossible for the higher-​ups to act the parts of good people. Therefore, higher-​ranking cadres must understand the sacrifices of their subordinates. Above all they must never think that the lower a cadre’s rank, the worse the person is. At the same time, local government officials should also understand that in this period of transition, if the allocation of responsibility, power, and benefits were symmetrical among different levels of government, the problems arising from grassroots practices would have shifted upward. The end result would be that the central government would have to bear responsibility for every single incident, which would not only discredit it, but also lead to the loss of its legitimacy and authority. In an era of swift change, the central government’s authority and legitimacy are the most basic prerequisites for China to bridge differences and achieve the virtually impossible. For a long time to come, the asymmetry of responsibility, power, and benefits in different levels of China’s administration will continue; it is precisely this asymmetry that has made the Chinese miracle possible.

2

We can sum up the discussion above as follows: Grassroots cadres complain that that there is an imbalance now among their responsibilities, powers, and benefits, and that no matter what they do, they will only get blamed for it (dong zhe dejiu). Higher-​ranking cadres require

316 Chapter 42 that their subordinates should do “not only this … but also that … and also …” but in reality, no one can do the three things at the same time. In a period of transition, rules-​based governance is extremely difficult. Rapid development, rapid change, the differentiation and diversification of interests—​ increased complexity—​ have increased the responsibilities but reduced the powers of many grassroots cadres who directly face the masses. To get something done, the measures taken might cause an incident, but if it is not done, the higher-​ups will be unsatisfied; if an incident does occur, the higher-​ups will not only be unsatisfied but also will punish the subordinates. Grassroots-​level cadres are thus always having to walk tightropes in gray areas. Those who walk tightropes in gray areas are bound to have problems, and once one occurs, the impression is, “There are no good people at the grassroots.” The issue is that these gray areas are fundamentally not the kind that lets good people get anything done. However, grassroots cadres are extremely critical for China’s development. Meanwhile, grassroots cadres shoulder the heavy responsibilities for the central government. They can never push all these responsibilities upward to the central government. If they did, its legitimacy would disappear, and in the end, lacking any authority or legitimacy, it would not be able to carry out any reform or development. This problem is manifested through the popular impression that the central government is good, and the local governments are bad. This has nothing to do with the quality of the cadres, but rather with the arrangements of national development strategies in a period of rapid change. In this sense, it is inevitable for grassroots cadres to be wronged. Their higher-​ups should not take advantage of the situation and pretend otherwise (zhanle pianyi hai maiguai 占了便宜还卖乖), but should appreciate the real situation at the grassroots. In this sense, in the period of transition, even if responsibilities, powers, and benefits were uniform and governmental functions transformed, the content of the responsibilities, powers, and benefits would still be different at different levels of government. The asymmetrical distribution of responsibility, power, and benefits at different levels of China’s administrative system differs from the bureaucratic systems with more balanced distribution found in general principles of administration. It is its own principle, and it amounts to an important intermediate summation of Chinese politics and administrative practices. This principle, together with movement-​style governance, the pressure-​type system, the tournament system, the mass line, and the petition system, comprise important parts of the governance system with Chinese characteristics, which deserve special study.

chapter 43

Grassroots Innovation Created the Chinese Miracle

1

After reform and opening up, China’s economy sustained rapid development. There are many reasons for this, but an important one has been local governments’ extremely strong motivation and capability in promoting economic development. As for motivation, local governments’ achievements in economic development have become an important part of their track record, so that under the stimulus of the “tournament” system, local governments throughout China do their utmost in this regard. As a result, they created the Chinese miracle. As for capability, they have two ways to develop their economy: one is investment promotion and the other is to carry out construction projects. Whether they can attract investment usually relates to whether they can finish the projects, and the success of the latter depends on institutional support. Since they are strongly capable of implementing those projects, they created the conditions for the miracle of China’s sustained economic growth. More specifically, implementing any project requires land expropriation, housing demolition, and resettlement, which always involves the adjustment of complex interests. Local governments will always encounter nail households, which emerge because of the immobile nature of land. So how can they expropriate land and carry out demolition and resettlement smoothly and deal effectively with nail households at the same time? In China’s current grassroots governance, the following systems and institutional forces are playing their roles. First is the asymmetrical distribution of responsibility, power, and benefits, a system in which the lower the level of government, the greater its responsibility, the less its power, and the fewer its benefits or interests. This asymmetrical distribution has greatly stimulated the grassroots’ capability to innovating with regard to systems and institutions. Second are the innovations of grassroots institutions, such as appointing area leaders, village liaison cadres (liancun ganbu), and work teams, establishing the system allowing discretionary use of unused budgeted funds (baoganzhi), having arranged talks (yuetan 约谈), announcements of progress, etc., which have stimulated the vitality of the whole grassroots system. Third is the system allowing discretionary use of unused budgeted funds, which serves to stimulate village cadres’ enthusiasm. Specifically, within the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004448285_044

318 Chapter 43 county/​township-​village-​villager structure, county and township governments assign tasks and benefits to villages, and then it is up to the village cadres complete the tasks while gaining benefits. This system gives village cadres, as members of the acquaintance society in their villages, the right to residual claims (shengyu suoqu quan 剩余索取权). Counties and townships acquiesce to village cadres’ gaining benefits from the gray areas of existing structures as they complete their tasks, and they encourage ruthless people who can get things done but may have links to gangs to serve as village cadres. The third item above concerns the exercise of village-​level power. In grassroots governance, the implementation of construction projects ultimately has to be at the village level, so village-​level power and the competitive games played over interests are very important. But on the whole, the main driving force behind the Chinese miracle lies in the grassroots governance system and institutions, i.e., in the first two items above, and the more crucial of the two is the asymmetrical distribution of responsibility, power, and benefits.

2

We often say that China changes from one day to the next. These changes come not by waiting around, not by depending on something, not on demand, but through practice. All urban construction and project completion involve adjustments of interests, and any such adjustment is bound to be extremely complicated and will inevitably create conflicts. Solving these conflicts requires innovation in systems and institutions. During the summer of 2015, when my colleagues and I went to Taoyuan Subdistrict, Ninghai County, Zhejiang Province, we learned that there were altogether 98 staff working for Taoyuan Subdistrict, managing 42 village communities. We were shocked to discover that little Taoyuan Subdistrict had more than 80 major county-​level construction projects going on in 2015. Add to that the county-​level key projects ongoing from the previous year, and there were over 140 such projects at the same time in the subdistrict. All of them used the responsibility system. Whether a project was headed by a county leader or subdistrict leader, the main executors and persons in charge, without exception, were at the subdistrict level. All of the key construction projects had construction work teams; county and subdistrict leaders served as the specialized team leaders on a part-​time basis, and subdistrict staff and village cadres served as team members, also on a part-​time basis. Taoyuan Subdistrict had a total of 98 people on staff, but they were responsible for 140 major construction projects at the same time. How could such a small government handle so many major

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construction projects and smooth out all of the complex interest relationships involved? This relates to issues in the following three areas: Firstly, why does the subdistrict have to shoulder the virtually unlimited responsibility for these major construction projects? From our interviews, we learned that all of the projects had people in charge, construction schedules, and deadlines for completion. If the projects were not completed on time, the people in charge would be punished. The Taoyuan Subdistrict project leaders and persons in charge of specific construction tasks bear virtually unlimited responsibility for completing the projects, but their powers and resources are very limited in comparison. Generally, there are no rewards for completing projects on time, but failure to complete the task smoothly and on time is inevitably punished severely. In other words, when China is creating economic miracles, there are broad, asymmetrical distributions of responsibility, power, and benefits. At the grassroots, responsibility is unlimited while the power and benefits are limited. The subdistrict has huge responsibilities, but little power and few benefits, so it must fully mobilize whatever resources it has and devise all kinds of means to complete its tasks. Secondly, the first thing that the subdistrict does is to devise institutional innovations—​assembling all kinds of structures to respond to the demands of higher-​ups. Taoyuan Subdistrict’s first act was to divide all of its cadres into four big work teams, each one responsible for several key construction projects. Below each big work team, it established small work teams in charge of individual projects. The next thing it did was to rely fully on the Areas (pianqu 片区) established in the original 42 villages of the subdistrict, and let each fully play out its role. Then, each of these villages appointed a village liaison cadre who coordinated village cadres in their work on the various construction projects. In this way, the subdistrict plus the village cadres, through various adaptive linkages, mobilize all their resources most effectively and ensure the smooth and timely completion of the key construction projects. Thirdly, to complete tasks on time, the responsible work teams of various construction projects would work around institutions, in ways that might be against the rules but not against the law. Their institutional innovations would occur in various gray areas. For example, during the process of land expropriation, housing demolition, and resettlement, whenever they encountered nail households, they would seek out all the people related or connected in some way to the nail households,

320 Chapter 43 especially if they are government employees, and give them jobs to do—​ easily done, by coordinating with various government departments—​ and then demanding that they do nail household work. Some local governments will even tell the relative or family member to persuade the nail householder to agree to terms offered, and if they fail, they lose their jobs. Such assignment of joint responsibility is certainly unreasonable, but the local governments would say that if you are a public servant or Party member, you have a responsibility to share in the state’s burdens. That is not entirely correct, but one cannot say it is totally unreasonable. Here is another example. If a nail household refuses to go along with land expropriation, housing demolition, and resettlement for a key project, thus hindering its progress, then one method that can be used is to create an accident. For example, a truck “accidentally” knocks down the house, and then the local government can pay out higher-​than-​usual compensation because of the damage to the furniture still in the house. In such cases, very few nail households will still refuse to accept the compen­sation. No doubt they would have preferred a different outcome, but it is still an opportunity to obtain higher compensation—​their goal in the first place. Because of huge pressure from the asymmetrical distribution of responsibility, power, and benefits, grassroots governments make a lot of institutional innovations in gray areas—​the conditions for maximizing those innovations have already been set. Once these innovations are proven effective in practice, they are quickly taken up by other local governments. They become sources of strong grassroots governance. It is precisely the existence of these gray areas that creates great flexibility in China’s grassroots governance abilities. During the present transition period, the existence of gray areas is very important. If everything is governed by law, and if everything is transparent and open, the various interest conflicts and complex dilemmas of the transition period would never be settled and smoothed out.

3

Under an asymmetrical distribution of responsibility, power, and benefits, in which they are assigned virtually unlimited responsibility, the grassroots must make institutional innovations in gray areas to finish its tasks. With good luck, innovations in gray areas lead to getting jobs done without a hitch; with moderate luck, the jobs get done with little problem; but if luck is bad, even though the task is accomplished, there will be a whole stack of problems with

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grave social outcomes. Of course, the worse luck means failing to finish the task, and ending up with a stack of problems. The great pressure of responsibility means that grassroots governments will do their utmost to finish the tasks, so they make innovations in the gray areas, despite the possibilities of negative outcomes, mass incidents, bloodshed, and suicides. Big incidents like these mean, of course, that the “innovations” failed, and that the grassroots cadres—​typically the persons in charge—​will be held accountable. Even so, giving innovation a try is preferable to being held responsible for failing to fulfill a task. There is risk with innovation, but with the risk the task can be done. Even if the task is not finished, or the risk taken has caused severe outcomes, the only outcome is punishment. Since village cadres will definitely be held accountable for failing a task, they would rather take the risk, or fail in the innovation and be penalized. Of course, the higher-​ups are certainly unwilling to let their subordinates take random risks, and institutional innovation is not equivalent to taking risks, so they must use accountability to control the creation or risk of failure. Hence, they must use accountability to control the failure of innovation or of taking risks. Subordinates who have caused problems in the course of completing tasks have to be punished. Because of the necessity of keeping a balance between completing tasks and minimizing incidents due to innovation, subordinates must carefully consider how to fulfill tasks, control risks, and innovate—​just being bold will not do. In this sense, all subordinates with great responsibility, little power, and few benefits are extremely enthusiastic about learning others’ experiences with institutional innovation. Meanwhile, the higher-​ups have to find a balance between demanding the completion of tasks and avoiding risks—​they cannot simply increase the pressure. If an incident occurs, they must protect the subordinates who have taken risks to accomplish tasks, otherwise it will have a chilling effect on other subordinates. Protecting subordinates may involve political or economic methods, or a job transfer. Superiors require subordinates to fulfill tasks, but if the subordinates have problems and cannot come up with any innovative ideas, the former have to “hit” on the one hand and “protect” on the other. “Hitting” is punishment, which is political and open, but “protecting” is economic and under-​the-​table. If there is protection and no hitting, or if there is too much protection, the subordinates can go overboard and get too adventurous, leading to a lot of bad incidents. Without protection, though, subordinates will lack the motivation to innovate or take risks to fulfill assigned tasks. Only when there is a balance between “hitting” and “protecting” is it possible to maintain a high standard and quality of innovation in grassroots governance institutions. The many institutional innovations in grassroots governance have enabled the grassroots

322 Chapter 43 to complete the various “most difficult jobs in the world,” carry out various construction projects smoothly, and ultimately create the Chinese miracle. All top-​down tasks eventually have to be carried out in grassroots governance, face-​to-​face with the masses. One of the important reasons for the Chinese miracle of economic development and rapid urban construction is the making of institutional and methodological innovations in gray areas by the grassroots level, under huge pressure from the top-​down asymmetric distribution of responsibility, power, and benefits, and the way that successful experiences of innovation are quickly reproduced and disseminated, so that they become successful national experiences, and then, in turn, quietly transform grassroots governance. As a result, grassroots governance in China has virtually fulfilled what no other system has been able to do: mobilizing personnel and completing the construction for a compressed modernization.

Index Abolition of agricultural taxes 28, 74, 75, 98, 99, 102, 103, 106, 130, 175, 192, 219, 238, 239, 241, 246, 248, 254, 255, 257, 258, 259, 273, 296, 312 Acquaintance society 67, 131, 133, 142, 174, 192, 244, 245, 246, 270, 274, 276, 282, 318 Administrative examination and approval network platform 60 Agricultural enterprises 136 Agricultural taxes and fees 73, 74, 75, 87, 98, 99, 102, 103, 106, 109, 130, 138, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 173, 175, 192, 219, 239, 242, 246, 247, 248, 254–​257, 259, 268, 271–​274, 295–​297, 311 Agriculture-​related funds 141, 142, 144, 276, 279 Allocation of land to households 242–​243 allowing discretionary use of unused budgeted funds 178, 300, 317 Ancestral hall 278–​282 Appeal to higher levels of government 179, 258, 290 Artificial household division 297 Assured voter 21, 251 Assured votes 21, 22, 251 Asymmetrical distribution of rights, responsibilities and interests 250 Atomized villagers 16 Autonomous platform 133 Autonomous region 92, 96, 254, 277 Autonomy 3, 29, 30, 34, 73, 76, 105, 111, 136, 175, 176, 183, 199, 202, 214, 231, 235, 238, 239, 240, 247, 260, 276–​279, 281–​285, 309 Bad debts 148 Bidding 83, 109, 132, 210, 270, 274 Bonus 44, 45, 50, 52, 224, 226 Bribery 122 Bureaucratic division of labor 197 Bureaucratic logic 169 Bureaucratic system 197, 200–​202, 309, 316 Buyer’s market 206, 220 Carry on the family line 312, 313 Center of Land Consolidation 125, 126

Central Commission for Discipline Inspection 176 Central Document No. 1 142 Central Rural Work Leading Group 146 Chain operation 102 Chairman of the village council 69 Chinese miracle 310, 315, 317–​319, 321, 322 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (cppcc) 9, 211 Civil Affairs Bureau 94, 128 Clan identity 143, 153, 278 Clan village 265, 270, 274, 276, 278 Clear their debts 88 Commission for Discipline 165, 176, 186, 188, 308 Committee system 196 Competitive transfer payment 130, 132 Complaint system 162 Comprehensive agricultural subsidies 87, 120, 141, 142, 143, 144, 296 Comprehensive Management Office 31, 161, 162, 167, 168 Comprehensive rural reform 141, 142, 276, 284, 285 Comprehensive village system reform 103 Contracted land use rights 123 Contribution of free labor 155 Contribution of labor and money 151 Convenient service platforms, 161–​166  County and Township Cadres Forum 311 Credit cooperative 147, 148 Creditor-​debtor relationships 149 Cross-​evaluation 199 Cross-​village clans 264 Cultivated land occupation and compensation 224 Demonstration sites 133, 137, 138, 140, 247 Demonstration village 139 Dense interests 189, 190, 230 Deputy secretary of town Party committee 9 Development Research Center of the State Council 146 Development zones 207, 217, 218, 298 Discipline inspection 48, 176, 186, 188, 308

324 Index Discretionary power 105 Divide and contract land 126 Division of fields among households 72, 73, 241, 254 Downward shift of villagers’ autonomy in Qingyuan village 276–​285 Economic differentiation 3, 72, 238, 288, 308 Economic elites 48, 100, 286, 288 Elderly insurance 205 Election by the masses 175 Employed in government-​affiliated institutions 46 Endogenous 212, 219, 230, 235, 239, 248, 283, 304–​310 Endogenous forces 212 Equity consolidation 213–​214 Establishment candidate 9 Exogenous 219, 230, 295, 301, 304–​310 Factional politics 5, 249, 251, 252, 253, 308 Family planning 28, 171, 173, 254, 255, 258, 263, 264, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 273, 277, 298, 312, 313, 314 Farmland reallocation 101, 103, 104, 107–​111 Farmland transfer fee 107 Fat-​lean pairing principle 32 Financial resources 33, 56, 122, 135, 137, 139, 156, 157, 187, 226–​229, 238 Financial resources, allocated to villages 135–​140 Five Conferences Decision-​making Law 177, 179, 181, 308, 309 Five social insurances and one housing fund 44 Flood Control Law 95 Flow of capital to the countryside 59 Foreign capital 204, 207 Forest Ecological Benefit Compensation Fund 141, 279 Fortified villages 34 Four discussions and two disclosures 177, 179, 180, 181–​184, 189, 202, 229 Fundraising 150, 271, 278, 282 Funds integration 141, 143 General Office of the cpc Central Committee 183 General Office of the State Council 183

Going through the motions 31, 114 Governance by virtue 86 Government-​affiliated institutions 46, 128 Grain ration fields 109 Grassroots governance 6, 60, 69–​71, 89, 90, 92, 100, 102, 129, 153, 155, 157, 167, 169, 170–​174, 182–​185, 187–​191, 197, 199–​203, 214, 215, 243, 259, 295, 296, 299, 301, 302, 303, 309, 317, 318, 320, 321, 322 Grassroots organization 61, 62, 64, 71, 101, 104, 106, 134, 145, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157, 170, 172, 202, 208, 212, 254–​262, 277, 282, 295, 296 Grassroots Party-​building 254 Grey income 75 Grid administrator 161, 162, 165, 166 Grid management 161, 163, 165, 299 Grid platform 161, 162, 165 Guanxi (networks) 22, 135, 153 Guardian 167 Half-​working and half-​farming 66 Hardship allowance 172 Head of households 282 Homestead 4, 23, 210, 213, 217, 237, 297, 306 Honorary position 31 Horizontal line of authority 128 Innovation and creativity 171, 174 Integration of government administration with commune management 72 Intergenerational division of labor 66, 72, 236 Investment promotion 207, 212, 215, 317 Involution 243, 296 Labor for accumulating credits 255 Land acquisition and demolition 184 Land allocation 107, 108, 263, 277 Land consolidation 119, 123–​129, 141, 144, 195 Land contractual management rights 101, 109, 111 Land expropriation and demolition 4, 178, 179, 249, 251, 253, 298, 302 Land for flexible purposes 109, 110, 260, 261, 262 Land formation 123 Land leveling 123, 124 Land property rights 172

325

Index Land property structure 192 Land use control 32, 204, 207, 215 Land use rights 107, 111, 206, 236, 237 Landless peasants 32 Law of Land Administration 205, 216, 297,  298 Left-​behind peasants 236 Lianghui (People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) 10 Line cadres 31, 33, 209, 224, 225 Local tyrants 34 Locking up village debts 146, 149, 152

Office of the Rural Work Leading Group 148 One-​vote-​veto 312 Onlookers 94, 272 Openness of village affairs 176, 183 Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committee 175, 183, 228, 277, 278 Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China 128 Overall planning 3

Nail households 5, 6, 27, 28, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 99, 100, 103, 119, 121, 122, 127, 132, 137, 147, 150, 153, 155, 156, 157, 195, 196, 240, 244, 246, 249, 250, 257, 295, 296, 298, 300, 302, 303, 317, 319, 320 National Development and Reform Commission 128, 205 New Rural Cooperative Medical System 130, 263, 296 New rural endowment insurance 119, 130, 222, 223 New rural medical insurance 119 New rural social endowment insurance 32, 88, 172, 222, 296 Non-​real estate asset 32

Party branch committee member 31, 209 Party branch secretary 20, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 40, 41, 50, 58 Party leadership of the masses 93–94 Party members’ meeting 184, 229 Passive governance 99, 100 Passive households 150 Paternal relatives 287, 288, 289 Pay enough to the state and leave enough for the collective 73 Peasant differentiation 235–​240 People’s Chamber 114 People’s Commune system 51, 72, 241, 243 People’s Congress 9, 211, 229 People’s government 10, 86, 87, 90 People-​position compatibility principle 62–​63 Personal connections 97, 290 Petition 6, 15, 23, 87, 89, 94, 101–​105, 107, 132, 151, 176, 179, 187, 188, 190, 240, 252, 256, 258, 259, 264, 298, 303, 308, 316 Political efficacy 240 Political vanity projects 133, 247 Poverty-​stricken counties 96 Principle-​compromising 174 Professionalization 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 227, 228, 230, 310 Profiteering 214, 252 Profit-​sharing order 136, 241, 247, 248, 296, 300 Propaganda committee member 9 Pro-​people 86, 87, 89, 91 Provincial Party Committee Organization Department 304 Proximity principle 32 Public land ownership system 7

Offering job opportunities instead of sheer relief 119, 120, 121, 220

Relationship between obligations and rights 257–​258

Mainstay peasants 54, 55, 59, 70, 307 Maintaining stability 101, 103, 105, 149 Major illness relief 172 Maoist cadres 72 Mass line 71, 112, 115, 316 Matching funds 121, 122, 130 Micro-​governance 197 Middle peasants 42, 48, 65, 70, 77, 203, 236, 237, 238 Minimum livelihood guarantee (mlg) system 13, 187 Minimum living standard allowance 87 Minimum subsistence security for poverty alleviation 172 Mobile village cadres 34 Movement-​style governance 314, 316 Municipal Party committee secretary 112

326 Index Rent-​seeking 24, 136, 137, 179, 238 Rentier groups 34, 214 Replacing subsidies with rewards 120, 121, 155 Reserve candidate 54 Right to residual claims 318 Road alignment 123 Rural collectively-​owned commercial construction land 216, 297 Rural homestead 4, 23, 297 Safeguard rights 258 Secretary of the town committee 267, 273 Senior citizens’ associations 69, 154 Service allowance 305 Shareholding cooperative system 213 Side income 77, 305, 308 Sideline income 77 Single-​surname villages 143, 287 Small kinship group 14–​16, 253, 286–​291 Small kinship village 286–​289, 291 Social differentiation and stratification 97 Stability maintenance 167 Swing voter 21, 251 System of shared benefits 122 Territorial management 167 The Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee 216 Three capitals 24 Three connections and one leveling 56 Three deductions 73, 271 Three improvements and one demolition 298 Top-​down transfer payment 103, 133, 137, 153, 219 Top-​down transferred funds 99, 100 Tournament system 316, 317 Town Civil Affairs Office 31, 209 Township and village integration 214, 215 Transfer payment system 133 Transfer payment 103, 130–​137, 139, 140, 152, 153, 155, 157, 172, 173, 219, 246, 258 Two-​track land-​use system 109 Unlimited government 90 Urban insurance 32 Urban management officers 87, 89

Use urban development to boost rural development 296 Vertical lines of the government 128 Village affairs hall 60 Village affairs’ supervision committee 176, 177 Village autonomy 30, 34, 111, 199, 202, 231, 235, 238, 239, 240, 260, 281–​285, 309 Village chambers of commerce 6 Village clerk 41, 50, 56, 63 Village community 84, 213, 237 Village council 69, 192–​200, 279, 281, 282, 299 Village debt 121, 139, 146–​152, 256 Village doctors 60–​64 Village elite 53, 57, 63, 99, 197, 239, 286, 289, 307, 308 Village financial management group 176 Village governance 60–​64 by capable in southern Jiangsu province 204–​218 centered on allocation of financial resources 228–​229 in central and western regions 65–​71 in China 295–​303 peasant differentiation affects 235–​240 for poor village collectives, unaffordability of 254–​262 in Shanghai 219–​231 in southern Jiangxi province 263–​275 family planning in southern Jiangxi province 263–​270 peasant burden and cadre-​masses relationship in southern Jiangxi 270–​275 Village head 9, 13, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, 40, 41. 50, 51, 52, 56, 57, 63, 96, 97, 98, 99, 112, 113, 151, 175, 179, 186, 193, 201, 209, 221, 224, 225, 227, 228, 251, 252, 279, 281 Village Party secretary 5, 13, 20, 22, 23, 26, 40, 45, 46, 47, 51, 53, 54, 55, 85, 86, 99, 149, 167, 168, 171, 186, 188, 194, 206, 207, 208, 209, 211, 221, 224–​228, 251, 252, 263, 266, 267, 268, 286, 306 Village plutocracy 240 Village power 8, 173, 180, 183, 186, 188, 189, 190, 252

327

Index Village representatives’ assembly 157, 185 Village teachers 60–​64 Village-​level economic cooperative organizations 51, 176 Villagers’ assembly 157, 194, 226 Villagers’ committee 5, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 46, 51, 57, 58, 60, 62, 69, 73, 76, 98, 103, 104, 105, 109, 168, 175, 176, 177, 181–​186, 189, 209, 211, 213, 217, 225, 226, 228, 229, 239, 240, 250, 251, 253, 254, 277, 278, 281, 282, 285, 305, 306, 307, 308 Villagers’ group 32, 105, 106, 129, 131, 142, 147, 151, 153, 161, 165, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199,

200, 202, 226, 227, 244, 254, 256, 277, 281–​284, 309 Village-​run enterprises 147, 206, 212, 221, 300 Villages in the city 138 Violent incidents 103, 311, 312, 313, 315 Voluntary labor 255 Vote-​buying 4, 5, 10, 17–​18, 20–​29, 56, 98, 175, 179, 228, 230, 239, 251, 290, 307 Work points 51, 73, 74 Write-​in candidate 9, 18 “Zhangzhou 110” 86