The Challenge of New Rural Governance and the way to solve it

With the rapid progress of industrialization and urbanization and the continuous deepening of rural reform, a new type of rural community has emerged in China's rural areas, such as "withdrawing villages and living together" and farmers "living together". Some new situations, such as the "hollow village" caused by the transfer of rural labor force to cities and towns, the "super village" in the real city, and the "village in the city" in the gap between the city. The emergence of these situations has brought a lot of problems to rural governance, buried many hidden dangers, and even restricted the development process of new rural construction and urban-rural integration to a certain extent, thus hindering the sustained and effective growth of China's rural economy. To achieve a new type of rural governance, from a general point of view, we should not adopt an across-the-board approach in accordance with the traditional way of rural governance, but take measures according to local and village conditions, so as to improve the quality and level of rural governance and realize the new development of urban-rural integration.

In recent years, the rapid progress of industrialization and urbanization and the deepening of rural reform have not only brought new vitality to rural development, but also brought many new situations to rural governance and caused many new problems. The new type of rural governance should not adopt an across-the-board approach in accordance with the traditional way of rural governance, but should meet the new challenges brought by the new rural communities, "hollow villages", "super villages" and "villages in the city". Make a comprehensive and systematic analysis, adjust measures to local and village conditions, and solve new problems, so as to improve the quality and level of rural governance and realize the new development of urban-rural integration.

I. the new situation in current rural governance

(1) A new type of rural community under "withdrawing villages and living together" and "farmers living together"

With the acceleration of urbanization, a large number of rural labor force has been transferred to cities and towns, and a large number of unreasonable, inadequate and abandoned residential and construction land have emerged in rural areas. In order to replan and make comprehensive use of rural collective construction land (mainly residential land), many local governments let farmers live in new resettlement areas by demolishing old villages and building back-moving buildings, thus forming a new type of rural community. In this case, the old homestead can be reclaimed to obtain construction indicators for urban construction, or the original homestead can be directly used for urban project construction. With the rapid development of economy and society, the problems of backward rural infrastructure and lack of public services are highlighted; after solving the problem of food and clothing and basically achieving a well-off life, farmers also put forward new and higher requirements for living conditions and production and living environment, which also foreshadowing the construction of a new type of rural community. Since the construction of the new countryside in 2006, many rural areas, especially those in economically developed areas, have accelerated the speed of community construction, and the new rural community has become an important part of the new rural construction. Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Hebei, Chongqing and other provinces (cities) have carried out community construction with the concentration of farmers to cities and towns or agglomeration communities as the main content. Up to now, nearly half of the communities in Jiangsu, Shandong and other provinces have become a new type of rural community.

The new type of rural community is not only different from the traditional administrative village, but also different from the urban community, either by the merger of several administrative villages, unified planning, unified layout, unified construction, or by the construction of a larger administrative village. after completion, the new communities are mostly located in the core areas of towns, streets or villages and towns with convenient transportation. In essence, the new rural community construction is not a simple village renovation, transformation, nor a simple gathering of more people, but to create a new form of social life in the community, so that farmers can enjoy the same public services as urban people, live like urban human life, and finally achieve the goal of narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas and local urbanization. However, in practice, due to the thinking inertia of some local governments'"land finance", the construction of new rural communities has been alienated into the "most convenient way" to replace urban construction land. In this process, if we can not properly deal with the relationship between the relevant interest groups, it will easily lead to all kinds of problems. Moreover, even in the new rural communities that have been built, community governance also faces many challenges.

(2) "hollow villages" caused by the transfer of rural labor force to cities and towns

For a long time, the countryside has always been an important field for people to live and live, but with the development of industrialization and urbanization in our country, the non-agricultural transformation of the rural population has been greatly accelerated, and more and more villages have become "hollow villages". In September 2014, the Baotou investigation team of the National Bureau of Statistics conducted a survey on 32 administrative villages involved in the survey of residents' income and expenditure. The results show that the total number of households in 32 administrative villages is 29124, the number of families going out is 2851, and the number of idle houses (more than 2 years) is 2690.

There are mainly two kinds of "hollow villages" in the new period: one is in the sense of demography. Originally, the infrastructure, education, medical care and other public services in cities are better than those in rural areas, and with the rapid progress of industrialization and urbanization, the gap between urban and rural areas tends to widen further. Under this background, a large number of young and middle-aged farmers with high cultural quality go to work in cities, leaving the elderly, the weak, sick and disabled, women and children and other groups to stay in the village, resulting in a large number of "people leaving houses empty" phenomenon in rural areas. This is due to the "hollow village" formed by the transfer of labor. The second is in the sense of geography. After earning money from working in cities and towns, a large number of migrant workers return to their hometown and need to build new houses due to factors such as marriage, separation, improvement of living conditions, location and so on. due to the lack of village construction planning, imperfect land use management system, lack of effective supervision of farmers' illegal construction of houses, lack of infrastructure in the village, etc., most of the newly built houses are concentrated in the periphery of the village, especially along the main road. The old houses in the village are often idle or become "warehouses" and "furnishings", which leads to a large number of idle homestead and idle land in the village, forming the architectural style of "inner and outer expansion", leading to the "hollow village". The "hollow villages" of these two levels are related to each other, but the "hollow" in the demographic sense has a more far-reaching impact. In this sense, this paper mainly discusses the phenomenon of "hollow village" caused by the rapid transfer of rural labor force to cities and towns under the rapid progress of industrialization and urbanization.

Generally speaking, the "hollow village" has the following remarkable characteristics: in terms of location, it is generally far away from the big city, the economy is relatively backward, and the development is slow; in terms of the appearance of the village, there are a large number of idle housing and abandoned cultivated land in the village; in terms of population structure, the young and middle-aged labor force in the village is scarce, and a large proportion of the elderly, women and children are left behind. According to the survey, at present, the population structure of the "hollow village" is seriously maladjusted, and the left-behind elderly people over the age of 50 account for the vast majority of the left-behind population. The increasing number of "hollow villages", the loss of a large number of young and middle-aged labor in the village, the large number of left-behind elderly, women and children, and a large number of idle housing and abandoned arable land will affect the rural governance in the new period.

(3) the "Super Village" of Mingcun City

In the early 1990s, in the developed areas along the southeast coast, "super villages" represented by Huaxi Village and Yonglian Village appeared one after another. With the advancement of China's modernization construction and the rapid development of rural industrialization and urbanization, a large number of "super villages" with strong economic strength and high degree of modernization are rising rapidly and are in a state of sustainable development. it has become a "beautiful scenery" in the development of grass-roots rural areas in our country.

As a new form of village, "super village" does not belong to the traditional sense of the village, nor to the modern sense of the city, but shows many intermediate characteristics. Most of these super villages exist in the form of enterprises or enterprise groups, but they retain some characteristics of traditional villages; they not only retain the village committee, a grass-roots mass autonomous organization, but also perform various functions of "quasi-government". It also plays an intermediary role in the relationship between the state and the villagers; it not only enters the industrialized community, but also retains some life order and principles of the local society, showing the characteristics of both cities and townships. Compared with ordinary villages, "super villages" are very different in economic structure, collective income, demographic composition, infrastructure and public services. First, most of the "super villages" have their own collective enterprises, and the output value is huge (output value is mostly hundreds of millions or even tens of billions), forming a non-agricultural economic structure with township enterprises as the main body. industrial output value or non-agricultural output value has accounted for the vast majority of the total output value of the village. For these villages, agriculture is no longer the leading industry. Second, it has formed a stable "village government" income that can be used for village administration and public and public welfare undertakings. Third, the population of the village has doubled, gathering a large number of migrant labor force, some of which have exceeded the total number of villagers by several times or even more than ten times. Although most of the migrant population are "migrant workers", do not have the household registration of the village, have strict differences in identity with the villagers, and have great mobility, but as a whole, they have a relatively stable scale and become "prospective villagers" of the village. Fourth, with the rapid development of village infrastructure and public and public welfare undertakings, the villagers' way of life and cultural values have changed, and new lifestyles and values are forming ①.

In the process of development and expansion, most of the "super villages" have gone through the process of merging the surrounding villages and become the "community" inhabited by the original villagers and newly joined villagers. Moreover, these "super villages" have been urbanized, and most of them have exceeded the development level of the surrounding villages and towns and become de facto local economic, cultural and social service centers. The emergence of a large number of "super villages" and their new characteristics have brought many new challenges to rural governance.

(4) the "village in the city" in the gap between the city

In the process of promoting urbanization, due to the stage of development, the central area often gives priority to developing into a city, while the relatively remote suburbs evolve into "villages in the city". "Village in the city" mostly means that in the process of rapid economic development and urbanization, the countryside located on the edge of the city has been divided into the urban area, although it has become a part of the city in the region. However, in the land ownership, household registration, administrative system still retain the village model of the village, also known as the "village in the city". According to the distance from the city center and the ownership of agricultural land, "villages in the city" can be divided into three categories: first, villages in bustling urban areas where there is no agricultural land at all; second, villages in the periphery of the urban area with a small amount of agricultural land; third, villages in the outer suburbs with more agricultural land.

Although the "village in the city" in the gap between the city has become a part of the city, compared with the real city, its infrastructure, public services and environmental sanitation are still very backward. The existence of "village in the city" not only affects the urban management and restricts the development of the city, but also changes the original characteristics of the village and brings many new problems to the village governance.

II. New challenges to rural governance

In the traditional rural society, the old rural governance model has achieved certain results in promoting rural progress, agricultural development and farmers' wealth. however, with the rapid economic and social development and the rapid progress of urbanization, a large number of new situations such as new rural communities, "hollow villages", "super villages" and "urban villages" have emerged, which have brought many new problems and challenges to rural governance. The traditional one-size-fits-all rural governance model has been far from being able to meet the requirements of the development of the new era. The Communique of the third Plenary session of the 18th Central Committee of Communist Party of China in 2013 pointed out that it is necessary to "form a new type of urban-rural relationship between workers and farmers, in which industry promotes agriculture, cities lead townships, workers and farmers benefit each other, and urban and rural areas are integrated. Let the broad masses of farmers participate in the modernization process equally and share the fruits of modernization". However, the old rural governance model has seriously hindered the development of urban-rural integration.

(1) New challenges to the governance of "new rural communities"

First of all, it caused some villagers to "go upstairs and lead to poverty". The construction of new rural communities is often accompanied by farmers'"going upstairs". In this process, there is a widespread problem of insufficient local government compensation for farmers' real estate and homestead, and farmers often need to pay extra to buy buildings. coupled with the increase in the cost of living of farmers after "going upstairs", it will lead to the adverse consequences of "going upstairs to lead to poverty". Moreover, after going upstairs, farmers will basically break away from the land and lose an important source of income-- agricultural income. in this case, if the problem of non-agricultural employment can not be solved, the problem of farmers' income will become a big problem.

Secondly, there are unique community phenomena such as "raising pigs on the roof, growing vegetables in the green belt" and so on. At present, in most rural areas of our country, agriculture is still the main production activity of farmers, courtyard economy and family livestock raising are still important sources of income, and land is still the main means of security. Rural villages with villages as the main form are still more suitable for rural villagers to live and engage in all kinds of production. In the face of sudden "going upstairs", many villagers, especially the elderly, find it difficult to adapt in a short time, coupled with the difficult feelings with land and livestock, some villagers will choose to open up "their own territory" on public spaces such as roofs or green belts, which can be used to raise pigs or grow vegetables.

Thirdly, the local relationship weakens, the cohesion of the village decreases, and the relationship between villagers is becoming more and more unfamiliar. In the construction of a new type of rural community characterized by the concentration of farmers, the important link is the merger between villages and the participation of outsiders. With the merger of villages, the relatively closed traditional village pattern linked by consanguinity and region has been broken, and the villagers who originally belonged to different villages have become common community residents, which weakens the original local relationship of the village. Although the new community has improved the living conditions and living environment of farmers, the high-rise housing and anti-theft system in the community is no longer convenient for villagers to visit and chat, and it is not convenient for villagers to help each other, especially in the community, "there are fewer and fewer public spaces." the function of some surviving public spaces has also been weakened, coupled with the addition of foreign "strangers". The affectionate relationship in the old rural areas gradually gave way to the organized and institutionalized karmic relationship, the cohesion of the original village community was weakened, and the relationship among the villagers became unfamiliar and indifferent. How to "live well" among different villagers has become an urgent problem to be solved.