The Dilemma and outlet of the Power of Village Community in China

In recent years, Chinese society misunderstands the nature of village power, resents it in attitude, rejects it in policy, and restricts it in legal system, which leads to its failure to perform its due function. In fact, village power is the basic system in our rural society, it is the common carrier of villagers' public interests, collective organizational interests and extended interests of state power, and the basic means of farmers' collective existence and operation. it plays an irreplaceable function in providing public goods. Only by activating the power of the village community can we effectively solve the problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

I. the predicament of the power of the village community

At the present stage, the power of the village community in our country is in a dilemma, which is manifested by the lack of authority of the village community power, the loss of the role of village community cadres and the weak restriction of village community rules.

(1) the power of the village community lacks authority

"any rule attempts to arouse and maintain the belief in its' legitimacy'," and the legitimacy of the power of the village community supports the authority. In the order of etiquette and law in ancient China, careful institutional rules were set for the gentry who held the power of the village community and the villagers affected by the power: religious precepts such as karma, ethical rules such as the three principles and five permanent principles, and sophisticated human feelings required to provide sufficient legitimacy and authority for the squire to exercise his power. In the period of the people's commune, the rural social resources were all under the control of the political power, the power of the village community was replaced by the state power, and the interests of the village community belonged to the national interests; with the help of the strong state power, this so-called "village community power" is powerful and authoritative. However, the existing system pays attention to the extension of state power to rural society, ignoring the construction and maintenance of rural power itself. At present, the power of the village community not only lacks the necessary economic basis to maintain its existence and operation, but also loses the necessary coercive means that can be used to restrict the object of power. The power of the village community lacks sufficient support in the fields of politics, morality, public opinion, prestige and trust, and the lack of authority brought by the position of village cadres makes it difficult to establish the power order of the village community. In a few places where the power of the village community can play a role, it often depends on the personal prestige of charismatic leaders. Due to the lack of support from the formal institutional rules, the power elite can only shape the authority and prestige on their own, and the core members of the power community need to put forward and promote the power creed, for example, the "Quotations of Wu Renbao" in Huaxi Village and the "250 Spirit" in Nanjie Village. On the one hand, this power creed is used to integrate the power team, on the other hand, it is used to win the recognition of the villagers. However, the efforts to independently make up for the insufficient application of formal social rules need to rely on the supporting elements such as specific resource endowments, traditional habits, leaders' personal abilities or economic interests in the small environment of the village community; these supporting elements are not universal, and the successful model of independent shaping authority cannot be popularized. At the same time, the strong man of power has two sides, and the excessive strengthening of the power of the village community according to his personal will will often break through the constraints of general social reason and the rule of law, leading to self-myth and creating "local emperors".

(2) Village cadres have lost their roles

Village cadres play a dual role, that is, the agent of the state and the head of the village. In the relationship between the village community and the state, the state is always in a strong position, firmly controlling rural cadres through formal and informal institutional rules, and rural cadres become agents of the state. In the internal relations of the village community, the cadres hold the power as the family, and the village communities and villagers as the entrusting party can not effectively ensure that the cadres are used by themselves. When the interests of the state contradict the interests of the village community and the interests of the villagers, and when the will of the state conflicts with the will of the village community and the will of the villagers, village community cadres often become self-contradictory conflicts. In the struggle between the two restraint forces, the power of the village community is often seriously out of balance, and the village community has insufficient restraint ability for its own agents. the reality is that the villagers are unable to restrain the village cadres.

The village cadres who lost their roles swayed at two extremes: negative inaction and self-interest. On the one hand, in most agricultural village communities, land is contracted to households and subsidies go directly to people, and village cadres have no resources, unable to organize public services, and collectively unable to provide public goods; the remuneration of cadres is low, and only the elderly who are old and weak are willing to serve as village cadres. As a result, the cadres of the village community did nothing and became the watchers of the village community. On the other hand, in the villages with collective economy, the village community power generally shows a tendency of abuse, and village cadres are prone to self-interest. "in modern society, the restriction and coercion of groups other than the state on their members and even their members may be more oppressive than the state." Because of the conflict between the relevant policies and laws, the state law and the rural rules and regulations, compared with the state power and the power within the company, the village community power has some problems, such as unclear rules and regulations, weak protection and so on. There is the problem of selective use caused by the parallel use of multiple rules. Village cadres have more power than government departments, but they are not restricted by the same strict division of labor and procedures as government departments; they have the same right of action as enterprise operators, but they do not have to bear the corresponding risks; village cadres can freely play in the blank areas of villagers' autonomy and political power. Some scholars have pointed out that the so-called collective ownership of land is actually owned by small groups of township and village cadres, and some even become individual ownership of individual township and village cadres.

(3) weak constraints of institutional rules

The power of the village community is originally derived from the villagers' autonomy, and the village cadres who hold the power of the village community need to be responsible to the villagers. however, the current system is directly restricted from top to bottom according to the logic of administrative management. the power of the village community is treated as the subordinate power of the government. Since the reform and opening up, the government has gradually withdrawn from the overall control of the rural society, and the power of the village community could have been given more space. unfortunately, the government has not made great efforts to support the power of the village community. At the level of policy and legislation, many national policies and laws have a direct impact on farmers, such as agricultural subsidies directly into farmers' accounts, beyond the village collective level; at the level of economic operation, individual villagers directly participate in market activities, do not rely on the village collective as the intermediary. The village community can neither control the rural resources nor directly provide benefits to the villagers. Due to the lack of interests in the collective hands of the village community, village cadres can not effectively restrain the villagers through the power mechanism, and the villagers' recognition, dependence, respect and awe of the power of the village community are very low. The state power should provide authority for the existence and operation of the village community power, but at present, the starting point of the state standardizing the village community power is inappropriate, paying attention to preventing village cadres from abusing their power, while neglecting to ensure their exercise of power. Because "its coercive force lacks the guarantee of national coercive force at the level of effectiveness, its frequent forms are mainly internal constraints", such as village rules and regulations, village committee resolutions, rural public opinion and so on. The village power does not have the mandatory means of criticism, reward, punishment, dismissal and other compulsory means owned by the company and other community power, let alone the rigid violent facilities such as the army, police, courts and prisons owned by the public power. The power of the village community is at the lowest level of the evolution of power, the basic guarantee of the exercise of power lies in the personal prestige of those in power, and the power of the village community is lack of coercive power. The general situation of the power of the village community in our country is that the restriction of the power of the village community on the villagers is mainly maintained by flexible means such as morality and affection, and the village cadres who master the power of the village community do not know which powers they can exercise and how to exercise their power. as a result, the village community power is inactive and the village community power is slack.

II. The reasons for the predicament of the power of the village community

The predicament of the power of the village community is caused by both the macro structure and the internal structure of the village community, the squeeze of the government power and the elimination of the current legal rights.

(1) the village community on which the power of the village community depends has been desolated

In the urban-rural dual structure, the city has become the center of the occurrence and allocation of wealth, the rural economic status is marginalized, and it has become the reservoir of the labor force. During the period of economic prosperity, migrant workers went to cities to provide cheap labor; during the economic depression, migrant workers returned home to resolve the economic and social risks of the city. In the face of the impact of market economy, farmers are in a state of disorganization, and the absorption of rural resources and labor in cities leads to the trend of empty shell in rural areas. The weak industrial nature of agriculture and the status of vulnerable groups of farmers have become increasingly prominent; the gap between urban and rural areas and between the rich and the poor continues to widen.

Rural industry can not provide enough income to retain people, rural undertakings can not provide enough space to retain talents, rural elite outflow, the shortage of young talents; village cadres are generally aging, some cadres are confused, and their work enthusiasm is not high. There are some problems, such as mental slackness, lack of ability, alienation from the masses, negative corruption and so on. Rural grass-roots organizations lack the practical ability and motivation to solve the problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, and can not effectively coordinate village community affairs. Through the use of relevant policies and laws by cadres, it is impossible to analyze the resource advantages of the village and the interests of the villagers, learn from successful experience and grasp the opportunity for development; can not effectively integrate rural social resources, promote the transfer of contracted management rights, and form large-scale operation; unable to coordinate the relationship between off-soil farmers and soil-keeping farmers, ensure that "tillers have their own land", reduce abandonment, and increase the scale and income of land-conserving farmers to dominate economic resources. It is impossible to strengthen the construction of rural infrastructure and improve the rural market and agricultural service system to make rural society suitable for entrepreneurship; nor can it strengthen public services such as medical care, health, education and old-age care to make rural society comfortable for life. In short, in the pattern of unbalanced urban and rural development, water conservancy and other public facilities are abandoned, production services and other public goods are scarce; cultural life is poor and monotonous, and rural customs are dispelling; the dominant position of the countryside is being lost. it is difficult for rural society to form the ability of independent development.

(2) the relationship between the power of the village community and the interests of the villagers is loose

The basic mode of the operation of power system is "command and obedience". The question now is: why should the villagers obey the power of the village community? Only when the power of the village community controls the economic resources of the village community and can provide the villagers with the benefits of survival and development, and the villagers rely on the interests of the village community, the power of the village community and the person in charge of the village community, can the villagers obey the power of the village community. Due to the emptiness of unified management and the lack of collective economy, under the household contract management system, farmers' dependence on the interests of village power almost does not exist. The current situation of the relationship between village cadres and villagers is as follows: at ordinary times, there are few practical affairs between village cadres and villagers, and village cadres can basically not solve the problem after something has happened; when contradictions arise between villagers and village cadres, villagers have no scruples to inform on village cadres. On the one hand, because it is easy to meet the challenges of the villagers, some village cadres lack confidence in exercising power; on the other hand, the supervision of village cadres can not be carried out. The cost of villagers' participation in democratic elections and supervision far exceeds their available benefits. Farmers have no village community in mind, and most villagers rationally choose to give up the right to elect village cadres. As most of the functions of the village community organization can not be performed, the village affairs are already scarce, and the village affairs worthy of disclosure are even more scarce, so the publicity system of village affairs has no practical significance for ordinary rural areas.

(3) the state power squeezes the power of the village community.

The power of the village community is formed on the basis of natural resources and historical tradition, and is exclusive to the state power. The political power of traditional China basically ends at the county level, the local society relies on the governance of the gentry, and the power of the village community is very powerful. Since the founding of New China, the power of the village community has been divided, part of the power has been returned to the government, the boundary between the village power and the state power has been further blurred, and the state power under the strong government system has been excessively extended to the village community. This excessive extension distorts the village power, leading to the loss of the direction of the village power, from serving the villagers to being responsible to the higher government, and alienating from the villagers' autonomy to the subsidiary power of the state power. During the period of the people's commune, the private domain of farmers was completely covered by the public domain, and the power of the village community was concentrated from the society to the state; in the post-commune period, the state recaptured the power of the village community through the control of village cadres. The role of village cadres is misplaced as the agent of state power. Village cadres "are neither state cadres, nor state salaries, nor administrative personnel, nor law enforcers. However, it is necessary to complete the task that only administrative and law enforcement personnel can accomplish by compulsory means." Before the reform of taxes and fees, the main work of village cadres was to collect taxes for the state and implement the family planning policy. After the reform of taxes and fees, the selection of village cadres is still influenced by the higher government, and the capture effect is strengthened through financial support. Because rural power cannot draw local financial resources to support daily expenses, it relies on higher-level financial transfer payments; the state finance subsidizes the salaries of rural cadres, and the salaries of village cadres of poor village communities are basically paid by finance. This practice undoubtedly solves the practical difficulties of the rural society, but at the same time, it further implies that the village cadres are the employers of the government. As each expenditure has to be examined and approved by the township government, it is even more difficult for village-level organizations to use their power to carry out activities. "village finance and township management" not only reflects but also aggravates the helplessness and helplessness of rural power. It can be seen that there are risks hidden in the financial transfer payment: the state pays the cost of the operation of the power of the village community, which may be alienated into the consideration for the purchase of the power of the village community. Because the village community is unable to pay acceptable remuneration, unable to attract and retain talents, the government implements the university student village official system, college student village officials are selected and dispatched by the government to enter the rural community from the outside and directly control the power of the village community. Its starting point is mainly to transport talents and provide intellectual resources for the village community. The question is: on behalf of university student village officials, who holds the village power? Can they be naturalized as representatives of the interests of the village community and loyal to the village community? The acquisition of the power of this kind of village community has not been authorized by the members of the village commune. Is this takeover recognized by the villagers? According to what conditions and procedures can villagers refuse and remove foreign village officials?