The income of village cadres is no small matter.

The question of whether the salary of civil servants should be raised or not has been very hot recently, while the income of village cadres does not seem to have received due attention. Village cadres are the key to the maintenance of rural order. Whether the village cadres can carry on, and whether their income can support them, is a major event in China's rural governance.

In the general central and western agricultural areas, the village is lack of resources, and the village collective economy is also very weak. as the village cadres at the end of the administrative system, they are not national civil servants and can not get civil servants' wages, but can only be paid as non-part-time cadres.

If the village is relatively closed and farmers' income mainly comes from agriculture and rural industry and commerce, and village cadres are engaged in family management on the one hand and work part-time as village cadres on the other, and receive subsidies for village cadres to miss work, the income of village cadres will not be lower than that of ordinary villagers. However, at present, when the rural society is fully open, it is very convenient for farmers to go to the city, and the vast majority of rural young and middle-aged workers have gone to the city to work and do business, but as village cadres are unable to go to the city to work and do business because they are in office, they can only continue to operate in the village. If there is not enough income from village management, the economic income of village cadres will be far lower than that of ordinary villagers who go out to work and do business, and it will be very difficult for village cadres to continue to work.

Not long ago, the author investigated the income of village cadres in Luotian County, Hubei Province. Dahan Town, Luotian County, belongs to the Dabie Mountains, and its economy is underdeveloped. according to the current remuneration of village cadres, the main village cadres, such as the village branch secretary and the director of the village committee, generally have about 10, 000 yuan a year, and the average village cadre is about 8000 yuan. On average, the remuneration of village cadres (including all rewards) is less than 1000 yuan per month, which is a big gap with the monthly salary of about 3000 yuan for local civil servants, or even far lower than the monthly salary of 2000 yuan for university student village officials.

At present, in order to improve the enthusiasm of village cadres, some localities are considering regularizing village cadres and increasing their remuneration, so that village cadres can be separated from production and specialization, so as to solve the problem of part-time employment of current village cadres. However, in the history of China for thousands of years, there is a buffer between the state and society. It is the non-official and non-civilian identity of village cadres and the villager autonomy system based on it that provide a better management flexibility space for national policy. Once the village cadres are regularized, the villagers' autonomy will lose its foundation, and the complexity and diversity of the rural society will be difficult for the national power to face.

In this sense, it is reasonable for village cadres to solve the problem of basic order of governance at the grass-roots level for quite a long time in the future. Its premise is the economic diversity of the rural society itself. It can be said that the small-scale peasant economy needs the "overall planning" of the grass-roots organization system with non-off-production village cadres as the core, and at the same time, the small-scale peasant economy provides economic space for the operation of the rural grass-roots organization system.