ABSTRACT

The organizations of the town and township political power are at the lowest level of political power in Chinese rural areas. Passing the instructions of the central government directly to the rural areas and the peasants, these organizations are a link between the Party and the government with the people. They are the footholds of the Party and government work in the rural areas and play important roles in promoting the implementation of the lines, principles and policies of the central and provincial authorities, in increasing the Party’s ability to rule and in building a socialist harmonious society in rural areas. But after China deepened its reforms and, in particular, after it reformed rural taxes and fees, the organizations of political power in the towns and township have revealed some problems that cannot be ignored. They include the heavy debt burdens of the town and township governments, the inability of the town and township governments to provide sufficient public products and services and the contradictions between the town and township governments and rural society. In order to consolidate the results of the rural taxes and fees reform and to

attempt to solve the difficulties and problems confronting the town and township grassroots organizations, we began experiments in 2005 on integrated rural reforms. These experiments highlighted the reforms of five major systems: the systems of the town and township institutions, the management systems of rural compulsory education, the financial systems of the county and township governments, the settlement of the debt burdens of the town and township governments and the improvement of the operational mechanisms of village-level organizations. In Zhejiang Province, Shaoxing and three other counties (districts) were selected for experiments. In the course of these experiments, Shaoxing County conducted experiments on ‘expanding the powers of the town and township governments’, in which part of the enforcement powers of the functional departments of the county government were decentralized to the town and township level in the form of entrusted enforcement. This experiment was conducted against the backdrop that the town and township institutions nationwide are universally streamlined and the town and township level has no enforcement institutions or power. This move has attracted widespread attention.