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China, reinventing social management

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In Brief

President Hu Jintao outlined a new focus on social management and development for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the 2011 Forum on Social Management and Innovation.

He noted that improving social management and promoting social harmony were basic conditions for building a prosperous and harmonious socialist society, and as such required a social management strategy that could coordinate social relationships, regulate behaviour, promote social justice and stability, and manage social risk.

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Implicit in this shift are insights into both the challenges that social policy now has to contend with in China, and the way in which the CCP has come to view the role of social policy, and the government-population nexus.

This is the latest in a series of steps taken by the CCP over the last few years to improve its social management capabilities as social development and management has become a separate and increasingly sophisticated goal.

The CCP agenda broadly involves improving the party’s social management capabilities, and improving social cohesion by promoting equality and justice. In procedural terms, the CCP’s agenda includes a commitment to pooling social resources, building a social management structure led by party committees, building cooperation between government, non-government organisations and the public, and building coordination between social development, and economic, political and cultural development initiatives.

This is complemented by a focus on tangibly accelerating social development, developed in the 12th Five-Year Plan. The plan calls for expanding and improving social development services. Steps include ensuring service delivery is equally effective in urban and rural areas, providing equal access to fundamental public services, adjusting income distribution to increase the ratio of people’s incomes to the national income, accelerating reform and development in the healthcare sector, and improving population management.

This policy shift provides a number of insights into the CCP’s evolving attitude toward social policy.

First, the strategic importance of social development and management is increasing. For a long time social management reform and development had been treated mostly as a way of supporting economic reform by fostering social stability. Increasingly, the CCP is aware of the broader strategic importance of social management in governance.

Second, the content of social development and management is increasingly complex. Industrialisation, urbanisation, marketisation, informationisation and internationalisation have profoundly altered the pattern of interests in Chinese society. New social strata, organisations, needs, affairs, and social conflicts have arisen. In this context, the content of social development and management has become richer and more sophisticated in order to solve social conflicts and develop and enhance service delivery in response to new public concerns.

This has involved comprehensive moves to improve the depth and effectiveness of service delivery across the provinces. Restructuring, transparency measures, and social management networking form the backbone of this new approach.

The central government has undergone an overall process of restructuring, including a program of ongoing law reform. Many departments, notably the State Council, have been restructured, and their duties and responsibilities have been redefined. Thirty-one provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have cut their licensing requirements by almost half, and the number of items subject to administrative licensing at the city and county level has been sharply reduced.

Since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, administrative accountability has been implemented throughout China, and relevant mechanisms have been gradually adopted and improved. Various sections of government have established and improved administrative transparency and policy hearing systems, which have inspired people to participate in political and public affairs. In August 2003, the city of Changsha in Hunan Province promulgated a set of provisional methods for implementing administrative accountability. Tianjin, Chongqing, Anhui, Yunnan and some other provinces and municipalities soon followed suit and adopted similar methods and mechanisms.

To complement these reforms the CCP is promoting the development of grassroots and non-government organisations to increase the autonomous development and management capacity of society. An extensive community service network has arisen. By the end of 2009, there were 175,000 community service centres in the country, including 53,000 neighbourhood service stations. Meanwhile, there were 693,000 convenience and benefit points for urban citizens and 289,000 community volunteering service organisations.

The development of these networks has included a particular focus on promoting grassroots community involvement in rural areas. Rural organisations have played positive roles in formulating village development plans, driving the development of public service and commonwealth undertakings in villages. By the end of 2009, throughout China, there were 599,000 village committees, 4.8 million villager groups, and 2.34 million village committee members.

The CCP’s social management strategy remains in a state of flux, but it seems certain that social management, in the form of improved and broadened service delivery, and increased grassroots involvement, will be of enduring importance in Chinese policymaking.

Feng Jun is Professor and Executive Vice President of the China Executive Leadership Academy Pudong (CELAP), and former Vice President of Renmin University.

This article was published in the most recent edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, Governing China’.

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