How is rural China arranged politically?

1. How is rural China arranged politically? James Carne and Henry Sadler-Dawe

2. Basic Structure • Village Level • Town Level • County Level • Prefectural Level • Province Level • Country wide Level

3. Village / Town Level • The village level serves as an organizational division and does not have much importance in political representative power. • Basic local divisions like neighbourhoods and communities have defined boundaries and designated heads (one per area): • Rural areas are organized into village committees or villager groups. • A "village" in this case can either be a naturally occurring village or an administrative village, which is a bureaucratic entity. • There are 40895 township level areas

4. County • Every level of administrative division has a local Communist Party of China Committee. • The head of the committee is called the Secretary the real first-in-charge of the county. • Further, there is the People's government of the county, and its head is called the County Governor. • The governor is sometimes also one of the Deputy Secretaries in the CPC Committee. • There 2858 countys within china

5. Prefectural • The prefectural government is an administrative branch office with the rank of a national ministerial department and is created by the province government. • The leader of the prefecture government, titled as prefectural commissioner and is appointed by the provincial government. • The prefectural committee are part of the province wide committee so are not a separate entity • There are 333 prefecturals in china

6. Province • A standard provincial government is nominally led by a provincial committee, headed by a secretary. • The committee secretary is first-in-charge of the province, come in second is the governor of the provincial government. • There are currently 33 provinces within China

7. Party Cadre • A local party official with power of decision making and influence on a local scale

8. Hukou • House Hold Registration • Residency permit issued by government • It identifies someone as resident of area • Reduces migration • Since 1997 gradual reform to end this • Migrants now get temporary hukou

9. People’s Communes • People’s Communes were born during the Great Leap Forward and were made official state policy in 1958. • They Were the highest of 3 administrative levels in rural areas of the People’s Republic China and are the largest collectivist units divided into Production Brigades and Production Teams. • Each commune was a combination of smaller collectivist farms consisting of 4000 to 5000 households.

11. Townships • Between 1982 and 1985 when People’s communes were disbanded and replaced by Townships (production teams replaced by village groups) • Townships is the fourth-level in the administrative hierarchy and contain a number of village committees and villages (as 2000 took up 20% of China’s area). • Townships are smaller, more remote and less populous than towns than towns and in 1995 there were 29500 townships and 17500 towns. • Township’s governance is divided between the Communist Party Township Secretary and the mayor

13. Guanxi or ‘the art of using personal contacts’ • Winning trust and engaging with potential business partners is the first priority for the Chinese. Relationships come first, transactions second. • Significant in small farms in rural areas as most are family owned. The relationships with the most lasting importance are those of kinship, home town, kindness or favours between families.