Along with the reform of the “Super-ministry System”, China is currently promoting the merger of villages in its vast rural areas, which is a major reform after the merger towns and townships taking place not long ago in rural China ever since the convening of the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. The “Bigger Village System” and the “Super-ministry System” are the new targets included in China’s political reform in the days to come.

    Reduction in the Number of Administrative Villages and Towns/Townships. There are at present about 27,000 towns and townships staffed with about 1.1 million office cadres and 1.7 million cadres working in relevant stations and other offices, and about 645,000 organizations at the village level with four million village cadres. Gao Yinuo, researcher on the issues of rural areas, farmers and agriculture, pointed out that along with the in-depth development of urbanization in rural areas, more and more farmers are going to cities and become urban residents, which has resulted in “hollow villages” in rapid growth, especially in the coastal provinces in East China. In addition, the imbalanced social and economic development and the different quantity of resources owned by different villages have caused a fairly wide disparity between rich villages and poor ones. Grassroots governments in some more developed provinces such as Zhejiang, Shandong and Jiangsu are promoting the merger of towns/townships and villages, which has greatly reduced the number of administrative villages and towns/townships, and made considerable achievements in simplifying governmental structures.

    Promotion of villagers’ autonomy towards community-type management. The merger of villages practiced in Qunan County, Shandong Province has provided an example of village management for other provinces. In that county, the number of villages has reduced from about 1,000 to a little over 700. Sanyikou Village came into being through the merger of six villages, and as a result, the problems of irrigation and drainage were solved, main roads were built and the deserted land from the torn down old buildings was made use of as the place for processing agricultural and sideline products. The whole village has become a bigger community, which enables it to use in concentration its resources for the improvement of the infrastructure in a unified way so as to change the small, scattered and chaotic situation of villages in the past, improve scale and professional management of rural areas and increase the efficiency of land use. Meanwhile, the relatively concentrated residential quarters are conducive for the management of rural community so as to eliminate the dual rural-urban structure.

    The “bigger village system” through the merger of villagers is conducive to the acceleration of urbanization in rural areas, making countryside become towns and farmers become urban residents.

(Source: www.people.com.cn, People’s Daily Overseas Edition, January 30, 2008 by Hu Yi)