Gao Weixing and Wang Chong: Adhere to a People-Centered Approach and Promote the Modernization of Social Governance
Social governance is a vital component of national governance, and the modernization of social governance is an essential element in the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. Since the 18th Party Congress, the Party and the state have made a series of major decisions and deployments, driving new achievements in social governance and writing a new chapter in the "two miracles" of rapid economic development and long-term social stability [1]. The Proposals of the Central Committee of the CPC for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development proposed the improvement of the social governance system. We must persist in systemic governance, governance according to law, comprehensive governance, and governance at the source; improve social governance institutions characterized by co-construction, co-governance, and shared benefits; and advance the modernization of social governance. This points the way forward and provides the fundamental compliance for our persistence in centering on the people, improving and innovating social governance, and unswervingly following the path of socialist social governance with Chinese characteristics.
Taking the leadership of the Party as the overarching guide to provide the fundamental guarantee for social governance. The Party's comprehensive leadership is the most prominent feature and greatest advantage in advancing Chinese-path modernization; it is also the "backbone" for maintaining the correct direction of social governance and effectively solving governance difficulties in a complex and shifting environment. Social governance is an important part of the Party’s work. Persisting in the Party’s comprehensive leadership over social governance helps to fully leverage the political leadership, ideological guidance, mass organization, and social mobilization power of Party organizations, transforming the Party's political, organizational, and institutional advantages into social governance advantages. Currently, as the world undergoes great changes unseen in a century, China's social governance activities are characterized by numerous points, long lines, and broad areas, where various international and domestic, explicit and implicit risks and contradictions are easily superimposed. Facing this situation, on the one hand, we must focus on enhancing organizational power, highlighting political functions, and building Party organizations at all levels and of all types into strong fighting fortresses [2] for propagating and implementing the Party’s decisions, uniting and mobilizing the masses, and leading the promotion of social governance. On the other hand, with the rapid development of emerging fields, the massive emergence of "new economic organizations" and "new social organizations," and the continuous expansion of "new employment groups" [3], we must strive to strengthen Party building in emerging fields. We must effectively achieve the coverage of Party organizations and Party work within these new organizations and groups to promote effective governance in emerging fields.
Aiming for co-construction, co-governance, and shared benefits to continuously improve the social governance pattern. Co-construction, co-governance, and shared benefits mean fully leveraging the roles and comparative advantages of diverse subjects—including the Party and government, market entities, social organizations, and the masses—to construct a social governance community in which everyone is responsible, everyone does their duty, and everyone shares. This will continuously stimulate the enthusiasm and initiative of various governance subjects to participate in governance activities, thereby maximizing social governance efficacy. This concept also reflects the process of social governance activities evolving from "good administration" (shanzheng) toward "good governance" (shanzhi) [4] in response to changes in the social governance situation. "Good administration" refers to a dualistic structure where society is divided into managers and the managed; managers exercise public power to maintain social order through accurate, efficient, and clean administrative activities. Its main features include strict laws, clean officials, efficient administration, and standardized management. Its core goal lies in "efficiency rationality," emphasizing the rationality of management means while seldom considering the social rationality of the efficient outcomes themselves. However, it is not enough for social governance to merely pursue the maximization of total efficiency rationality; it must also fully respond to the reasonable demands of diverse subjects such as the market, society, and residents. "Good governance" is a governance process aimed at maximizing the public interest, which helps stimulate the endogenous motivation of all governance subjects. Co-construction, co-governance, and shared benefits constitute precisely such a social governance process—oriented toward maximizing the public interest shared by all members of society—helping to promote the collaborative operation and benign interaction between the state and society, ensuring that society is both full of vitality and remains orderly.
Centering on the masses to uphold the value principles of social governance. The masses are the creators of history and the practical subjects of social governance activities. The mass line is the lifeblood of the Party. To improve and innovate social governance, we must practice the Party’s mass line in the New Era, firmly establish a "people's standpoint," persist in the principal status of the people, and fully stimulate their enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity. We must improve the systems and mechanisms for coalescing, organizing, mobilizing, and serving the masses, taking the realization, maintenance, and development of the fundamental interests of the broadest possible range of people as the starting and ending point of all social governance activities. Currently, the principal contradiction in Chinese society has been transformed into the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. The demands of the masses in areas such as medical care, education, employment, health, environment, culture, and security continue to grow, with higher requirements for the timeliness, transparency, and standardization of social governance. There is an urgent need to accurately grasp and effectively respond to the thoughts, ideas, worries, and aspirations of the masses, continuously enhancing their sense of fulfillment, happiness, and security. We should improve systems for coordinating interest relations and protecting legitimate rights and interests, unblock channels for the expression of reasonable demands by the masses, and safeguard social fairness and justice. We must strengthen and improve service management for various social groups, performing the work of caring for and assisting the elderly living alone, families in difficulty, persons with disabilities, and children with special needs with "heart and soul." We should improve the social psychological service system, pushing the "tentacles" of service to the "last kilometer" [5] at the grassroots level to consolidate the psychological foundation of social governance. We must persist in and develop the "Fengqiao Experience" [6] in the New Era, improve the level of legalization in work related to "letters and visits" [7], systematically collect, organize, and feed back the opinions and suggestions of the masses, establish working ledgers, and move the threshold for resolving various risks and contradictions forward to eliminate them in the bud.
Focusing on the "worries and expectations" of the grassroots to shift the center of gravity of social governance downward. If the foundation is not solid, the earth will shake (jīchǔ bù láo, dìdòngshānyáo) [8]. The grassroots level is the concentration point for various social contradictions and problems, as well as the "first kilometer" of social governance. Grassroots social governance often faces practical difficulties such as limited resources and heavy tasks; meanwhile, social contradictions and risk trigger points are numerous, propagate quickly, and are highly perceptible. We must continuously push the center of gravity of social governance down to the grassroots, sinking governance resources such as manpower, materials, and funds to the frontline to effectively crack prominent problems like insufficient resource coordination, unclear powers and responsibilities, and weak forces. We must continue to strengthen the Party-building-led grassroots governance and the construction of grassroots political power, building urban and rural grassroots Party organizations into strong fighting fortresses for propagating and implementing the Party’s decisions and leading the promotion of social governance. We should go deep into the frontline of urban and rural communities to conduct field investigations, effectively grasping the "urgent, difficult, worrisome, and expected" (jínánchóupàn) problems of the masses. Taking the community as the main scene and primary battleground, we should strengthen the coordination, integration, and supply of convenience service resources, strengthen the construction of the social worker workforce and the management of volunteer service organizations, and ensure that "whenever the people call, I respond." We must scientifically assess the "double-edged sword" effect of the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology on social governance, promoting its benefits while avoiding its harms to empower social governance. Centering on practical governance needs, we should break down the "information chimneys" and "data islands" between government departments, build integrated social governance information systems and comprehensive intelligent platforms, achieve effective collection and real-time feedback of social governance data, and strengthen data analysis and comprehensive application to further enhance the refinement, scientific rigor, and intelligence of social governance.
Using the combination of "three types of governance" as the path to enhance the overall efficacy of social governance. To improve and innovate social governance, we must base ourselves on China's national conditions and continuously improve the urban and rural social governance system that combines autonomy, the rule of law, and the rule of virtue (zìzhì, fǎzhì, dézhì) under the leadership of Party organizations, achieving a holistic leap in governance efficacy. The system of grassroots self-governance by the masses is an important part of the socialist political system with Chinese characteristics, playing roles in self-management, self-service, self-education, and self-supervision in grassroots social governance. This helps to maximize the stimulation of the enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity of the grassroots masses in social governance activities, effectively resolving various contradictions and risks at the grassroots. We should persist in and improve the coordination committee system and hearing system for urban residents' committees, as well as the villagers' meetings and representative meetings in rural areas, to better achieve effective grassroots social governance. The rule of law is the basic means of modern social governance. We must be adept at using legal thinking and methods to improve and innovate social governance, persisting in scientific legislation, strict law enforcement, impartial justice, and universal law-abidance. We should strengthen the promotion of the rule of law and cultivate its soil, making it a social consensus and behavioral norm, and striving to enhance the level of legalization in social governance. The rule of virtue moves people’s hearts through moral influence, and its educational role is profound. China is a country with a deep tradition of the rule of virtue. By raising the level of moral awareness, guiding the public to consciously move toward the good, and creating a positive social fashion, we can achieve the salutary effect of "spring breezes and rain, moistening things silently" (chūnfēnghuàyǔ, rùnwùwúshēng) [9]. We should fully leverage the role of grassroots norms such as "citizen conventions" and "village regulations" in social governance, continue to strengthen the construction of family education and family traditions, promote the transformation of outmoded customs (yīfēngyìsú), and cultivate a social mentality of self-esteem, self-confidence, rationality, peace, and upward mobility, laying a solid foundation for enhancing the overall efficacy of social governance.