Nongguan is the unofficial name for the rural comprehensive administrative enforcement teams 农业综合行政执法队 (‘rural enforcement team’ hereafter), whose responsibility is to supervise and improve law enforcement in China’s vast countryside. People use the term nongguan to show they view these teams as the rural equivalent of the infamous chengguan 城管, the urban management and law enforcement force, which has been often criticised for harassing and bullying street vendors in urban areas, causing injuries and even deaths. The fact that the nongguan wear similar official uniforms to chengguan further reinforces public concern that nongguan are overly empowered and bound to behave in a similarly negative way to chengguan. Subsequently, rumours such as ‘the nongguan are collecting property management fees’ or ‘the nongguan are making peasants apply for licences to farm’ began to spread online, expressing widespread anxiety over the extent of the nongguan’s power and jurisdiction over rural areas today.

In fact, rural enforcement teams are not new. When the 1993 Agricultural Law was revised in 2002, the revision indicated that ‘the Agricultural Departments of county and higher-level governments shall, within their jurisdiction, improve the construction of administrative enforcement teams that shall practice comprehensive administrative enforcement and improve the efficiency and standard of enforcement’.[1] My field research reveals that many places have had rural enforcement teams for more than two decades. For example, in a county in China’s coastal Zhejiang province, rural enforcement teams were established in 1998 under the county’s Agriculture Department; their main task was to supervise the ‘agricultural product shops’ 农资店, ensuring that the products they sell, such as seeds and fertiliser, are certified. Other county bureaus, such as the Department of Water Resources and the Department of Forestry, also had their own enforcement teams whose tasks involved rural law enforcement. In one county in Anhui province, the task of enforcing rural laws was shared by the county’s Agricultural Department, Forestry Department and Animal Husbandry Bureau, each of them forming their own, independent enforcement teams. Hence, although rural enforcement teams have long existed in China, their bureaucratic affiliation and scope of enforcement has varied from place to place.

In 2018, following the Third Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, the central government initiated a comprehensive reform of rural enforcement teams, which aimed to integrate the jurisdiction and forces relevant to rural enforcement that used to scatter among a variety of bureaus or departments into the rural enforcement team, highlighting the team’s ‘comprehensive’ 综合 feature. Earlier that year, the Ministry of Agriculture was replaced by the newly created Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, with the new ministry integrating some of the management responsibilities previously under the jurisdiction of other bodies such as the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Development and Reform Commission, which also became directly responsible for managing rural enforcement teams. Accordingly, the teams at the local levels were required to use the unified name of ‘rural comprehensive administrative enforcement teams’, and their jurisdiction and staff were adjusted in accordance with the reforms. A county government in Shandong province, for example, established a new rural enforcement team on the basis of the county’s Agriculture Department’s Office of Fertiliser Management and selected a team of staff from the county’s Department of Comprehensive Administrative Enforcement to join the team.

Subsequently, the central government issued a series of documents to institutionalise the rural enforcement teams. In 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the ‘Catalogue of Tasks for Rural Comprehensive Administrative Enforcement’ 农业综合行政执法事项指导目录to clarify the teams’ duties. These ran to a total of 251 items relating to fertiliser, seeds, animal husbandry, agricultural machinery, fishing and land use. Most items belong to the traditional duties of rural enforcement teams to maintain a healthy rural market and production environment, but supervising land use appears to be a new task. According to the catalogue, rural enforcement teams now need to supervise two types of rural land: farmland 耕地and residential land 宅基地, and to focus on two types of illegal activity: (1) the illegal possession of farmland for non-farming purposes and damage to ‘growing conditions’ 种植条件 (Item 222) and (2) illegal possession of residential land by individual households (Item 223). Notably, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has, on several occasions, stressed that the rural enforcement teams must follow the catalogue and not overstep their jurisdictions.

Other central documents have focused on the enforcement processes of rural enforcement teams. In 2021, the ‘Regulations on the Process of Rural Administration Sanction’ 农业行政处罚程序规定 were issued, which stipulated how rural enforcement teams should handle and impose administration sanctions. In 2022, the ‘Guidelines for the Basic Equipment of Rural Administrative Enforcement’ 全国农业行政执法基本装备配备指导标准 listed five main categories: (1) ‘basic equipment’, such as law enforcement vehicles and agricultural product rapid inspection vehicles 农产品快速检验车; (2) ‘evidence collection equipment’, such as body and other digital cameras; (3) ‘emergency equipment’, such as satellite phones and handheld megaphones; (4) ‘self-protection equipment’, such as protective clothing and first aid kits; (5) and ‘other equipment’, such as signal jammers. The rural enforcement teams can also discretionally select some of this equipment ‘depending on their work needs’ 根据工作需要配备. In 2023, the ‘Management Measures on Rural Comprehensive Administrative Enforcement’ 农业综合行政执法指导办法 further elaborated on the process, standard and methods for the purpose of ‘reinforcing the management of rural administrative enforcement organizations and staff’ and ‘regulating rural enforcement behaviors’.

These new documents suggest that while the party-state sees rural enforcement teams as vital to rural governance, it also realises the importance of regulating them. This is indeed important considering the types of tasks rural enforcement teams carry out and how they deal directly with rural residents. As the catalogue indicates, the rural enforcement teams are expected to continue to play their traditional role in combating counterfeit rural products and maintaining a healthy market for rural products. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, between 2020 and 2022, they helped prevent economic losses to farmers of nearly RMB 1.5 billion. At the same time, rural enforcement teams have been assigned more tasks that they previously did not need to carry out, such as supervising rural land. In Zhejiang county where I conducted fieldwork, the rural enforcement team did not need to deal with illegal construction on rural residential land before the reform, which used to fall under the jurisdiction of the county Department of Land and Resources. When I visited in October 2023, it had become an essential part of their work.

It also appears that the party-state increasingly views rural enforcement teams as essential to strengthening food security, a top priority for the leadership. In March 2023, a nationwide campaign for guaranteeing food supply involving the administrative enforcement teams 全国农业综合行政执法‘稳粮保供’专项行动 kicked off with a conference in Changsha city, Hunan province. There, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Deng Xiaogang 邓小刚, stated that the campaign’s goal was to mobilise the rural enforcement teams to devote themselves to ‘safeguarding’ 保驾护航 national food security. An interesting coincidence is that while the comprehensive reforms around rural enforcement began in 2018, it was after April 2023, not long after this campaign launch, that videos of nongguan’s intrusive actions went viral on the internet – leading to the widespread misunderstanding that the nongguan had just been created. Some videos purported to show nongguan destroying vegetable farms and cutting down fruit trees, although they came from unconfirmed sources. Some netizens attributed such actions to the ‘Returning Forest to Farmland’ 退林还耕 policy for increasing grain production. It remains unclear whether such actions are in line with central government expectations or whether they reflected arbitrary local government decisions. In September 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs published a report titled Successful Cases of ‘Guaranteeing Food Supply’ Conducted by Rural Enforcement Teams 全国农业综合行政执法‘稳粮保供’典型案例. All the examples were about the combating of fake or uncertified rural products. None involved land.

The party-state has clearly noticed the negative perceptions of rural enforcement teams among the general public. Also in September 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs held another conference on ‘Constructing the Work Style of the Rural Comprehensive Administrative Enforcement Team’ 农业综合行政执法队伍作风建设座谈会, which stressed the importance of following principles such as ‘enforcement in accordance with the law’ 依法执法 and using ‘civilised methods’ 文明执法. However, to what degree the rural enforcement teams will abide by these requirements and rules remains a critical issue. In the management of chengguan, although the central government has also required them to conduct ‘fair and civilised law enforcement’ 公正文明执法, coercive and excessive enforcement actions still often occur, giving rise to intense social unrest. The causes are, of course, complex, including uneven qualifications 素质 of chengguan staff, weak supervision, and intensive pressure imposed by top-down evaluations. These issues may likewise exist for managing rural enforcement teams, with some of them even more difficult to tackle considering that they are enforcing laws that exist at the grassroots level of China, in other words, furthest from the central government. Hence the question: are the nongguan coming? The answer likely depends on whether the party-state can effectively develop its capacity to manage and supervise these enforcement staff, which often not only entails efforts from the state but also the empowerment of peasants.

Notes

[1] Article 87, Agriculture Law of the People’s Republic of China (2002).

The post Are the Nongguan Coming? The Evolution of the Rural Comprehensive Administrative Enforcement Team in China’s Rural Governance appeared first on The China Story.

To achieve the first centennial goal the Party needed to address rural poverty since the highest concentrations of poverty were in the countryside. In 2013 Xi Jinping launched the ‘targeted poverty alleviation programme’ 精准扶贫 which shifted poverty targeting from regions to households.[1] Once target households were identified, each was allocated a government official who was tasked with lifting household members above the absolute poverty line of RMB 4000 (US$620) per person per year. Their careers depended upon it. Assigned Party members would try to help people find jobs, sell their produce, and sometimes simply gave people money. The Party also directed government agencies to invest in rural infrastructure and provide grants to rural areas where there were large numbers of poor households. Local government leaders who failed to eliminate poverty in their jurisdictions would not be eligible for promotion.

In 2021 Xi declared ‘complete victory’ in the struggle against extreme poverty, announcing that 99 million people had been raised above China’s official poverty line as a result of the targeted poverty campaign. The announcement enabled Xi to claim that his first centennial goal had been met, even though the livelihoods of many hundreds of millions of farmers remained very modest. China’s official poverty line of 4,000 yuan ($620) a year is equivalent to $1.69 a day, which is less than the World Bank’s threshold of $2.15 a day, and far below the World’s Bank recommended national poverty threshold for upper middle-income countries such as China, which currently stands at $6.85. If applying this threshold, barely half of China’s population would sit above it, as former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang observed at a 2020 press conference.

Following the 2021 declaration of victory, Xi Jinping set his sights on a new campaign — ‘rural revitalization’ 乡村振兴 — to consolidate the gains of the targeted poverty campaign and transform China into an agricultural superpower. Investment in rural revitalisation programs is intended to increase farmers’ still relatively low incomes, which will be essential if the Party is to achieve Xi’s second centennial goal. As Document No.1 (2023) noted, ‘the most arduous and heavy task of building a modern socialist country in all respects still lies in the countryside.’

Since its launch in 2021, the significance of rural revitalisation for China’s national development strategy has become increasingly apparent. Rural revitalisation matters for ‘dual circulation’ — China’s plan for future growth to be driven as much by consumer demand as by exports. It matters for employment – new rural enterprises are being touted as job-generators for new graduates. It also matters for ‘common prosperity’ — the need to address the still wide gap between rural and urban incomes. And in the wake of US-China tensions and heightened concerns in Beijing about China’s high dependence on food imports, rural revitalisation matters for food security. The program also intersects with the Xi Jinping administration’s economic policy slogans ‘green development’, ‘ecological civilization’ and ‘beautiful China’. Rural revitalisation envisions beautiful and sustainable villages where people will want to live and visit.

Xi’s second centennial goal includes a vision of China as an ‘agricultural superpower’ 农业强国. Party documents emphasise the need to modernise farming practices and develop new agricultural technologies. Document No. 1 (2023) outlined nine tasks for China’s ‘rural revitalisation’, including the stabilisation of grain supply, increased domestic production of key agricultural products such as soybeans, and the expanded use of modern agricultural technologies. Investments in rural infrastructure will continue under the program, but most government subsidies will be directed toward new local industries.

The Party’s plan for achieving its ambitious rural revitalization agenda is to put itself in charge. Document No. 1 (2023) emphasises the important role of the Party in rural governance, calling for full implementation of policies empowering the village Party branch to lead the village (in place of the elected village committee). Village Party secretaries are now required to take over the formerly separate position of village leader under a Party policy known as ‘two burdens on one shoulder pole’ 两副担子一肩挑. This policy requires township officials to orchestrate village elections to ensure that the village Party branch secretary wins. Because the village Party secretary frequently now stands unopposed in such elections, only minor positions, such as deputy village head or village accountant, are contested.[2]

The Party has also used a law-and-order campaign to chase ‘undesirable’ candidates out of consideration for village leadership. The campaign to ‘Sweep Away Black and Eliminate Evil’ 扫黑除恶 ran from 2018 to 2020 and has now been streamlined into local government and police work. In rural areas the campaign targeted ‘village tyrants’ 村霸 who had built their own independent kingdoms and amassed power outside of the ‘state governance system’. Villagers who had been ‘dealt with’ as part of the campaign typically became ineligible to run for village office.

During the week of 24-28 April 2023, the CPC’s Central Party School organised its first nation-wide training program for China’s village leaders. Offered via video link, and run through 3,568 classrooms across the country the training covered five main topics: ‘developing and strengthening the village-level collective economy’, ‘Party-building leading rural governance’, ‘doing in-depth and detailed mass work’, ‘strengthening village party organisation into a solid fortress’, and ‘building a beautiful, Red village’. A Xinhua news report of the training cited Kong Qingfan, Party secretary of Tongfa Village, Qing’an County, Heilongjiang. According to Xinhua, Party secretary Kong ‘believes that the village Party organization secretary must truly become the “leading goose” of rural revitalisation, and the grassroots party organisations must truly become the “backbone” of the people, shouldering their mission and responsibility in line with the [Party’s] original intention (i.e., original revolutionary spirit, chuxin 初心).’

To further strengthen Party organisation at the grassroots the Party has dispatched a plethora of cadres from government agencies and public institutions, including universities, banks and State-owned Enterprises (SOEs). Xi Jinping has revived and expanded the position of First Secretary 第一书记 who are deployed from outside the village and whose mission is to strengthen the leadership and management capacity of the village Party branch and village Party secretary. First Secretaries are meant to serve as trainers, mentors and ‘missionaries’ of the Party. According to the National Rural Revitalisation Commission, in 2023 more than 400,000 First Party Secretaries and supporting work team personnel were deployed across 26 provinces. The First Secretary is typically supported by a work team 工作队 — a mechanism the Party uses to support the rapid take-up of major policy initiatives, which means millions more public sector employees are being rotated into China’s villages to forge ahead with the Party-led rural revitalisation agenda.

By putting the Party back in charge, the Xi administration’s approach to governing the countryside is consistent with the Party’s wider recentralising agenda, but in the countryside it represents a break with four decades of rural governance in which self-governing village committees and directly elected village leaders played a lead decision-making role in village affairs. While Party secretaries remained a strong presence in some villages where they were known as the ‘first hand’ 一把手, the Party’s presence was otherwise much diminished in the post-collective countryside.

In reasserting its authority in China’s villages, the Party has created new risks and challenges for itself. For one, it will not be able to shift blame for policy failures to village leaders or village committees since Party representatives now control those positions. Although the Party has criticised corruption and cronyism by elected village leaders, it is not clear how village Party leaders, working in the same social and cultural milieu and under similar pressures and constraints, will be immune to such behaviours.[3] Second, the costs of grassroots Party building are staggeringly high- just the salaries of 400,000 deployed Party functionaries in 2023 alone would cost an estimated 24 billion yuan (US$3.4 billion) before costs of deployment and administration.[4] Millions of First Secretaries and work team members have been mobilised to strengthen the Party’s grassroots capacity to lead the rural revitalisation agenda, but effective capacity building will take years and the costs of deployment will place an increasing strain on fiscal resources, especially if China’s economy continues to tank as it did through much of 2023. The strain is felt most acutely by local governments that are heavily indebted and unable to raise new revenue through land sales as they did in the past.

Most importantly, rural revitalisation calls for innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture and agribusiness. The last time the Party inspired such innovation in the countryside was in the 1980s when it disbanded the communes and got out of farmers’ way. Rural China then took off and kickstarted the Chinese economic growth miracle.[5] It is unclear how a centralised approach to governing the countryside will encourage private investment and cultivate innovation in rural business and technology. If the Party continues with the top-down grant-making schemes that were rolled out for previous rural campaigns farmers will absorb the funds, but it will not necessarily generate sustainable new initiatives.

In imagining China as an agricultural superpower, Xi Jinping and the Party leadership have dared to dream big. But in sending the Party in to take charge, they have followed a playbook that has become standard since Xi came to power. Whatever the political or policy problem — the Party organisation will fix it. To guide Party functionaries in their work, in October 2023 the Party Publicity (formerly Propaganda) Bureau released yet another book of quotations by Xi Jinping. Titled Extracts from Xi Jinping’s Discourses on Grassroots Governance, the book highlights the importance of Party intervention to ‘improve the system of governance in the countryside’.

With the Party in charge, the success of China’s ambitious rural revitalisation campaign will likely mirror the success of the country’s wider economic policies, over which the Party is asserting increasingly centralised control. It begs the same question that we might ask of the economy more broadly as China emerges from the ravages caused by COVID-19-related restrictions: can a centralised and tightly controlled political system provide the conditions necessary for the leap to high incomes and advanced economic development?

Notes

[1] For a discussion of earlier approaches to poverty alleviation in China see Ben Hillman, ‘Opening up: The Politics of Poverty and Development in Rural China’, Development Bulletin 61 (May 2003): 47-50.

[2] Zhao Tan, ‘First Democracy, Then Centralism’: The New Shape of Village Elections under the ‘One-Shoulder Pole’ Policy, paper presented at the Australian Centre on China in the World, 9 August 2023.

[3] On informal power and the limits of formal institutions in the countryside see Ben Hillman, ‘Factions and Spoils: Examining Political Behaviour within the Local State in China’, The China Journal 64 (July 2010): 1-18.

[4] This estimate is based on the assumption that each First Party Secretary and work team member earns a salary of 5000 yuan per month. Salaries are likely to be higher in many cases.

[5] Jean C. Oi, Rural China Takes off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform, University of California Press, 1999.

The post From Poverty Elimination to Rural Revitalisation – The Party Takes Charge appeared first on The China Story.