[Guangming Forum]

Recently, the meeting of the special working mechanism for the central level to rectify formalism and reduce burdens for grassroots units emphasized that "we must pay more attention to source governance, not only treat the symptoms of prominent problems, but also treat the root cause from the ideological and interests, and take real hard work and work hard." It sends a clear signal that perseveres in implementing the spirit of the Central Eight Regulations and continues to deepen the rectification of formalism and reduce burdens for grassroots units.

The modernization of grassroots governance is an important cornerstone of the modernization of the national governance system and governance capabilities. The purpose of promoting the reduction of burdens and empowerment of grassroots organizations is to liberate the vitality of grassroots cadres in doing things and starting businesses, and build a new pattern of grassroots governance with clear rights and responsibilities and efficient operation. In 2024, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the "Several Regulations on Reducing Burdens for Grassroots", which for the first time formulated and issued institutional norms to reduce burdens for grassroots in the form of party regulations, providing important institutional guidelines for deepening and expanding the rectification of formalism and reducing burdens for grassroots.

The phenomenon of "grassroots governance overload" is fundamentally caused by the misalignment between the resources, powers and abilities of grassroots governments and the tasks, responsibilities and affairs they face. The shift of the focus of governance to the grassroots level should have brought about improvements in service efficiency. However, in practice, some departments and institutions simply package work tasks and push them to the grassroots level, but do not match the required personnel, funds and other resources, which makes the work pressure at the grassroots level continuously increasing, and the effectiveness of work is difficult to ensure.

Therefore, it is urgent to allow grassroots to return to their duties to serve grassroots, and to establish a list of duties with clear rights and responsibilities, and to scientifically define the functional boundaries of grassroots organizations and standardize the scope of performance of grassroots cadres, and to build a long-term mechanism for coordinated promotion of burden reduction and empowerment. Only by breaking through institutional obstacles from the source and forming a work pattern that closely cooperates between different levels and departments such as counties (districts), townships (streets), villages (communities), can the effectiveness of grassroots burden reduction be consolidated for a long time. For example, in Qiannan Prefecture, Guizhou Province, the local area has established a responsibility chain of "four-level linkages in prefectures, counties, townships and villages", formed a special working group, regularly organized and studied the progress of village-level organizations' clear responsibilities and empowerment work, strengthened the overall coordination and scheduling of matters in villages, and formed a working system that is connected from top to bottom, implemented precise policies, and grasped to the end, ensuring that the focus of burden reduction reform truly falls on "serving the people, serving the people, and serving the people."

Building a list of duties with equal rights and responsibilities means straightening out the responsibilities between different levels, departments and positions. Based on the scope of powers, functional positioning and responsibility ownership of grassroots governments, necessary empowerment should be strengthened in terms of personnel coordination, financial autonomy, and resource allocation rights. On the other hand, a "negative list" of rights and responsibilities should be formulated to clarify which responsibilities should not be borne by grassroots governments, thereby preventing disorderly decentralization of responsibilities. For example, Chenzhou City, Hunan Province has established three lists of "cancel, optimize, and retain", canceled 50 matters that should not be undertaken at the village level, and improved the access mechanism, implemented joint approval for new matters to prevent the abuse of "territorial management". To ensure that the list of duties is effective and effective, a dynamic management mechanism must be established, and the list must be adjusted in a timely manner according to actual conditions, and strict supervision and accountability must be carried out for behaviors that fail to perform duties according to the list.

The key to solving the structural imbalance of grassroots governance resources is to establish and improve the resource matching and efficiency enhancement mechanism, and promote the rational allocation of resources such as staffing, funds, authority, and materials. For example, in terms of personnel, we can further promote the orderly growth and precise sinking of grassroots staffing resources through "reducing the upper and filling the lower", implement dynamic optimization of the allocation of existing personnel, and revitalize the "stock" of grassroots personnel. It can also optimize the management methods of grassroots funds, enhance the flexibility and mobility of the use of grassroots funds, and ensure the needs of grassroots resources through "people and things to transfer", "fees to transfer", and "things to people and people to take their own". For example, Putuo District, Shanghai explores the interactive mechanism of "ordering dishes" in villages and "side dishes" in departments, integrates 71 empowerment projects from 56 units in the district, and invites neighborhood committees and village committees to select projects of interest through online "order orders" to accurately connect with the end needs of village autonomy, training, publicity and publicity, etc., and significantly improve the effectiveness of grassroots governance.

To consolidate the effect of reducing burdens at the grassroots level, we also need to create a capacity improvement empowerment mechanism to enable the grassroots level to have the work ability to match the tasks of performing duties. On the basis of actively absorbing professional talents, we will establish a comprehensive, multi-level and full-coverage grassroots training system to improve the professional level of grassroots cadres and build a strong professional team. For example, systematically carry out digital literacy training to help grassroots cadres, especially rural cadres, master basic digital skills, digitally reshape service processes, cadre-mass communication, etc., and improve the digital technology application capabilities of grassroots units.

The essence of reducing burdens at the grassroots level is the modernization of the governance system. Its connotation is not only transactional streamlining, but also breaking down deep institutional and mechanism barriers. The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly proposed to improve a long-term mechanism for reducing burdens at the grassroots level. Only by promoting the reconstruction of governance rights and responsibilities with the spirit of nailing down nails, and integrating various innovative measures into a systematic institutional supply can we truly realize the qualitative change of grassroots burden reduction from "physical reduction" to "chemical reaction", so that the vast number of grassroots cadres can be freed from the constraints of formalism, devote more energy to people's livelihood, measure people's sentiments with their steps, and win the hearts of the people with their hard work.

(Authors: Hu Zhiping and Xu Dongsheng, respectively, are professors from the School of Government Management, East China University of Political Science and Law, and doctoral students from the School of Government Management, East China University of Political Science and Law)