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Revitalizing the State's Urban “Nerve Tips”*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
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While observers of China have always paid attention to the “base-level” administrative institutions and mass organizations created by the Communist party-state, urban Residents' Committees (RCs; jumin weiyuanhui) have received relatively little study in recent years. Though the RCs remain pervasive in most areas of most cities and engage the energies of millions of activists and volunteers, this neglect is understandable. During the Mao era, Western writing on neighbourhood organizations emphasized their role in helping to police and administer the harsh political order that gripped the cities. In the 1980s and 1990s, the authorities have yielded much greater space to a private sphere in which law-abiding individuals are relatively free from intrusion. Instruments of state penetration such as the RCs have seemed less worthy of analysis. They also lack the requisite autonomy to qualify as part of an emergent civil society, and moreover their limited progress in serving as a focus for democratic participation earns them much less international attention than their rural equivalents, the Villagers' Committees. They may even seem worthy of derision rather than study; merely mentioning the term juweihui often brings an amused smile to people's faces, as it connotes ageing, officious busy bodies poking into people's personal matters.
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References
1. The juweihui are sometimes referred to in English as “neighbourhood committees” or “street committees”; the latter term, however, renders them easily confused with street offices. I employ a literal translation in this article.
2. An important exception is Choate, Allen C., “Local governance in China, part II: an assessment of urban Residents Committees and municipal community development,”Google Scholar Asia Foundation Working Paper, No. 10, November 1998. See also Clark, John P., “Conflict management outside the courtrooms of China,” in Troyer, Ronald J., Clark, John P. and Rojek, Dean G. (eds.) Social Control in the People's Republic of China (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1989)Google Scholar; White, Gordon and Benewick, Bob, Local Government and Basic-Level Democracy in China: Towards Reform?Google Scholar transcript of a research trip, March–April 1986, China Research Report, IDS (Brighton: University of Sussex, 1986); Dutton, Michael R., Policing and Punishment in China: From Patriarchy to “the People” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 335–340Google Scholar; Benewick, Robert, “Political institutionalization in government,” and Gordon White, “Basic-level local government and economic reform in urban China,” in White, Gordon (ed.), The Chinese State in the Era of Economic Reform: The Road to Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1991)Google Scholar; and Jankowiak, William R., Sex, Death and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, as well as items cited below.
3. The journal's current title in Chinese is Chengshi jie ju tongxun (CSJJTX). Its first three volumes (1991–93) were published as Zhongguo jiedao gongzuo (China Street Work).
4. As of the end of 1998, there were 119,042 RCs comprising 508,363 members nation-wide, according to figures collected by the MoCA.
5. Beijing Statistical Yearbook 1998 (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1998), p. 39.Google Scholar These figures exclude the smaller cities within the eight counties that lie inside the greater Beijing administrative region.
6. The RCs' official duties are as follows: “1) to publicize the Constitution, laws, statutes and state policies; to uphold the lawful rights of residents; to teach residents to fulfil their lawful obligations and protect public property; to carry out many forms of activities in promoting socialist spiritual civilization; 2) to manage public affairs and projects of public benefit for residents of the neighbourhood; 3) to mediate civil disputes; 4) to assist in maintaining social order; 5) to assist the People's Government and its agencies in conducting work pertaining to residents' interest in public sanitation, birth control, welfare, youth education, and so forth; 6) to express residents' opinions, requests and suggestions to the People's Government and its agencies.” Zhonghua renmin gongheguo fagui huibian 1989 nian 1 yue-12 yue (Compiled Statutes of the People's Republic of China, January–December 1989) (Beijing: Zhongguo fazhi chubanshe, 1990), p. 140.Google Scholar
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21. Peng Zhen saw the post-Cultural Revolution rebuilding of the RCs as crucial to improving security work in the cities. See his “Zai wu da chengshi zhian zuotan hui shang de jianghua” (“Speech at a conference on public security in five big cities”) and “Xin shiqi de zhengfa gongzuo” (“Political-legal work in the new era”), in Peng Zhen wenxuan, especially pp. 411–12 and 430–31.Google Scholar
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23. Interview, Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, 30 July 1998.
24. Ibid.
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27. Interviews with Shanghai and Beijing Civil Affairs Bureaus, 30 July and 26 August 1998.
28. See n. 7.
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30. “Minzhengbu fubuzhang Yan Mingfu zai Jilin shi juweihui gongzuo huiyi shang de jianghua” (“Talk by Ministry of Civil Affairs Vice-Minister Yan Mingfu at a meeting on Residents Committee work in Jilin”) CSJJTX, Vol. 5, No. 9 (1995), p. 4.Google Scholar
31. Jinhua, Wang and Aijiao, Dai, “Guanyu Suzhou, Wuxi, Shanghai juban jingji fazhan zhuangkuang de diaocha” (“A survey of the condition of neighbourhood economic development in Suzhou, Wuxi and Shanghai”), CSJJTX, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1994), pp. 16–17Google Scholar; Ministry of Civil Affairs and Fujian Province Civil Affairs Department, “Fujian sheng chengshi juweihui jianshe qingkuang diaocha” (“A survey of the condition of urban Residents Committees in Fujian province”), CSJJTX, Vol. 5, No. 8 (1995), p. 22.Google Scholar
32. Lijia, Ji and Guicheng, Liu, “Liaoning sheng juweihui jianshe cunzai de wenti ji gaijin de cuoshi” (“Existing problems in the building of Residents Committees in Liaoning province, and measures for improvement”), CSJJTX, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1994), p. 8.Google Scholar
33. For instance, Muqing, Wang, “Hangzhou shi jumin weiyuanhui jianshe diaocha baogao” (“Report on a survey of the development of Residents Committees in Hangzhou”), CSJJTX, Vol. 7, No. 8 (1997), p. 27.Google Scholar
34. In the summer of 1998 I spoke to 54 ordinary citizens one-on-one in private to try to get a candid sense of their impressions of the RCs, in addition to interviewing government officials, academics and some RC members themselves.
35. People sometimes teasingly call them the “small-footed detective squads” (xiaojiao zhenji dui) – a reference to the bound feet of elderly women raised before the revolution.
36. Some 90% of RC staff nation-wide are women, according to MoCA estimates. Most are residents of the neighbourhoods they work in, although Street Offices sometimes recruit staff from outside the immediate area.
37. The relatively privileged permanent residents of the cities generally applaud the RCs' efforts to keep a handle on the activities of migrants, whom they tend to distrust. This, however, is complicated by the fact that RCs are sometimes criticized for bringing more migrants into the neighbourhood to work in businesses under the committees' sponsorship.
38. See Woolcock, Michael, “Social capital and economic development: toward a theoretical synthesis and policy framework,” Theory and Society, No. 27 (208), pp. 151–208Google Scholar; Evans, Peter, “Government action, social capital and development: reviewing the evidence on synergy,” World Development, Vol. 24, No. 6 (06 1996), pp. 1119–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Putnam, Robert D. with Leonardi, Robert and Nanetti, Raffaella Y., Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
39. For an earlier account, see Clark, , “Conflict management.”Google Scholar
40. Choate, , “Local governance in China, part II,”Google Scholar elaborates on the RCs' significance in the provision of social services.
41. See, for instance, Shanghai Luwan District Government, “Guanyu wo qu dangqian juweihui gongzuo de qingkuang diaocha” (“A survey of current Residents' Committee work in our district”), CSJJTX, Vol. 5, No. 12 (1995), pp. 17.Google Scholar
42. See Hang, Shao and Jianfen, Peng, “Ying yifa queli juweihui zai xin jian zhuzhai xiaoqu guanli shang de zhongxin diwei” (“It is necessary to establish the central position of the Residents' Committee in the management of newly built residential neighbourhoods in accordance with the law”), CSJJTX, Vol. 8, No. 7 (1998), pp. 2–4.Google Scholar
43. In private housing these are sometimes called “owners committees,” yezhu weiyuanhui.Google Scholar
44. Compiled Statutes of the PRC, p. 141.Google Scholar
45. On differences between Villagers' Committees and Residents' Committees, see the MoCA-edited volume Shijian yu sikao (Practice and Reflection) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui chubanshe, 1992), pp. 325–345.Google Scholar
46. O'Brien, Kevin J., “Rightful resistance,” World Politics, Vol. 49, No. 1 (10 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Minxin, Pei, “Citizens v. mandarins: administrative litigation in China,” The China Quarterly, No. 152 (12 1997).Google Scholar
47. Following an anonymous reviewer of this article, one could also hypothesize that institutions like the RCs inherently work at cross-purposes towards increased legalism, as they are designed to handle residents' affairs through personalized contacts outside bureaucratic channels.
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