According to Xinhua News, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued a new directive to build grassroots government organizations. It no longer talks about expanding grassroots elections and other democratic autonomy mechanisms. Instead, it emphasizes the party’s comprehensive re-engineering of grassroots organizations as well as the implementation of tight control over them.
The “Opinions of the Central Committee of Chinese Communist Party and the State Council on Strengthening the Modernization of the Grassroots Governance System and Governance Ability,” included 7 major sections. It included overall requirements, improving the party’s overall leadership of the grassroots governance system, and strengthening the governance capability of grassroots political power. It also detailed 27 items, emphasizing the use of artificial intelligence and other modern scientific and technological information methods to strengthen the party’s overall control over grassroots government organizations, enhance organizational mobilization capabilities, and completely abandon the grassroots democratic experiments which have been carried out over the past two decades.
The document emphasizes “adhering to the party’s overall leadership of grassroots governance and enabling the party’s leadership to run throughout the entire process and all aspects of grassroots governance.” It also states that it plans to take about five years to establish a grassroots governance system with unified leadership of the party organization and use another 10 years to finish the modernization of the grassroots governance system and governance capabilities.
Source: Radio Free Asia, July 11, 2012
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/9-07112021170004.html