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China Grass-Roots Organizations
Aspects of Chinese society also have contributed to shaping the
contemporary structure for maintaining public order
(see Urban Society
, ch. 3). Urban and rural dwellers rarely change their
residences. Amid the sprawling cities, neighborhoods remain closeknit communities. For the 80 percent of the population that lives
in the countryside, home and place of work are the same. With
little physical mobility, most villagers stay put for generations
and know each other intimately. In such close-knit environments,
where everyone is likely to know everyone else and notice most of
what happens, mutual surveillance and peer pressure can be
extremely effective
(see Rural Society
, ch. 3).
The structure of the public security system remained extensive
in the 1980s, and the authority of its forces exceeded that of most
police forces in the West. Nevertheless, public security agencies
required and received the assistance of a wide-ranging network of
grass-roots organizations to mobilize residents' responses to the
government's call for observance of laws, lead the people in
maintaining social order and public security, and settle disputes
among residents.
In urban areas an average of 11 patrolmen were responsible for
controlling an area containing 15,000 or more residents. A
patrolman could not know all the people and their particular
problems; he needed help. The local people's governments and
congresses shared responsibility for public order but had no
special personnel for the task. The armed forces were available,
but they had other primary concerns and would be called out only in
the most extreme circumstances.
To provide security beyond what could be provided by the police
and to extend government control, a system of neighborhood or
street committees had been established on a nationwide basis in
1954. The committees were charged with the responsibility of
assisting the government in maintaining order. They usually
controlled from 10,000 to 20,000 people and consisted of 3 to 7
full-time cadres. In the late 1970s, the size and functions of
neighborhood committees were expanded. The neighborhood committees
were specifically responsible for maintaining public order and were
accountable to the local people's congress.
Residents' committees and residents' "small groups," also
established in 1954, were subordinate to neighborhood committees.
These were the genuine grass-roots organizations, staffed by unpaid
local residents elected by their neighbors. They directly involved
the people in controlling their neighborhoods, and they reduced the
demands on formal state institutions by maintaining surveillance
for the public security forces and mediating most civil disputes
and minor criminal cases for the judiciary. A residents' committee
supervised from 100 to 600 families with a staff of 7 to 17
members, one from each subordinate residents' small group. A
residents' small group controlled fifteen to forty households. The
public security organization in the countryside was also pervasive.
From the 1950s to the early 1980s, it was structured along military
lines. The
people's commune (see Glossary)
was the lowest level of
government organization, with its administrative committee on a
legal par with the local people's government in the urban areas.
People's communes were subdivided into
production brigades (see Glossary)
and production teams (see Glossary).
Each team elected a
people's public security committee, which sent a representative to
the committee at the brigade level. Physical control was mostly the
responsibility of the militia units organized at the team, brigade,
and commune levels. In the winter of 1982-83 communes were replaced
by township governments, and grass-roots committees were patterned
after urban committees
(see Rural Society
, ch. 3). These rural
grass-roots committees were given legal status by the Draft Organic
Regulations for Villagers' Committees approved by the National
People's Congress in April 1987.
Residents' committees and small groups were staffed originally
by housewives and retired persons but involved others as their
functions expanded. Their pervasive presence made them a primary
means for disseminating propaganda, and their grass-roots nature
allowed for effective use of peer pressure in mediating disputes
and controlling troublemakers. Perhaps 4 or 5 percent of the adult
population exercised some authority in what Western experts have
described as "participatory democracy in an extended form." The
functional subunits, the residents' committees and residents' small
groups, were particularly important in controlling the people.
People's mediation committees, guided and supervised jointly by
the basic people's court and the public security station, performed
an important function within the residents' committees. They
settled minor disputes and disagreements using conciliation and
peer pressure.
Mediation committees were established originally in communist areas
during the Chinese civil war (1945-49) as a natural outgrowth of
traditional preferences for local mediation of disputes. Upon
taking over the major cities of China in 1949, the Communists were
confronted with a tremendous backlog of judicial cases. Mediation
committees provided a means of resolving disputes while actively
propagandizing and involving the people in the new government.
Beginning in 1954 mediation committees were set up in
neighborhoods, stores, schools, enterprises, factories, and
workshops in the cities and in the production brigades and teams in
the countryside.
In the 1980s the five- to eleven-member people's mediation
committees were elected by popular vote to two-year terms with the
option of being reelected. Members served without pay and could be
removed at any time by the electors for dereliction of duty. They
were responsible for settling disputes, strengthening popular
unity, promoting production and order, and conducting propaganda
activities. Parties in dispute came voluntarily to the mediation
committee; people seemed to feel they should try mediation before
proceeding to a lawsuit. Mediators' duties ranged from acting as
go-betweens for parties who refused to talk to one another to
defining issues, deciding questions of fact, and issuing tentative
or advisory decisions. Mediation committees also exerted strong
political, economic, social, and moral pressures upon one or both
parties to gain "voluntary" compliance with the decisions. In
addition to mediation committees, other officials, police officers,
party members, and work supervisors were expected to serve as
mediators. Members of the residents' committees and small groups
who were not members of the mediation committees were also involved
in the mediation process.
Data as of July 1987
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