CPC embarks on new path of social management
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In a small village tucked into the rugged mountains in east China's Jiangxi Province, every household has a board indicating a person's name, workplace and mobile phone number on the door.
"He is my go-to guy," said 58-year-old Liu Guoyou, a farmer in Shangduan Village, Huangbai Township in the city of Ruijin, referring to Zhong Chunlin, head of the municipal Bureau for Letters and Calls.
"I often forget things at my age. But I can always know Zhong's number since it is right there, atop my door. Whenever I encounter difficulty in life and don't know what to do, I call him," said Liu.
"Now half a year has passed, and he has already become family," Liu said.
Liu's attitude is not an isolated case. Actually, every government official in Ruijin has become the go-to guy for 20 households, said Chen Xiaochun, secretary of the Ruijin municipal committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Chen, himself, often replied as late as midnight with text messages to local farmers. "Besides the 20 households that I am responsible for, I also make my mobile phone number available to the public," said Chen.
"I take problems and difficulties that people mentioned in their texts seriously. For some problems, I solve them myself, and for others, I forward the issues to the department in charge," Chen said.
Ruijin is the birthplace of the Provisional Central Government of Chinese Soviet Republic in 1931, and it is also the starting point of the Long March, a famous military maneuver carried out by the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army from 1934 to 1935 led by the Communist Party of China to combat the Kuomintang regime.
Today, Ruijin is a popular tourist destination for both its natural scenery and its "Red" heritage.
Ballads depicting diligent, selfless CPC cadres is still popular today. It tells the story of CPC officials who went to work wearing a pair of straw sandals and bringing their own food, and even when they finished with their daily work, they carried a lantern to pay household visits to solve people's difficulties.
"The CPC was set up with the aim of serving the people. Today, it is important for us to use new tools, such as the Internet, cell phones and video chats, to hear the voices of the people and help them realize their aspirations," said Chen.
Great changes have taken place in the country since the founding of New China more than 60 years ago. For example, the country has come a long way to become the second largest economy in the world. The distribution system has changed from the "eating from the same pot" to "distribution based on one's work". However, it also faces problems like the uneven development between regions, yawning wealth gap, social services being lagged behind, as well as contradictions relating to labor and debt disputes.
The biggest challenge at present is that whether the CPC can strengthen its blood ties with the people, under the backdrop of fast social progress and great changes in the country, said Dai Yanjun with the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
The 12th Five-Year Program, the national development blueprint for the years from 2011 to 2015, states that China will beef up the government's role in social management and providing social services and optimize the mechanism of safeguarding people's rights and interests to ensure the harmony and stability of society.
Progress has been made. In east China's metropolis Shanghai, subsidized delivery rooms are provided to migrant workers and the municipal government provides 200 yuan (31 U.S. dollars) in subsidies to the hospitals for each new mother.
As for the lingering "Hukou system", the household registration system that classifies people as "urban" or "rural" residents, Dongguan city government in south China's Guangdong Province provides new channels for people to be registered as a resident there as long as they meet certain criteria, such as having worked in Dongguan for a certain number of years and having paid their social security.
In the year 2010, as many as 10,000 migrant workers became Dongguan citizens.
In southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, public opinions have been incorporated into government officials' performance evaluations since 2008. The public opinion poll conducted by independent pollsters take up one-fifth of an official's performance results, said Li Mingqing, deputy head of the Organization Department of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the CPC.
