An Analysis of College-graduate Village Official Policy in China

Xinxin WANG

School of Marxism，China University of Political Science and Law，Beijing 100088，China

1 Introduction

The implementation of China's college-graduate village official policy has lasted for20 years since the initial plan of Jiangsu Province began to carry out in 1995.Over the past20 years，the policy has undergone the transformation from partial exploration to integral coverage.These explorations and attempts not only lay the foundation for the persistent development of the policy，but also foster the policy atmosphere for the college-graduate village officials' growth.The policy's objective and target group of the policy will be involved in the process of analysis.Moreover，the main content of the policy will be analyzed as well.

2 The analysis of policy's target group

In terms of any public policy，its target group is certain.The target group of the policy，as the direct taker of the policy implementing subjects' influence，will change in varying degrees when they suffer from the policy implementing subjects' effect（Ning，2003）.In the implementing process of college-graduate village official policy，village officials constitute the target group which the policy intends to influence.These village officials mainly come from the group of college graduates.Some of the graduates choose to participate in the examination held by local government，and these who live up to the standard will be recruited by the government and become the cadre of rural areas.According to the policy，if the graduate is a member of Communist Party of China，she or he will be appointed as the assistant of village secretary.If the graduate is not a member of Communist Party of China，she or he will be appointed as the assistant of village director.If the graduate is a member of the Communist Youth League，then she or he will be appointed as the Youth League Committee's secretary or vice secretary of the village.

3 The analysis of policy's objectives

The establishment of policy objective will set the important prerequisite for the resolution of policy problem and lay the foundation for the selection of the superior scheme（Xu，2009）.Meanwhile，the policy objective is a significant indicator which is capable of reflecting the policy performance when the evaluator attempts to evaluate the policy.The objectives of policy must incarnate the overall plan and strategy of the policy.At the same time，these objectives must be resolvable（namely，the overall objective can be resolved into many sub-unit objectives）so that they can be manipulated effectively.It is easy to perceive that the overall objective of college-graduate village official policy contains many sub-unit objectives when we analyze it，and the multi-objectives are capable of guiding us to scrutinize this policy from multi-perspectives.Concretely speaking，college-graduate village official policy mainly contains three objectives.The first one is to promote employment.This objective aims to change the graduates' notion and guide them to work in rural areas so that the employment pressure can be alleviated and jobs can be obtained by them in China's villages.The second objective of this policy is that it is able to reinforce the rural administration.The reason why policy makers regard the reinforcement of rural administration as the policy objective is whether the rural administration is successful or not will exert the direct influence on the extracting efficiency of rural resources.The college-graduate village official policy attempts to attract the graduates to rural areas so that the public organization in these areas can recruit the high-quality employees and the rural administration will also be improved and reinforced in this process.The third objective of this policy is to foster talents and provide talent resources for the construction of the New Countryside.In order to cope with the embarrassing situation of talents' shortage，the policy sets some special posts（such as the vice director or vice secretary of village）and a series of regulations to attract and retain talents.These talents will assist the director or secretary of village to handle all kinds of rural affairs and help the villagers to tackle various problems.In this procedure，the constructing mission of the New Countryside will be carried out in a more effective manner.

4 The analysis of the policy's content

Any public policy necessarily contains certain policy content，and the formation of the content benefits from the policymakers' analysis about the certain policy problem（Zhang，2004）.Meanwhile，the policy content also reflects the policymakers' stance and attitude towards the policy problem.Of course，there is no exception for the college-graduate village official policy.This policy delivers some policy content，which is mainly involved in the recruitment，obligation，training，daily protection and fostering of these village officials，to social members in the process of reflecting the stance and orientation of policy makers what have mentioned above.Here，we merely select some facets of the policy content to analyze.

4.1 The stipulation about recruitmentIt is not difficult to find out that the stipulation about recruitment plays an important role in the policy when we scan the policy texts made by local governments（Wang，2015）.These local governments will confirm the recruiting number and prerequisite，on which the proclamation will be released and the recruiting examination will be arranged，on the basis of analyzing the posts' requirement from multi-dimensions.Compared with the year of 2013，it is obvious that the recruiting number of college-graduate village official began to decrease in 2014.For example，in 2014，the recruiting number of Beijing City was 2300 and it decreased by 4.2%compared to 2013.The recruiting number of Tianjin City was 100 and decreased by13.8%.The recruiting number of Hebei City was3000 and decreased by 27.2%.The recruiting number of Inner Mongolia was 500 and decreased by 48.5%.The recruiting number of Jiangxi Province was1500 and decreased by 50%.The recruiting number of Hubei Province was 1200 and decreased by 53.2%.The recruiting number of Shanxi Province was 303 and decreased by 56.7%.The recruiting number of Hunan Province was 1000 and decreased by 59.3%.Notwithstanding a sharp decrease of the recruiting number in each local government，the quality of candidates is enhanced in this process.In terms of the candidates' academic credential，it has been improved apparently since 2008.In the past 7 years，the candidates from college for professional training have been undergoing a drop of4%on average annually，whereas the candidates who obtained the bachelor or master degree have been undergoing an increase of 4%on average annually.This situation reflects a sort of policy orientation which places the emphasis on the improvement of these village officials' quality and the optimization of their educational background.Obviously，the policy orientation is different from the initial plan which emphasizes the increase of recruiting number，and this manifests the change of policy emphasis and the shift of policymakers' focusing point.

4.2 The stipulation about the village officials' obligation

The policy content about the village officials' obligation can be seen in three documents.Namely，Stipulation of Hiring College Graduates to Serve as Village Officials（hereafter referred to as Stipulation 1），Stipulation of Establishing the Lasting Mechanism for College-graduate Village Officials（hereafter referred to as Stipulation 2），and Stipulation of Consolidating College-graduate Village Officials' Work（hereafter referred to as Stipulation 3）.These documents express the policy content about the village officials' obligation to the social members and point out the mission which must be completed by these village officials.It will not only help the social members，especially the village officials，to realize all sorts of obligations，but also provide the advantageous premise for the following actions（such as the implementation and evaluation of the policy）.In Stipulation 1，these village officials' obligation is summarized as that college-graduate village officials must assist village director or village secretary to cope with all kinds of rural affairs and improve the educational level，sanitary condition，medical care and other facets of villages.But in Stipulation 2，the obligation is disassembled into six facets.In the first place，these village officials should carry out the relevant deployment made by the Communist Party of China，and strive to propagandize the policy and stipulation of the Party.In the second place，these village officials must complete a series of missions which are related with the construction of New Countryside and assist the leaders of villages to make industrial plan.Furthermore，these village officials must play a leading role in the process of constructing the rural demonstration zone and cooperative organization.In the third place，these village officials must promote agricultural technology，carry out the comprehensive control of rural society's order，and implement the one-child policy in rural areas.In the fourth place，these village officials must collect and tackle all kinds of documents and materials and some of them should be responsible for the maintenance of network and device.In the fifth place，these village officials must take part in the discussion which is about rural affairs and take some advises according to the real situation and main problems of villages.In the sixth place，these village officials must strive to promote the organizational construction of the Youth League and help the youngsters who live in villages to join the Youth League.It is very obvious that Stipulation 2 is aimed at supplementing Stipulation 1.The later（Stipulation 1）only defines college-graduate village officials as a sort of officials who occupy the special post and play the assisting role in villages，whereas the former（Stipulation 2）details these village officials' obligation and demonstrates the duties of these village officials in a more accurate way.These efforts will enhance the maneuverability of the policy and provide more instructions for the officials.To some extent，the implementation of Stipulation 2 embodies the policy's continuity and stability of policy makers' orientation as well.If we deem Stipulation 2 a kind of formulation which demonstrates the obligation in a static way，then Stipulation 3 is a sort of dynamic explanation about the content of obligation.In Stipulation 3，the obligation of these village officials is rearranged according to the chronological order and these officials will be required to undertake different obligations in different period.In the first year of their tenure，these officials should be familiar with the village work according to the requirement of Stipulation 3.Concretely speaking，they should visit whole peasant households of the village，make an archive for every peasant and write an investigating report based on the village's situation.In the second year，these young officials are required to tackle all kinds of affairs for village's dwellers and these affairs mainly include that officials must help villagers to hunt for the cooperative projects about agriculture and cope with the contradiction among the villagers and so on.The requirement like this not only makes the obligation of these village officials clearer，but also endows the college-graduate village official policy with a dynamic sense because it expresses the requirement one by one and year by year.The creation of this dynamic sense will improve policy executors' cognition to the policy and guide the behavior of these executors and target group in an expectant direction.

4.3 The stipulation about training

4.3.1 Training plan.The policy demonstrates that training arranged for college-graduate village officials must be parallel with the training of other government officials.That is to say，these village officials（temporary officials）and other government officials（formal officials）must be reckoned as the human resources of public organizations equally.Meanwhile，the relevant institution about these village officials must be consummated gradually so that the institutional protection can be offered for the training job.Furthermore，the regional governments are capable of making the training plan for local village officials in accordance with the real situation of the region and designing the training class for these officials.Moreover，the policy divides the training into two parts，namely，the pre-job training and tenure training.The pre-job training intends to shorten the adapting time of these young village officials，show the features of the position and help these officials to adapt to the new working atmosphere.The time restriction of pre-job training is notmentioned in these stipulations，so the local governments are able to design time restriction of the training on the basis of analyzing the condition of regional training resources.On the other hand，the tenure training is aimed at improving these officials' working ability and instructing them to devote to the governing activities about rural affairs.In terms of the time restriction，the policy requires that every village official must receive training for at least one week and their performance during the training period will be regarded as an important bas is on which the performance evaluation will be conducted.

4.3.2 Training content.The policy demonstrates that the designer of training content must combine the training content with the features of these officials' post.Moral theory，political theory，and other relevant expertise should be included in the training content，and some necessary skills of agriculture should also be involved in the process of designing the training content.Moreover，the policy encourages these village officials to learn the knowledge about management，economics and legislation through the training class so that their capacity in coping with the public problems and helping villagers to become rich can be improved.In addition，the policy proposes that the explanation about the policy of peasant，agriculture and countryside should be included in the training content and this practice will deepen these village officials' cognition about the problem that is related to peasant，countryside and agriculture.In order to help these village officials to integrate into villages and enhance the working efficiency，the policy proposes that the training content should contain the folklore and relevant methodology so that these village officials can be familiar with the villagers' custom，interest and preference.

4.3.3 Training pathway.Stipulation 2mentioned above supplies the policy executors with two feasible pathways.The first pathway can be reckoned as the formal pathway and it proposes that the training resources derived from tertiary institutions and other researching institutions must be utilized to cultivate these village officials.In this process，the agricultural universities should utilize their advantages and diversified approaches（such as the postgraduate education and continuous education）to train these village officials.The second pathway can be regarded as the informal one and it will arrange the training activities for these village officials in a way of organizing the field research and urging the relevant leaders to share their experience with these young village officials.

4.4 The stipulation about life supporting

4.4.1 Subsistence allowance.Every village official is capable of taking some subsistence allowances according to Stipulation 1 and these allowances will be supplied by local and central government.In the year of2008，the central governments et an standard for the subsistence allowances.The village officials in western part of China will get15000 yuan from central government per person every year，the village officials in middle part of China will get 10000 yuan per person every year，and village officials in eastern part of China will get5000 yuan per person every year in accordance with Stipulation 1，whereas the other part of subsistence allowances will be supplied by local governments and the establishment of concrete standard will rely on the financial condition of those areas.In 2011，the central government realigned the standard of subsistence allowances，and every village official in western part of China will get20000 yuan per year，officials in middle part will get 15000 yuan，and officials in eastern part will get 8000 yuan after the realignment.The other part of subsistence allowances are still offered by local governments.Obviously，the standards of subsistence allowances are apparently different in different areas because the economic situation and financial condition in different areas is disparate from each other.In order to narrow the gap，some local governments select the policy scheme of improving the subsistence allowances' level year by year and this policy scheme demonstrates that these village officials' subsistence allowances must rise along with the increase of their working ages.For example，Beijing selects this policy scheme.Village officials' subsistence allowance in the first year of this city is 24000 yuan per person per year and the allowance will increase 500 yuan every year in the following two years.Some provinces enact the policy framework to differentiate the village officials' subsistence allowance.In other words，these village officials will be divided into different categories according to their working sites and the officials whose work site be longs to the undeveloped are a will be given more allowances，whereas the officials who work in the developed areas will be given less allowances because the high standard of allowance will attract more village officials to work in the undeveloped areas and serve for the villagers there.Jilin is a typical example.Village officials' subsistence allowance in Yanbian District is different from the officials' allowance in other districts of Jilin.In the year of2014，village officials' allowance in other districts of Jilin is22800 yuan per person per year，whereas the village officials in Yanbian District will get27600 yuan per person every year because the working condition in Yanbian district is more arduous than in other districts of Jilin.Some other provinces and cities also attempt to differentiate subsistence allowance of village officials and these provinces and cities divide these officials into different groups according to their educational background，instead of differentiating these officials in accordance with the regional disparity.Generally speaking，the allowance's level of a village official who obtained the master degree will be higher than the one who obtained the bachelor degree.For example，in Sichuan，the standard of allowance is that the undergraduates could get 13200 yuan and the postgraduates could get 18000 yuan per person per year in 2014.

4.4.2 Insurance and other benefits.In Stipulation 1，these village officials are required to participate in the pension insurance.Meanwhile，the local government should underwrite the commercial insurance，such as the accident insurance and medical insurance，for these village officials.Whereas Stipulation 2 enacted in 2009 requires that these village officials should participate in the social insurance and officials in some are as must participate in the supplementary medical insurance and relevant premium will be supplied by both the relevant departments responsible for the village officials' work and the village officials themselves.In addition，Stipulation 2 also requires that the relevant departments of regional governments should strive to allocate some resources in accordance with the regional situation to these village officials so that their living standards can be improved effectively.These departments should deal with some troubles which might be encountered by the officials and arrange the physical examination for these officials every year.Moreover，these departments must take effective measures to prevent the officials from all kinds of hazards and create a safe working environment for them.

5 The evaluation about policy target and policy content

The targets of college-graduate village official policy consist of diversified sub-unit objectives，whereas the diversity of objective will setup a better premise for accomplishment of the final targets.In order to accomplish these targets more efficiently，the policy makers conduct the comprehensive and diversified arrangement in the facet of policy content and these arrangements will not only lay the foundation for the policy executing activities，but also promote the fulfilling of the policy target.It is obvious that the current policy targets and policy content have many advantages，but we should also find its shortcomings simultaneously.These shortcomings do not emerge solely，and inmost cases，they are closely intertwined and show a complex form.The chief shortcoming of the policy is that the coordinating degree of its policy targets is not very high.As mentioned above，the policy mainly has three targets：promoting employment，reinforcing the rural administration，and fostering talents and providing talent resources for the construction of the New Countryside.Among these three targets，the promotion of employment can be regarded as a short-term target and the fulfilling of this target will be easier than the other two targets.However，the fulfilling of this target is not capable of laying the foundation for the accomplishment of the other two because the government has designed another five pathways to shunt these village officials onto other posts and this practice reflects the fact that these officials leave villages and begin to work in a new position.Under these circumstances，only few officials will stay and work in villages continually，whereas the emergence of this embarrassing situation will set some obstacles to the fulfilling of the other two targets because the original reserve talents pool is becoming smaller and smaller.It is not difficult to find that the inconsistency between the subsequent policy content and the original policy target results in the discordance among the policy targets.In order to cope with this problem，we should make an effort to realign the policy target and innovate upon the policy content.

5.1 Readjusting the policy targetWe are capable of attempting to set different policy targets in different phases according to the chronological order and different developing periods in the process of readjusting the policy targets.For example，the target of first phase can be set as promoting employment，whereas the target of second phase can be set as helping villagers to solve some problems.By that analogy，we are able to set the final target and accomplish it eventually.Of course，we are also capable of affirming the status of different targets in the target system and clarifying the affiliation of different targets bymeans of setting the policy targets according to different properties of them.To some extent，this practice will achieve the interdependence of these policy targets and improve the coordinating degree of them.For example，the policy targets of college-graduate village official policy can fall into two categories.The first one can be deemed the instrumental target，such as the promotion of employment and the fostering of talents.The second one can be regarded as the substantial target，such as the reinforcement of New Countryside construction and the promotion of well-being society's construction.The policy makers must ensure that the fulfilling of instrumental target is capable of setting the stage for the accomplishment of substantial target.In other words，the instrumental target is aimed at providing the budget guarantee and political guarantee for the fulfilling of substantial target.Only by doing this can policy targets connect with each other and the coordinating degree of them be improved effectively.

5.2 Establishing the feedback-control mechanism about the policyThe feedback-control mechanism about the college graduate village official policy is in charge of delivering the evaluating outcome of the policy and other relevant information to the policymakers through the specific ways so that the policymakers are able to readjust the policy content on the basis of analyzing the feedback information.In the process of consummating the policy，the policy makers should focus on the authenticity and comprehensiveness of the feedback information so that the information is capable of truly reflecting the implementing results and the real effects of the policy from multi-dimensions，and then decide which part of the policy content to be innovated and retained.In addition，the policymakers should focus on the supervision aimed at the policy evaluation so that the transparency and fairness of the policy evaluation's procedure can be ensured and the policy's evaluating outcome is capable of reflecting the real situation，and these efforts will create the beneficial premise for the adjustment and innovation of the policy content.

6 Conclusions

The article attempts to provide a basic analyzing framework for the analysis of college-graduate village official policy，and the target group and the objectives are mentioned in this framework.At the same time，the recruitment of these village officials，the stipulations about their obligation，training and living support are brought into the framework as well.Of course，the analysis of college-graduate village official policy is not restricted to the factors above.Other factors related to the growth of these village officials are also supposed to be taken into account when the analysts start to analyze this policy.

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