Revolution From the Bottom——View the Growth of a Civil Society in Urbanization of Wenzhou Pattern From the Perspective of City of Longgang Peasants
In the process of gradual system transition since the reform and opening up, the development road of Wenzhou has attracted widespread attention from people for its characteristic of thorough privatization and marketization and called “Wenzhou pattern”. For research on Wenzhou pattern, most people will make the explanation from the perspective of development of regional economy and transition of economic system rather than make the in-depth analysis from the perspective of social and political transition. To survey the significance of Wenzhou pattern for the social and political transition of our state, this article uses the explanative pattern of Civil Society and takes City of Longgang Peasants as an example to view the growth of civilian social strength in the process of urbanization of Longgang from the perspective of interactive relation between the state and the society.
The peasants of Longgang who had first become rich started to rush in city with their money in order to come true their years of dream that become an urban residents. By Dec. 31, 1984, more than 5000 households from three provinces and seven counties had applied for settlement in Longgang, with the total payment for land of nearly 10 million Yuan. And then, a vigorous and large-scale movement of city construction by peasants was formally started up. Now, total population in the urban area of Longgang has already reached 0.12 million. With a network of many cross streets and dozens of high-rise buildings above 20 floors, it looks just like a decent modern small city.
Longgang is a “city” built by industrialists and businessmen with the identity of “peasant”, in the process of its urbanization, these social individuals separated form original village community have no unit community to rely like citizens in other cities of China, therefore, a community organization on behalf of their interests is gradually formed in the process of social game for the purpose of common benefit. Under double restriction of supply-oriented system environment and traditional cultural background of China, although Longgang exists certain budding of civil society, but it is very difficult for the budding to grow up into a civil society in modern sense if the national macro system operation mode has no big change. In recent years, on the basis of further growth of civilian social strength of Longgang, national behaviors are also more inclined to rationalization, and she has gradually decreased intervention in concrete social affairs, while she continues to strengthen control over collective actions of the society to reduce abnormal social friction cost.
For many social interest relations exist exclusiveness to some extent, any government cannot be on behalf of the interests of all people, but at least, it should be able to keep proper balance between interest relations of social stratums. To keep such balance, the first thing is to make various interest appeals able to be expressed through normal channels. Growth of the civil society of Longgang that is based on development of private economy has fully displayed the role played by community organization in modernization of urban society in new times. However, we should see that development of community organization is unsymmetrical; in particular, the weak group is unable to effectively convey its own interest appeal due to the extremely low level of organization, so that it is placed in a quite disadvantageous position in the society. Therefore, if only elite group can form interest community through channels within the system and if the weak group is unable to form interest group and effectively express its own interest appeal, the weak group would be more disadvantageously placed in the social game, and if the things continue in this way, such social imbalance would threaten stability of the state sooner or later. So, either from the perspective of long-term stability or from the perspective of social fairness, the systematic obstacles against organization of social members, in particular, the weak group, should be eliminated to open up the channels for interest expression.
