Not so smooth

Though merging small villages was hailed as important a step in administrative reform as the creation of recent "super ministries", mergers in Guangdong province were suspended due to the problems encountered.

Guangdong province led the nation with a pilot village merger policy in 2003, when the provincial government required villages with less than 2,000 households and 2 sq km area to merge.

However, what happened in Guangning county, in the mountainous northwest of Guangdong is far from promising.

With an area of more than 60 sq km, Qingshui became the largest village in the county after Guishui and Cushikou villages were combined in 2004.

Four primary schools within the region merged into one, in an effort to "pool the best teachers". Since then, many students aged 6 to 13 have to spend more time traveling across mountains before arriving at Qingshui primary school.

Liang Youcheng, 53, originally from Liangtang village, purchased a house for 45,000 yuan and moved to Qingshui village in 2004. Now, his daily work includes an 11 km motorcycle ride back to Liangtang, where his forests and rice fields are located.

"Traveling along mountain roads is difficult. It will take villagers in the most distant area one day to get to the village committee, twice as long as before," Nanfang Weekend quoted Ye Xinlin, the former village chief of Cushikou village, as saying.

Because the Guangdong province merger failed to set up a size limit for the newly formed villages, some became too big for proper management.

Meanwhile, the administrative streamlining has reduced the numbers of village cadres. Thus the increased villager population and its scattered distribution pose a great challenge for management, not to mention the decreased fiscal subsidies from provincial government.

The number of village cadres in Guangning county has been reduced to 768 from 1,190, saving an annual expense of up to 4 million yuan.

"Administrative costs were lowered by the village merger, but the subsidies have also been cut down as there are fewer villages now," says Chen Maohui, Party chief of Guishui town, in Guangning.

For instance, a 970,000-yuan subsidy for public health has been canceled after 97 villages were removed, says Chen, which made the survival of village hospitals even harder.

Subsidies for poverty alleviation have also been reduced.

Originally there were 118 poverty-stricken villages in Guangning county with an total annual fiscal income of less than 30,000 yuan, each of which currently receives 30,000 yuan from the provincial government every year. When some villages merged into one, they did not receive any subsidy if their total income surpassed the poverty line.

A source from the civil affairs bureau of Guangdong province says that more than 3,000 villages and millions of villagers were involved in the village mergers, which were suspended after 2005.

CBW News

(China Daily 05/03/2008 page10)