On the afternoon of July 3rd, 2065438+02, the secretary of shifang city Municipal Committee of Sichuan Province said in an interview that the construction of Hongda Molybdenum-Copper Project would stop, and Shifang would not build this project again today. At this point, the Shifang incident has come to an end temporarily, but many problems caused by it are worth pondering.
In recent days, some local people gathered in the Shifang Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government for fear that the construction of the molybdenum-copper project that is being started will have a negative impact on the environment, which gradually evolved into a mass incident. It is reported that as the hardest hit area of the 5. 12 Wenchuan earthquake, the original intention of the local government to introduce this project is to let the people live in a good house and live a better life, but contrary to expectations, the people do not appreciate it. Why did the government's kindness do bad things?
Shifang incident is not an isolated case. Conflicts caused by such incidents, such as PX projects in Xiamen and Dalian, have appeared many times, but the handling process and results are quite different. Different from the handling of this Shifang incident, the incidents in Xiamen and Dalian were finally resolved in a relatively mild atmosphere. At the beginning of 20 12, the mass incidents caused by the land problem in Wukan, Guangdong Province finally found a solution acceptable to the government and the people, mainly because the wise concessions of the local government got the rational response from the villagers. The wisdom of resolving contradictions in these places provides many samples for solving similar mass incidents. Whether Shifang absorbed the experience and wisdom accumulated by predecessors in the process of handling mass incidents, with the gradual disclosure of information and details (if possible), people will have a fairer judgment.
Through the observation and comparison of such incidents, people have reason to believe that if other places do not really learn from this Shifang incident, similar incidents will continue to occur, and their frequency and intensity may even be greater. Then, in order to avoid the recurrence of Shifang incident, what problems are worth thinking about?
First, when launching similar high-pollution projects, in line with the principle of openness and transparency, fully satisfy the public's right to know, participate, express and supervise, and fundamentally eliminate the breeding ground for contradictions and grievances. In response to the Shifang incident, Shifang Municipal Party Committee Secretary 2065438+ admitted in an interview on July 3, 2002 that the previous communication with the public was "not in place", which led to some people not understanding, understanding and supporting the molybdenum-copper project. It seems that everyone knows the truth. Perhaps the most difficult thing to change is the behavior habit, and what is more difficult is the closed and rigid administrative culture behind this habit. Imagine that if the molybdenum-copper project can actively listen to the opinions of all sectors of society at the beginning of the project, let the local people fully understand it, and build trust in the two-way information interaction with the government, then even if there are different opinions, the possibility of causing mass incidents will definitely be much smaller.
Second, once things happen, policy makers should put down their posture, put on a correct posture, fully communicate with the masses in an equal rather than condescending manner, and actively resolve contradictions rather than intensify them. In the process of expressing opinions, it is inevitable that the masses will have excessive and irrational behavior. Individuals who fight, smash and rob will be severely punished according to law. However, as a government in a strong position, it should have a basic awe of the people's demands and aspirations, and resolve contradictions with the greatest sincerity and wisdom, not the other way around.
Third, the negative impact of the incident has already occurred, and the announcement of work stoppage is only the beginning. How to deal with the aftermath can truly test the ruling ability of the local government. Undoubtedly, after this incident, the authority and credibility of the local government in Shifang will be affected. What should local governments do in the face of the rift between the people and the government? A more effective way, I am afraid, is that local officials can explain the decision-making process of incident handling to the public in detail and actively respond to public concern about specific issues.
Dealing with the relationship between reform, development and stability is an important principle that has been emphasized from top to bottom for many years. Judging from the Shifang incident, this requirement is low in some places and may be high in some places. Shifang incident reminds us once again that if we can't handle this relationship correctly, not only will our good wishes not be recognized by the people, but what is more terrible is the huge social risks involved. This is worthy of serious consideration in many places.
20 12 On July 23rd, China Producer Party News Network reprinted the article "The Enlightenment of Shifang Incident on the Growth of Social Governance" by Cai Zhiqiang, Qilu Evening News. The contents are as follows: 1. The mass incidents triggered by the Mo Copper Project reflect the deep contradictions in social governance.
Shifang city, a molybdenum-copper project with an investment of more than 654.38+000 billion yuan, has been praised as a major supporting project for industrial development and revitalization in Wenchuan earthquake-stricken areas, a key project in the 12th Five-Year Plan of Sichuan Province and a project approved by the Ministry of Environmental Protection according to new standards. It can bring local profits and taxes of 4 billion yuan, employ 3,000 people, and drive the development of related industries to exceed 40 billion yuan. The reason why this project can't get people's understanding and support until it causes mass incidents is because people are worried about environmental pollution. There are the following reasons at the governance level.
First, the decision-making process lacks public support. The decision-making process without public participation, in the case of asymmetric information, can easily lead to social conflicts, especially decisions closely related to the lives, health and safety of ordinary people. Scientific decision-making and democratic decision-making require the government to comprehensively consider experts' opinions and people's opinions on the basis of the rule of law and respect for practice, so as to form the goal requirements of development.
Second, there is an all-round government thought in social management. The uncertainty of industrial society and the development of market economy require political parties, governments, markets and social forces to face risks and challenges together, participate in social management together and enjoy the fruits of development together. The government can no longer do whatever it wants. Naturally, it is believed that ordinary people should support the projects that the government argues are beneficial to development.
Third, social governance has grown slowly. In this process, on the one hand, the social subjectivity is increasing day by day, but the institutionalized participation ability is slowly improving; On the other hand, the decision-making process reflects the lack of systems and procedures for the people to be masters of their own affairs, which is incompatible with the people's growing awareness of participation and rights requirements.
The above problems are common in all parts of China during the transition period, and they are also reflected in the development process of other places.
Second, effective information communication and social participation are the basis of social governance.
From the perspective of crisis management, shifang city was the hardest hit by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. As an important field of post-disaster reconstruction, any institutional arrangement and policy process in development is easy to attract people's general attention. Therefore, increasing communication with all walks of life and ensuring people's enthusiasm for participating in social management and development should be an important part of local government work after the disaster. Especially for projects closely related to environmental issues, the government needs to strengthen information communication. In fact, in the process of implementing the molybdenum-copper project, the government has also done corresponding information communication work, including whether the project meets the requirements of environmental protection and whether it is conducive to transforming the local economic structure. But before and after the whole incident, ordinary people did not participate in the demonstration and decision-making of the project as effective subjects. We know that the decision-making of molybdenum and copper projects is first and foremost an expert decision-making process, and ordinary people are not professionals, so it is impossible to confirm the profit and loss of the project to their own interests and health. However, it is precisely because it is impossible to confirm that it is closely related to the living environment that it will cause social panic and anxiety. Obviously, the government's estimation and response measures in this regard are insufficient. This also shows that it is an urgent problem for leading cadres at all levels to cultivate the ability of effective communication between the government and the people and improve their scientific decision-making ability.
Effective information communication includes the flow and sharing of resources among the government, society and even the market. The important reason for mass incidents in shifang city lies in the fact that the government has neglected the demands of online public opinion and the guidance of public opinion on the spread of rumors. 20 12 After the foundation stone laying ceremony of the Mo-Cu project on June 29th, doubts and rumors about pollution began to spread on the Internet and among the people, and some radical remarks spread on the Internet again in the following days. However, the functional departments did not give an authoritative professional explanation, which was later called the arrogance of the government and the indifference to public opinion by some people and scholars. In fact, to prevent the spread of rumors, it is very important that the understanding and grasp of information by all parties should not be different. Among them, as a government that may not fully grasp information, it must first be able to confirm the reliability of information sources, secondly grasp the basic emotions of the people, and thirdly provide symmetrical information with explanatory power. As the public, in the process of enjoying information resources, different interest groups will inevitably sharpen or smooth the information. This requires the public, as an information provider, to bear the corresponding responsibility of communication, and at the same time, as a skeptic, to get an equal response from the government. It should be said that in recent years, the ability of leading cadres to communicate with the media has greatly improved. However, the improvement of communication ability itself cannot replace effective decision-making and the implementation of the people-oriented principle. In other words, all technological forces should not reduce people's trust in the government and the moral requirement that the government is highly responsible to the people. In other words, we can't give up the advantages of the party's mass work because of the evolution of technical strength. And this is precisely the original meaning of information exchange.
Third, the essence of social governance is to fully respect and safeguard the people's dominant position.
General Secretary Hu Jintao pointed out at the meeting to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of China * * * Production Party that we should learn from the people, put them in the most important position in our hearts and treat them as relatives. The people's right to be masters of the country and their dominant position need to be implemented in the specific links of policy implementation and institutional arrangements. As the main body of decision-making, it is naturally impossible for the government to go through the people in everything. However, in major projects involving people's livelihood, the government has the obligation and responsibility to inform. In terms of rights protection, apart from the extensive use of information technology, it is very important to ensure that the government fully respects public opinion in the form of system. Only by providing an institutional platform and material carrier for the people to effectively participate in daily governance can the status of the people as masters of the country be consolidated and implemented. The party's congress system, people's congress system, political consultation system and the five-year plan for national economic and social development are all important institutional arrangements to protect people's right to know, participate, supervise and make decisions. In the process of reform and opening up, it should be said that local governments have also made many attempts and reforms. For example, Hangzhou allows people to participate in the management of major affairs by building a compound subject. The transformation of Jiuxian Bridge in Beijing is also based on extensive consultation with the public, and the people decide their own relocation methods. Although some people have raised sharp objections, the steel investment project in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province has actually become a project that the government and many people are looking forward to, because since the reform and opening up, the local government and people have been talking about interaction.
As the hardest hit area of the "512" earthquake, the majority of leading cadres and the masses lived and died together in the process of emergency rescue and disaster relief and post-disaster reconstruction, and built a beautiful new home after the disaster on the ruins. The reconstruction process has created conditions for the close relationship between the Party and the masses, and the painstaking efforts and efforts of many party member cadres have been recognized by the people. According to shifang city's explanation, the purpose of introducing projects is to let people live in good houses and live a better life. But good flowers will not bear good fruit. Therefore, we need to reflect on why the government thinks it is good for the people, but it fails to gain the understanding and support of the people. The author believes that any major project investment will have advantages and disadvantages, and there will also be groups that benefit and groups that do not benefit. The key issue is that the government needs to respond to the environmental pollution, resource destruction and health protection issues that people are most concerned about. These materials recognized by experts in the EIA process need to be told to the people in time.
Fourth, the development of deliberative democracy helps to improve the governance structure.
Another important revelation of mass incidents in shifang city is that the government needs to form an effective consultation mechanism. Deliberative democracy takes participation, rationality, public interest, knowledge and legitimacy as its basic elements. Among them, stakeholders are equal participants in the negotiations. All stakeholders' concern for their own interests has become a prerequisite for negotiations. At the same time, consultation is a free and rational discussion between the public and the public. It relies on collective wisdom and mutual moral responsibility to maximize public interests, reach consensus and eliminate conflicts through dialogue. As deliberative democracy includes extensive participation of citizens before decision-making, free expression of preferences and ultimate realization of knowledge, this process endows decision-making with legitimacy and is conducive to policy implementation. Compared with this requirement, the development of social democracy in China is not enough to achieve deliberative democracy in general. The government and society need to build an institutional platform and cultivate the ability of consultation. The mass incidents triggered by the molybdenum and copper project in shifang city show that when social forces do not know how to negotiate rationally and express their wishes, mass incidents can easily become a way for people to gain benefits and express their demands.
In many places in China, such as Hangzhou, in the practice of promoting scientific development and building a harmonious society, the interaction among the ruling party, government and enterprises, non-governmental organizations, individual citizens, scholars and mass media has been actively encouraged and promoted, and a multi-party cooperative form has gradually formed, which is mainly solved through consultation. Multi-subject or compound subject itself cannot guarantee the smooth resolution and development of contradictions, but long-term training and practice can promote the transformation of government functions and the active participation of social members in public affairs, as well as the benign interaction among various social subjects, which is conducive to the development of social rationality and the return to the logic of rule of law. The mass incidents in shifang city put forward the practical logic of promoting development, that is, the government needs to effectively absorb, integrate and contact the market, social organizations, clients and other subjects in the new environment, so as to achieve benign interaction in the process of promoting development and avoid losing the support and support of the masses in the policy process. At the same time, the party and the government need to promote social democracy through inner-party democracy in order to release and guide the people's democratic decision-making ability.
At present, emphasizing the rights and responsibilities of citizens is the inevitable result of the development of market economy. With the maturity of market economy in China, the diversification of social subjects and the differentiation of interests become inevitable. Both reform and development involve the reorganization of the original interest relationship. This process has changed the interests of almost all stakeholders, making conflicts between various interest groups inevitable and their relationships increasingly complex. Therefore, providing a platform for the masses to effectively express their interests and participate in public affairs has become an important measure to promote the harmonious development of local areas. The government needs to provide effective participation space and harmonious development channels for different social subjects to ensure that different stakeholders can do their best and get their place in economic and social development.
Fifth, perfect social governance depends on scientific institutional arrangements and clarifying rights and responsibilities.
Social governance refers to the process that the government and social organizations use power and means to plan, coordinate, control and manage social resources, actively mobilize the effective participation of social groups, and improve people's ability to cope with various risk challenges and obtain economic security and safety. An important content of social governance is to stipulate the rights, responsibilities and interests of the government, various social organizations, communities and individuals through the principle of rule of law, thus forming an organic whole of goals, strategies, organizational management systems, policies and institutional norms and behavior patterns for safeguarding interests and promoting development. In other words, social governance includes the process of social management based on order maintenance, citizen participation and interest coordination, as well as various norms formulated and a series of measures taken by the government to maintain harmonious development. The important logic of social governance is that social management, especially crisis management, is the function of the government, but the government cannot be regarded as the only management subject; We can't rely solely on administrative management to achieve social stability in an open society, let alone ignore the independence, autonomy and growth of social forces.
From the perspective of multi-subject responsibility, crisis management and social development involve information collection and analysis, problem decision-making, planning, measures implementation, policy adjustment, experience summary and system repair. The PX incident in Xiamen and the PM2.5 incident in Beijing have improved the capabilities of the government and society in practice, and also provided important assistance for the government and society to cope with risks and challenges. The growth of social governance lies in effectively preventing, eliminating or reducing the threats and losses caused by risks and crises through the coordination between the government and society, striving to realize crisis transformation, turning crises into opportunities, and enabling the government or social organizations to overcome difficulties and enter a new stage of development. Another revelation of mass incidents caused by the molybdenum and copper project in shifang city is that the government quickly complied with the public opinion of participants and a large number of onlookers in emergency management, and decisively stopped the project, thus eliminating the main cause of intensified contradictions. This kind of non-institutionalized emergency decision-making is of great value to calm the situation. Since then, shifang city has further requested the masses not to hold illegal assemblies, processions and demonstrations through public announcements. This practice is necessary and timely, which embodies the procedural requirements of the government in the normal governance process, and is also the primary condition for taking the rule of law as an orderly governance.
In addition, we should also see that the development of market economy and the deepening of reform and opening up have fundamentally changed the system and mechanism of social management. On the one hand, the government needs to give back some power to the society and the market. On the other hand, how to effectively assume power in society after the government withdraws is also a basic problem to be considered. All these need to realize the coordinated governance of "government-market-society" under the leadership of the Party.
On July 24th, 20 12, People's Daily published a commentary "Five Thoughts on Shifang Group Events in Sichuan". The contents are as follows: "Shifang Group Incident in Sichuan" has caused us some thoughts:
First, propaganda and explanation must be done well. After the incident, the Shifang Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government issued a notice, clearly stating that if the masses did not understand and support it, they would not start work. This is people-oriented and caring for the masses. But on second thought, wouldn't it be better to do this before the project starts? Although it is not too late to mend, it has taken a lot of detours.
Second, handle affairs openly and transparently, and fully satisfy the people's right to know. I'm afraid the problem with this group incident is that it is not open and transparent. The people don't know what they want to know and what they should know, and there is a feeling of being "deceived". If you explain things clearly to the masses, I believe that the eyes of the masses are discerning and the masses are very lovely.
Third, we should nip the unstable factors in the bud. This incident developed from a gathering to a group event, reflecting that the local government was not timely and decisive in dealing with emergencies. There are many lessons in this respect, which must be taken as a warning.
Fourth, it is everyone's responsibility to support national construction. Those who instigate, encourage and participate in this incident should be treated differently, and those with ulterior motives should be severely punished according to law; For those who don't know the truth, we should do patient and meticulous work.
Fifth, everyone should not believe in rumors, do not spread rumors, and consciously abide by laws and regulations. Credulity, blind obedience and impulsiveness can only hurt themselves. As an open letter issued by official website, the municipal government of Shifang said, peace is the need of our happiness. Impulse is the devil, and the meaning of this sentence deserves careful understanding.
Development is the last word and stability is the last word. The broad masses of cadres and the masses should understand this truth. As cadres, we should practice serving the people wholeheartedly; As the masses, we should put forward more constructive opinions and suggestions to the Party committee and government. Only when the Party and the government unite as one, and the people of Qi Xin unite as one, and everyone thinks in one place and works hard in one place can we promote the development of various undertakings and build a well-off society in an all-round way.