From social management to social governance: social conflict mediation in China

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1514
• Author: Jinfa Liu
• Date: 01 May 2014
• Published date: 01 May 2014

■Special Issue Paper

From social management to social

governance: social conflict mediation

in China

Jinfa Liu*

School of Government, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

China currently faces increasingly serious social conflicts. In the past, China’s approach to resolving social conflicts

was ‘social management’. Now, however, it is turning to the development of ‘social governance’. This change reflects

the inability of government acting alone to recognise and to address comprehensively the type of social problems that

require co-ordination of social forces. Our research identifies three dimensions of governance and provides a

comparative framework allowing us to illuminate how social governance as conceived in China differs from that in

Western countries. Under China’s current conditions, the strengthening and development of social governance is a

holistic process. Neither market-centrism nor state-centrism is pursued, and pure social-centrism is not the favoured

direction of development; the path chosen is rather a state-led social pluralism. The implications we see for the

Government are that it should first transform its own functions to achieve a substantially higher quality of public

service. This would put it in a position to empower (civil) society to mobilise multiple and varied social forces to

participate so that social conflict can be optimally addressed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

China’s leadership has often publicly expressed its

concern to avoid ‘social instability’. It is viewed as

a threat both to the political order and to the contin-

ued rapid growth of the economy. The Politburo

held its 23rd collective study session in September

2010, focusing on the ‘correct handling of contradic-

tions among the people in the new era’. General

Secretary Hu Jintao called for the establishment of

a mechanism, led by the Party and government,

which would protect the interests of the masses

(as citizens of China are still called), and would

strengthen and innovate ‘social management’.

However, after theThird Plenary Session of the 18th

Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee

social management was replaced by ‘social gover-

nance’in the official report. This reflects ‘governance’

coming to the fore and being understood as not

merely control over the population but as being a

‘service provider’(Raman, 2012).

This attention to the urgency of social governance

development indicates that the Chinese government

has begun to seek a balance between government

control and social autonomy with the aim of build-

ing a strong government and a strong society.

This paper focuses on the changes in Chinese

social conflict mediation mechanisms, that is, the

transformation from social management to social

governance. The article is organized as follows: first,

we discuss the increasing number of social conflicts

faced in China. Then we analyse the different

meanings of governance and its different origins

and types and build a classification model of gover-

nance, which allows us to explain the unique origins

and type of China’s social governance. This model

provides a comparative framework allowing us to

illuminate how social governance in China differs

from that in Western countries. Finally, we discuss

the feasibility of shifting from social management

*Correspondence to: Liu Jinfa, School of Government, Beijing

Normal University, No. 19, XinJieKouWai St., HaiDian District,

Beijing 100875, China.

E-mail: liujinfa1983@163.com

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 14 Number 2 pp 93–104 (2014)

Published online 7 April 2014 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1514

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.