1. Introduction
After reform and opening of China society over several decades, in terms of social management, a series of periodical characteristics have been presented. In order to create a harmonious and orderly environment for the development of the economic society, we need to innovate the social management to solve these new social management problems and meet the new management requirements. The way to achieve innovated social management is to enhance service awareness, increase service levels and lay a solid foundation for providing excellent public services.
2. Innovative Social Management
2.1 Concept of Innovative Social Management
As to social management, management is a mean and providing service is the base. Especially, in modern society, the supreme and ideal target of social management is service rather than management. Social management is not to put emphasis on the management itself but to focus on activating the society and mobilize the enthusiasm of the society and creating a harmonious and orderly social environment. China’s society management practices have shown that steady does not mean lifeless and orderly does not mean utterly quiet. The social management in which the masses are willing participate is the real effective social management. The steady social created by the masses consciously is the real steady social.
Of course, to achieve social service indeed needs a certain control and approval but also needs a certain management forms. However, in the final analysis, the purpose of management is for better service. For example, the government does not exist for approval and control but for social service. Premier Wen Jiabao said in March 8, 2004 in First Session of the Tenth National People’s Congress: “Management is service. We want to construct a service-oriented government to serve the market entities, the society and finally, the people.” This says out the essence of social management. That the government reduces matters to be approved by it, eliminates some inappropriate regulations and does not charge by official seals and permissions is the start of modern social management.
Take urban management for example. Modern urban civilization requires us to keep a good urban order. However, at present, China is still on its initial stage of socialism. Small tranters place booths to sell their goods along both sides of lanes, streets, subway station exits and entrances to maintain their basic living. This is very common in almost every city in China and has become a problem existing in urban management. This is a social problem (C. Wright Mills, 1959), I think. To solve this problem, it does not work to rely on urban management personnel asking and forcing such tranters not to. And the conflicts between those urban management personnel and such tranters often turn to violent events. In my opinion, this is also a new form of self-employment. If such tranters do not sell their goods in such foregoing prohibited places, they will lose their economic source. It is suggested to manage these tranters in accordance with laws and regulations for the purpose of urban image and transportation orders. But, before management is implemented, first of all, service shall be provided and a site for tranters to sell their goods for free or by paying a small amount of fees shall be provided.
2.2 Improvement of Service Level
Improvement of service level is the key to innovative social management. To innovate social management needs continuously to eliminate unharmonious factors and increase harmonious factors. How to increase harmonious factors lies on our social management service level. Whether or not the reasonable demands of the masses can be met, as well as, the complicated contradictions can be eased in a timely manner and interests of the masses can be guaranteed effectively, will directly reflect the governmental service level.
Firstly, the government needs to meet the new requirements and adapts to the new characteristics of the social development. Secondly, the government needs to implement a system that the leading cadres receive the masses, improve the system that the political and party leading cadres, party representatives, deputies to the National People’s Congress and members of National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference tie up with the masses, perfect the responsibility system for complaint letter and visit of the masses and establish a national complaint letter and visit of the masses information system and etc. Thirdly, the government needs to go down to all fields of the economic and social life, varied regions, different classes, different industries and different groups, establish a perfect, all-round, multi-layer and dynamic social information feedback network to make efforts to obtain deep-layer and early-warning social information, conduct comprehensive analysis of, do research on and make judgment of the social sentiments and predict the development and change trends of varied kinds of unstable factors to practically increase the social early-warning abilities.
All these efforts to be made are to form a scientific and effective interest coordination mechanism, a demand expression mechanism, a mechanism to ease contradictions and a mechanism to guarantee the interests of the masses.
2.3 Laying a Solid Foundation for Public Services
The base of social management is to lay a solid foundation for public services. Social management is never a single thing. As to management, we cannot just talk about management. We need to enhance our social construction and provide excellent public service to lay a solid social foundation for innovative social management.
In recent years, the public demands of the urban and rural residents in terms of education, medical treatment, social security and environmental protection and other aspects have been sharply increasing. The public demands of the masses are gradually upgrading from demands for surviving to demands for development. China’s public demands are characterized by rapid growth, multiple subjects, complicated structures and variety. The contradictions between increasingly growing demands for public products and public services by the masses and the insufficient supply of public products and public services are increasingly outstanding. Those kinds of social contradictions reflect the problems existing in terms of the social management.
As long as we practically promote and develop varied social undertakings involving the vital interest of the masses in place to not only enable the masses to go to school to learn, gain benefits from their works, pay the fees for medical services, afford their houses and have been looked after properly when getting old but also enable economic and social development results to benefit all our people to lay a solid foundation for social harmony.
Therefore, in the recent stage, the most fundamental requirement for innovative social management is to focus on developing social undertakings and solving bread-and-butter issues, optimizing public resource configurations, put emphasis on being in favor of providing public services to the rural villages, grass roots and undeveloped areas to gradually form a basic public service system that benefits all of our people and concentrate on solving the employment and education problems, medical service problems, social security, production security and environmental protection and other practical problems the masses are most concerned and most directly related to the interests of the masses to basically reduce and ease all kinds of social contradictions.
References:
1. C. Wright Mills, 1959. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press.