Good social governance can improve people's lives

The five-year plans, as an integral and special aspect of China's national governance, have played an important role in facilitating the country's rapid economic development and ensuring long-term social stability. Since 1953, China has implemented 13 five-year plans, and soon it will unveil its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), the last before it builds a moderately prosperous society in all respects by the end of this year.

As President Xi Jinping said, China will explore a pattern of social development through co-building, co-governance and sharing, and the 14th Five-Year Plan will chart out the country's social and economic development pattern from 2021 to 2025.

China has made some remarkable achievements in social development. Its per capita GDP exceeds $10,000, urbanization rate is over 60 percent, and its middle-income group is more than 400 million strong.

In the next five years, China will step into the new phase of social construction, social governance and social public service through co-building, co-governance and sharing. Vitality and order are indispensable for achieving the goal of modern social development. Social vitality is the source of social development; it enables continuous social progress. And order is the basic condition for social development.

Therefore, there is a need to maintain social vitality and promote social development. To ensure that, the government should deepen reform in order to streamline the administration, delegate powers to lower levels of governments, and improve regulation and public services to promote innovation and encourage start-ups.

There is also a need to deepen the cultural sector reform, so the cultural industry can more effectively promote socialist culture.

While a sound social order should be maintained to further stabilize the harmonious social environment, and strengthen social security, the wealth distribution structure should be optimized to increase the income and expand the size of the low-income group.

Different from social management, social governance includes both government governance and social self-governance which also involves the public. But while establishing a benign link between social governance and residents' autonomy, the country should stick to the social governance system led by the Communist Party of China and the government.

Also, the co-building, co-governing and sharing social governance system should be improved, and social cooperation and public participation promoted to establish benign interactions between the government and the public, because a sound social governance system cannot be established without social participation.

Since people form the basic structure of a society, the modernization of social governance depends on the development of individuals as conscious and conscientious social beings. As such, increasing social participation will inject vitality into the social governance system.

Also, social governance should focus on the grassroots level, because it is the front line of social governance. If social governance doesn't pay due attention to the grassroots, can never be universally beneficial.

So we should put more emphasis on innovation when it comes to social governance at the grassroots level. For example, grassroots social disputes and contradictions should be resolved at the grassroots level to improve social governance capacity and minimize social risks at the grassroots level.

Take Longgang in Zhejiang province for example. As the country's youngest city, Longgang pays great attention to grassroots social governance. About 70 percent of the district-level civil servants work among communities to solve the problems at the grassroots level, and promote innovation in public services, in order to improve the quality of grassroots public services, which enhances the residents' sense of gain, safety and happiness.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period therefore the authorities should focus on both economic development and social development to create a new pattern of social governance through co-building, co-governing and sharing. And the new pattern should adapt to the drastic changes in China's social structure, social relations and social behaviors, so as to better meet the people's increasing demand for a better life.

The author is a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Governance. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.