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【Abstract】Social conflict is a manifestation of social disorder and the result of social governance failure. Rural social conflicts are caused by the joint action of many factors, but fundamentally they are caused by the psychological gap between social expectations and reality. The imbalance between expropriation and demolition compensation and farmers' expectations can easily lead to conflicts, and the social conflicts caused by the intensification of conflicts put rural governance into trouble. Judging from the expropriation and demolition practice of Project G in X Village, the methods and results of conflict resolution determine the production and reproduction of social conflicts, and the dimension of conflict is directly related to the effect of social governance. Therefore, the way to avoid social conflicts is to resolve social conflicts, clarify the generation logic of conflicts, and analyze the social basis behind conflicts. The investigation found that the country has the order of the country, and the villages have the habits of the village. The key to solving the dilemma of conflict management in rural society is to follow the guidance of the national macro-framework on the basis of mutual respect and mutual social recognition, and invite the owners of local knowledge, local culture and local knowledge to coordinate diverse co-governance and bring rural society into good order.

【Key words】social conflict; rural governance; land acquisition and demolition; local knowledge; pluralistic co-governance

1. Raising the question

Socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, and the principal contradiction in our society has transformed into the contradiction between the people's growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development. The advancement of the national comprehensive modernization strategy and the construction of various modern public facilities require the acquisition of a large amount of land, and most of this land is in my country's rural areas. The resulting rural land acquisition and demolition conflicts are a major event facing my country's rural governance now and even for a long time to come. “Rural social conflict is one of the most serious problems affecting the stability of rural society in my country” (Zhao Shukai, 2003; Ruxin et al., 2004; Xiao Tangbiao, 2005; Wen Tiejun et al., 2007), which restricts or even determines whether the country can successfully realize the transformation from tradition to modernity (Yu Jianrong, 2002; 2003). From the perspective of national security and governance, to effectively control rural society and stabilize rural social order, the key is to effectively manage various conflicts caused by land acquisition and demolition in rural society.

Western sociologists believe that conflicts are inevitable in any society. However, the positive function of conflict promotes social integration and perfection, while the negative function makes social unrest regress. Most of our country's solutions to rural land acquisition and demolition conflicts adopt an official governance model led by local governments, that is, local governments use administrative movements, interest collusion, and flexibility and appeasement to reduce major issues to trivial matters and maintain stability first. This one-dimensional conflict management method is no longer suitable for rural “complex crises” (Xiao Tangbiao, 2015) and long-term development. Rural governance is to solve the problems faced by rural areas and achieve rural development and stability (Xu Yong, 2000). This involves facing the problem of how to manage the countryside or how to guide independent rural management so as to achieve the orderly development of rural society (He Xuefeng, 2005).

It is important to discuss the management of rural land acquisition and demolition conflicts under market economy conditions, but the deep logic behind the rural social order problems caused by conflicts - the most fundamental social relationship (the relationship between the state and society) embedded in morality, interests, risks, systems, actions, and coexistence - cannot be ignored. "The development of a country's entire collective resistance method, and the dynamics of a specific collective resistance event in a country, largely depend on the state-society Social relations and the state's ability to institutionalize collective protest events based on this relationship. "[1] The state's governance capacity is sometimes not reached at the grassroots level. Rural areas need to use rural local knowledge under the guidance of the national institutional macro framework to allow diverse stakeholders to co-govern. This is not only the social foundation of rural social conflict governance, but also the soul of the continuation of rural social existence and development. It should cause us to re-understand the dilemma of rural social conflict governance.

2. Villages before and after land acquisition and demolition

The famous German social conflict theorist Ralf Dahrendorf believes that the normal state of a society is not the well-known stability, harmony and integration, but precisely social conflict. Social conflict is a social norm that exists at all levels of society all the time. A peaceful and harmonious society is only a relative existence. This part will provide an in-depth description of a series of social facts that occurred during the process of rural land acquisition and demolition, comparatively analyze the changes before and after village land acquisition and demolition, and seek factual basis and social foundation for the following in-depth study of rural social governance.

(1) Peaceful villages before land acquisition and demolition

Village The relatively closed and traditional social structure has strong national cultural traditions and unique customs and habits. The villagers are mainly from the Yao ethnic group. There are 53 households in the village with a total population of 200 people. Compared with developed areas, the northwest region of Guangxi is relatively poor and backward, and Dahua County is still one of the national-level poverty-stricken counties. This was also confirmed in the interviews.

"We are relatively poor here. If you stay at home, you have to go to work in the mountains every day to have food. After the New Year, most young people go to Guangdong to work in factories. Those who stay in the village to farm and take care of housework are basically the elderly, children, and women who have to stay to take care of family members and children with limited mobility and illness. They only go out to work during the New Year or when there are major events in the village. People will come back, and the village will be very lively at that time. During our Bunuyao Festival, the villagers will wear our national costumes, sing and dance, have various competitions, and have ‘long table banquets’, etc.” From the villagers’ chats and village historical documents, we found that the life in X Village before the demolition was poor and backward, but peaceful and peaceful, and the villagers got along harmoniously.

According to the survey, as of the end of 2016, the village had a total of 152 acres of cultivated land, including 42 acres of paddy fields and the rest of dry land. In addition, there are two hills in the village, both of which are shrub land. The per capita annual income in the village is about 3,000 yuan, and the annual consumption is 2,570 yuan. The villagers basically make a living through farming, with young and middle-aged people doing odd jobs and doing small businesses in agricultural products to make a living. There are also farmers who rely on subsistence allowances to survive. Generally speaking, planting and breeding are the channels for people in X village to survive. It can be said that before the land acquisition and demolition, this was a traditional agricultural village with simple and poor people, but still able to help each other, mainly small farmers.

(2) Noisy villages after land acquisition and demolition

The development of things is always the result of the joint action of internal and external factors, and stability is not something that can be achieved once and for all. When the national comprehensive modernization strategy entered X village, the traditional and stable agricultural villages also became noisy in the process of transformation.

1. Involuntary demolition

After the launch of Project G, a total of 88 acres of land in Village X (including 35 acres of paddy fields) were acquired and the entire village was demolished. 10,600 square meters of houses will be demolished, including 5,508 square meters of brick-concrete structures, 3,609 square meters of brick-wood structures, and 1,483 square meters of simple houses. The smooth implementation of expropriation and demolition is the result of the combined effect of rigid administration and villagers' concessions. The expropriation and demolition department patiently explained the villagers' questions at first, but some requests and suggestions were reserved after the expropriation and demolition started. When measuring the area of ​​land and houses, villagers have no right to participate and have no say in the measurement standards and results. After the measurement is completed, demolition will begin immediately. Except for the postponement of cases with relatively large controversy and significant social impact, other cases will be implemented immediately if there are no objections after the public notice period.

2. Compensation that falls short of expectations

Project G will implement one-time monetary compensation for expropriation and demolition, with compensation of 36,010 yuan per mu for agricultural land I, 37,395 yuan per mu for agricultural land II, 14,404 yuan per mu for unused land, and 33,655.50 yuan per mu for construction land. Monetary compensation of 450 yuan, 750 yuan, 750 yuan, and 600 yuan per square meter will be given to demolished houses according to brick-wood structure, concrete brick structure, high-end decoration, and ordinary decoration respectively. There will be no follow-up support policies after the one-time monetary compensation.

There are two schools of thought on the expropriation and demolition of farmers. The old school opposes the expropriation and demolition, while the new school advocates expropriation and demolition. Farmers eager to get rid of poverty have high hopes in demolition and demolition, hoping to get out of trouble. After all, it is still very difficult to make a living from the soil. Giving up land and houses means choosing to give up your old life. Landless farmers can only make a living by selling cheap labor. The limited compensation has caused the village's livelihood to decline instead of rising, making it difficult to support house reconstruction. The villagers are caught up in comparing and calculating with each other... criticizing the government, the village committee, complaining about all kinds of unsatisfactory things, petitioning, gathering people to make trouble... The process of pursuing balance produces more imbalances.

3. Transition to differentiation

Project G is a large-scale public facility project led by the state. It will take at least 3-5 years to build, and the demolition and reconstruction of the villages to make room for it will also take 2-5 years. In order to solve the problem of transitional resettlement of the demolished households during the demolition and reconstruction cycle, the government and the leading demolition organizations are preparing to build temporary transitional resettlement sites for the demolition households to resettle during the temporary transition period. Transitional resettlement sites are generally built on temporarily selected open spaces. The space is limited and the housing is cramped. Most of them are prefabricated houses built with color steel, with one or two rooms per household. This simple and mechanical layout ignores the differences in the living needs of different subjects and fails to implement the people-oriented development concept. There are even "fights" between relevant subjects for space resources. The single function of the space is given multiple functions, which obviously increases the conflict function. Moreover, after the villagers moved into transitional housing, the reconstruction and resettlement project has not yet started.

The living conditions of the villagers in the temporary transitional houses in the small dwellings are very bad: the transitional houses are not spacious, and a family is squeezed into a small space, with constant friction and noise. Grumblings and complaints are heard from time to time. Mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches and mice breed and multiply during the hot season. The originally harmonious family and neighbor relationships have become angry and tense. The village reconstruction project could no longer be delayed, so the local government temporarily entrusted private construction teams to rush the work. The villagers watched the construction process, worried about the quality of the construction, and worried that they would not be able to live in a safe and secure home despite all their efforts. The lives of the once familiar villagers who had not been demolished and demolished were getting better and better. In contrast, the villagers in X village were even more worried.

4. The tradition of compartmentalization

National cultural tradition is the cultural value component composed of traditional cultural characteristics in the actual cultural value system. It is the driving force and source of a nation's development. It points to the cultivation of the national spirit and the improvement of the quality of life of national members. [2] The people of X village have inherited various traditional customs and habits of their nation from generation to generation. The major festivals of the Yao people include Panwang Festival, Spring Festival, Danu Festival, Hungry Ghost Festival, Shewang Festival, Qingming Festival, etc., and minor festivals occur almost every month. Big celebrations on big festivals, small celebrations on small festivals. The imprints of these festivals have flowed through the long river of time and have become a part of the Yao people. They have deeply penetrated into the lives of the Yao people and become a symbol of identification between the Yao people and other groups of society.

After the land acquisition and demolition of Project G, the village became chaotic, and many traditional activities were difficult to carry out due to site restrictions or changes in neighbor relationships. Even marriages of young people of marriageable age are forced to postpone their marriages, partly because there is no wedding room; on the other hand, even if one accepts this reality, the venue for the banquet is still a problem, and it is difficult to hold a decent wedding in a specific collective activity venue in the village in accordance with customs and traditions. Villagers have been nagging about this, accusing and complaining that the government has failed to consider their situation and has allowed them to suffer for a long time. However, deeply influenced by the traditional plot of a big country but a small people, the villagers only nagged and did not openly resist.

5. The difficult sequence of reshaping

Fei Xiaotong (1998) believes that in the differential pattern, "social relations are gradually pushed out from one person to another, which is an increase in personal connections, and the social scope is a network composed of personal connections." [3] After being relocated, building new houses became the hope and sustenance of the villagers of X village. However, according to the current principles of market exchange, the monetary compensation obtained cannot rebuild a house with the same specifications at all. The differences in reconstructed houses further make the stratification of the village explicit. The villagers are in a solemn mood, and neighborhood relations, village order and clan ethics are all facing tests. The villagers no longer talk to each other and are no longer enthusiastic when meeting each other. They rarely greet each other, let alone help each other. In terms of understanding of the boundaries and the concept of public areas, there are concepts such as "your house is higher than mine, which is bad for my family." Quarrels often occur, and the village committee often needs to mediate and clarify the rights and responsibilities of each household.

The traditional village layout, which was spontaneously formed based on clan ethics and elder-younger relationships, was completely disrupted during the expropriation and demolition. The maintenance of village relations has entered an era based more on mutual benefit, as if traditional, simple, closed villagers have become citizens overnight, and small villages have leapt into modern cities. However, even if the identity can be changed in an instant, it is difficult to reconstruct the habits, concepts and thoughts that are firmly embedded in the villagers in a short period of time. This difficult regeneration of villages is completely different from the differential pattern of traditional villages.

3. Structural contradictions fuel rural social conflicts

Project G was embedded into villages for land acquisition and demolition, and village resources were reorganized. However, the distribution of benefits was not what everyone expected. Conflicts and differences in the village are accumulating hiddenly, and the transition between the old and the new order has not yet been completed. Conflicts gradually intensify after the stable life is disrupted. Coupled with imperfect institutional design, these structural contradictions have become the trigger for rural social conflicts.

(1) Stable life affected by the project

Land is the foundation for farmers to live and work. Losing land means that farmers who have lived in rural areas for generations have lost the fundamental guarantee of survival. [4] my country’s current land acquisition compensation standards do not take into account the potential benefits that landless villagers may generate from their land during the future contract period, and are a one-time buyout. [5] Project G required a large amount of land acquisition in Village X. After the land acquisition, farmers had almost no land to farm. After the implementation of one-time financial compensation, no follow-up support policies are provided, making it easy for people to fall into livelihood difficulties. Villagers generally have the feudal mentality of "fearing officials and fearing the government". If their most basic survival interests are not harmed, they will not compete with the government. [6] As Xiao Xiangxiong (2014) said: "In the follow-up policies for land acquisition and demolition, the concept of sustainable development has not been implemented, and the last stop service for landless villagers has not been truly and effectively solved." [7]

The dual household registration system excludes farmers from various social security, which makes them rely more on "two acres of land". Unless it is absolutely necessary or the compensation measures are very tempting, they will never give up their "own" land easily. [4] The foundation of rural society is geography, affection, and blood ties. Farmers need to establish social networks based on trust and norms to form stable social relationships. [8] The embedding of national projects has broken the original and stable social relationship network in the countryside, forcing villagers to change their long-term survival and lifestyle. Rebuilding a new home and sense of belonging will take a long time to achieve.

(2) There are still omissions in the system design

The "Land Management Law" revised in 1998 gave grassroots governments the relative initiative in the process of land acquisition and demolition from the institutional level [9]. Collective ownership has, to a certain extent, established the status of village-level organizations as legal persons in collective land ownership, thereby creating a distorted phenomenon: grassroots authorities and construction parties that have received land acquisition and demolition orders from higher-level governments will rarely negotiate with individual villagers during land acquisition and sales, but directly communicate with village-level organizations. As long as the village-level organizations sign, even if the villagers object, it will be of no avail. [10]

While government departments dominate institutional arrangements, they often unknowingly directly intervene in democratic management events. During the demonstration and discussion stage of major projects involving the vital interests of farmers, the grassroots political power makes more decisions based on "self-argument", causing contradictions and conflicts to occur from time to time. [11] On the surface, local governments and various departments in the process of land acquisition and demolition are acting on behalf of the national interests, but in actual work, they will use their own advantages in the system and power to usurp the interests of landless farmers, which makes farmers take actions to safeguard their rights. [12][13] With the awakening of farmers’ consciousness, their awareness of their own rights and interests has deepened unprecedentedly, which has become the psychological motivation for them to take rights protection actions. [14] Those farmers who were “denied the right to participate equally in policy formulation” “generated distrust of local government”, which “invisibly aggravated the extent of the conflict.” [15]

Generally speaking, rural social conflicts are the result of the combination of the damage to the stability of the internal structure of the village and the incompleteness of the external system that controls village stability.

4. Types of rural social conflicts and their governance results

The interaction in village society is nothing more than government and people, enterprises and people, people, village communities, etc. Rural social conflicts caused by land acquisition and demolition are inseparable from the participation of these interactive subjects, and their type is bound to be a collection of conflicts between these major subjects. Peeling away the relationships among the subjects layer by layer will reveal the social consequences of different conflict types, that is, the governance status of social conflicts.

(1) Types of rural social conflicts

From the perspective of social relations, the interaction between stakeholders directly or indirectly involved in land acquisition and demolition in villages where engineering projects are embedded will inevitably produce certain results: either harmonious coexistence or conflicts. Judging from the practice in X Village, there are three main types of conflicts caused by rural land acquisition and demolition:

1. Conflicts between expropriated villagers and grassroots governments

Since the land acquisition and demolition of Village Due to the design characteristics of the administrative management system and the fiscal and taxation system, the assessment of grassroots governments, the promotion of leaders, and the amount of fiscal revenue have little to do with the villagers. As a result, the administrative departments have no incentive to invest too much time and energy in considering and solving the "trivial matters" of the villagers. This allows grassroots governments to float above rural society and devote their limited energy to work that is most beneficial to them, while turning a blind eye to the demands of farmers. [9] As long as farmers don’t make trouble, they won’t spend time and energy taking it seriously.

2. Conflicts between villagers and village committees

The conflict between ordinary villagers and the village committee is mainly due to certain unfair phenomena in land acquisition and demolition compensation. In the process of surveying farmers' houses and land, government departments need to coordinate with the village committee. Due to the differences in the close relationship with the village committee members, it is inevitable that the compensated area of ​​some households is greater than the actual area, while others are less than the actual area in the measurement and evaluation results. The honest and honest villagers just swallowed their anger and dared not speak out. The greater the gap between land acquisition, demolition and redistribution, the stronger the sense of unfairness of ordinary villagers, and the more urgent their desire to pursue balance and demand justice. [16]

3. Conflicts between villagers

Due to the high density and poor conditions of transitional housing construction, the life of villagers who are forced to crowd in these areas is extremely inconvenient. Details of daily life such as water, electricity and garbage dumping rub and collide in a small space, causing the relationship between residents to become increasingly alienated and even turn against each other. In the process of building a new community, quarrels among villagers over building houses often occur due to different understandings of boundary lines and public areas, or because they always hope that their own house will be better than others in Feng Shui.

(2) The results of governance of rural social conflicts

1. Reconstruction and integration of rural social structure

Politicians and researchers have overestimated the political nature, degree of organization, and social harm of the rights protection behaviors taken by the bottom of society for their own survival interests. [17] Conflicts exist in any society and are unavoidable. If control and guidance are done well, conflicts can also provide positive functions for the development of society and promote social integration and improvement.

In the process of rural land acquisition and demolition, villagers' expression of their own ideas and protection of interests can prevent the excessive expansion of the power of administrative departments and form a certain restrictive effect within reasonable and legal limits. On the other hand, due to institutional provisions, the village committee has the right to dispose of the collective property of the village. Driven by interests, it will consider its own benefits to the greatest extent when taking actions. Excessive encroachment on public property will inevitably arouse opposition from villagers and the government. Conflicts arising from this reason can limit the actions of the village committee within a certain space, so as not to exceed the reasonable boundaries too much, which is conducive to maintaining the healthy development of rural society.

2. The rupture and differentiation of rural social ties

The results for farmers who are forced to relocate often do not turn out as well as planned and designed by the project. Most rural households have fallen into a state of insecure livelihood due to the loss of land, housing, original social network and public facilities. [7] If a series of livelihood issues such as employment, education, medical care, and elderly care for landless villagers cannot be reasonably arranged, it will easily form an unstable factor and have a negative impact on social order. [7]

When grassroots governments define "public interest", they will try their best to expand its scope and thereby benefit from it. [17] The subject of rural land ownership is ambiguous and fictitious, farmers are unable to freely participate in market bargaining, and collective ownership lacks protection, making corruption and dark phenomena common in the process of land acquisition and demolition. Conflicts may also arise between the middle and upper classes and the management class during land acquisition and demolition. Currently, the resolution of such conflicts is basically that the middle and upper classes use rights petitions to show their strength and express their demands. In order to calm the situation, the management class generally adopts certain concessions to ease the situation. However, judging from the actual results, this unreasonable exchange of interests not only failed to reduce the frequency of conflicts, but instead intensified mutual distrust.

5. Reflection on the dilemma of rural social conflict management

Land acquisition and demolition is a process of redistribution of rural land value-added benefits. This process will inevitably lead to interactions and games between rural classes, and thus lead to conflicts between classes. [15] Most rural land acquisition and demolition conflicts in my country adopt an official governance model led by local governments, that is, local governments use administrative movements, interest collusion, and flexibility and appeasement to reduce major issues to trivial matters and maintain stability first. This one-dimensional conflict management method is no longer suitable for rural "complex crises" and long-term development. Looking at the current process and results of rural land acquisition and demolition, we can see that contradictions and conflicts of varying degrees and forms occur because of the following problems:

(1) The lack of farmers’ dominant status leads to a lack of fairness in compensation

At present, my country has not yet given farmers sufficient freedoms in rural land acquisition and demolition. They are only regarded as submissives and passively accept the regulations and policies formulated by the administrative departments. They do not effectively participate in the price setting process, making the amount and category of compensation fees unreasonable. The basic manifestation of conflict management in rural land acquisition and demolition is that the grassroots government has the strongest position, followed by the village committee, while ordinary farmers are marginalized to a certain extent. Villagers do not have the right to participate in the formulation and implementation process of the system, to share benefits and opportunities, and to enjoy equal rights to expression, information, and decision-making. Such a governance structure is not conducive to effective communication among all strata, and cannot establish channels for farmers to express their wishes and vent their emotions, resulting in long-term hostility, misunderstandings, and conflicts between different strata. [16]

(2) The imbalance of interests and behaviors brings contempt for clan ethics

In land acquisition and demolition operations, the government's interests are complex and ambiguous. According to common sense, the government should weigh the interests of all parties and maximize the interests of local residents. However, in the face of assessment pressure and fiscal revenue constraints, its behavior has shown a profit-making nature. Rural residents are in a state of limited rationality and show more trust in famous figures in the clan. When the situation is chaotic, they are accustomed to observing the actions of other demolished persons and referring to the attitudes of prestigious parties in the village. If the respected heads of families or village cadres agree to the demolition, they will also follow the elders' opinions and cooperate with the land acquisition and demolition work. [7] However, due to the government’s insufficient understanding of neighborhood and kinship relationships during land acquisition and demolition, this resource was not fully and effectively utilized.

Because clan elders have high moral authority, and in the special social form of rural areas, morality still has strong binding force on villagers, Chinese rural society has always maintained a strong tradition of clan and gentry autonomy, which in some cases is more influential than formal organizations. The essence of rural social conflict management is to adopt appropriate governance methods to ensure the normal operation of the grassroots social order. Local knowledge such as clan ethics, moral concepts, and rural rules and regulations are the fundamental basis for achieving a harmonious order in rural society.

(3) Lack of understanding of folk culture damages villagers’ psychological identity

In our country's current rural land acquisition and demolition work, we almost only consider material compensation, and even vigorously implement established compensation standards. We rarely take the initiative to combine local knowledge in rural areas with the psychological identity of villagers. Because rural areas generally retain strong social customs and the stickiness and continuity of traditional culture, traditional human relations also play a huge role in the actual operation of political power. [19] However, many local governments refuse to stay away from local knowledge, relying on their advantages in system design to over-indulge their powers. Some of the decisions and plans they make seriously violate the psychological contract of villagers, leading to frequent distortions and conflicts in the process of rural social governance.

Rural daily management personnel such as village committees are increasingly driven by interests and selectively attach themselves to grassroots governments and infrastructure construction parties. In the process of completing tasks, they tend to expand their own rights and interests and ignore the feelings of the villagers. From the perspective of social life, villagers attach great importance to interconnected ties such as geography, blood ties, and kinship. This actually suggests from the side that villagers’ requirements for communication and maintenance of existing relationships should be fully considered during rural land acquisition, demolition and resettlement work. Ignoring these psychological needs and identities has inadvertently aroused contradictions and conflicts among villagers in aspects such as building new homes and rebuilding neighborhood relationships.

6. Conclusion and discussion

The results of the governance of conflicts in China's rural society will directly affect the stability and harmony of rural society, and even have an impact on the country's strategic plan to build a new socialist modernized countryside. This makes it necessary to conduct new thinking on land acquisition and demolition conflicts in rural society and to find a conflict governance mechanism that is more suitable for the actual situation of rural society.

my country's developed areas and urban areas have been deeply baptized by the market economy, while rural areas are relatively closed and retain more traditional customs and cultural imprints. This dual economic and social structure makes it impossible for us to simply copy the governance experience of urban villages and suburban rural areas when managing contradictions and conflicts caused by land acquisition and demolition in rural society.

Switching from “strong” to “consultative” governance is the key to effectively curbing conflicts over land acquisition and demolition. The construction of future rural social governance models should effectively solve the problem of power distribution between dualized authority bases and the role positioning problems among diversified governance subjects, establish communication mechanisms between various classes, and smooth channels for farmers to express their wishes and vent their emotions. Respect local culture, give full play to the dominant position of farmers in rural governance, and invite local knowledge holders such as rural elites, rural authoritative figures, and rural social organizations to participate in co-governance.