Global Times: How some residents in East China's Fujian resolved their decade-long neighborhood conflicts with wisdom of whole-process people's democracy

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Oct 28, 2024, 05:46 ET

BEIJING, Oct. 28, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- On a day in early October, the Global Times reporter visited two residential communities in Quanzhou city, East China's Fujian Province, where the residents in two compounds once had a decade-long animosity toward each other, due to an ownership dispute on a middle pathway.

However, in Quanzhou, the reporter witnessed the sun shining on the clean and tidy pathway, as residents from both communities warmly greeted each other and engaged in friendly conversations.

It's hard to imagine that a decade ago, these two residential communities had been filled with arguments and insults, leaving the pathway littered with the remnants of their fights: wooden planks, sand, dirty water, and sometimes even feces.

During a fierce quarrel, Chen Jiantong locked a six-meter gate between the communities. Cai Detuan, who lives in the neighboring community, climbed a ladder and smashed the lock. A physical altercation ensued until police arrived and hurriedly separated them.

The disputes lasting 10 years were finally resolved in late 2022, thanks to the efforts of the local government, legislators, and compound residents, who together effectively practiced the concept of whole-process people's democracy to address grass-roots community issues, demonstrating the essence of the people's democracy in China, that is, the people get to discuss their own affairs, to reach the greatest common ground based on the wishes and needs of the entire society.

"We are all very satisfied with the result," Chen told the Global Times downstairs his home. "We had a vivid lesson in whole-process people's democracy and benefited greatly from it."

A decade-long heart knot

At the township-level Fengze subdistrict in downtown Quanzhou, there are two adjacent residential communities that are not enclosed by solid walls. Between them is an approximately 21-meter-long, 7-meter-wide pathway.

The pathway used to be a focal point of conflict between residents of the two neighboring communities, as there was no clear boundary between the two areas due to land designation and construction mistakes. Both sides insisted that the pathway belonged, or at least mostly belonged, to them.

Seventy-year-old Cai is one of the earliest residents there, living in the eastern residential community - a resettlement housing compound constructed in 2010 during the city's urbanization process. Two years later, a high-end residential complex was built to its west in 2012, which had the highest property prices in Quanzhou at that time.

In Cai's memory, this was when all the problems began. The western expensive complex claimed the pathway as their own and locked it. Before that, this pathway was considered as a rightful space of the eastern residential community.

Cai did not hide his past resentment toward his neighbors. "Every time I saw them, I couldn't help but want to say a few harsh words," he said.

Living in the western residential community, non-local Chen felt wronged and angry as well. In 2015, Chen bought a property there, after the developer promised it would be a "gated, high-end residential compound" populated by the affluent. It wasn't until Chen moved in, that he discovered the compound had no solid walls, enabling the "countrymen" of the neighboring community to come and go freely.

"[They] made our compound look less 'decent,'" Chen lamented.

The boundary dispute led to years of grumbles and quarrels. It remained unresolved until in 2021, when candidates for deputies of the district people's congress (also known as the district's legislators) visited the two residential communities to engage with voters. To the candidates, many residents from both sides mentioned their border dispute, and asked for a resolution to this decade-long heart knot.

Lawyer and then candidate Guo Rongfeng took note of their demands. "I give you my word," he said to the residents, "If I were elected, I would definitely try hard to resolve this issue once and for all."

The people get to discuss their own affairs

In November 2021, at the suggestion of Guo and two other newly elected deputies of local district-level people's congress - the legislative body of the district - Fengze subdistrict included the "boundary dispute" case as an annual working project and committed to resolving the issue.

In the past, the local government had repeatedly tried to intervene and resolve the dispute, but each time it had to put it aside because "residents from both communities suspected the government might favor the other side, even when it was not," said Lin Xinzhou, director of the working committee of the standing committee of district-level people's congress at Fengze subdistrict.

One day, when studying the concept of whole-process people's democracy, Lin was attracted by the sentence "the people get to discuss their own affairs." It inspired Lin, who realized that the "border dispute" was a matter concerning the two residential communities themselves, and the involving residents would be more appropriate than the government and the people's congress to take the lead.

"We could encourage the residents to discuss and solve the problem themselves," Lin told the Global Times. "Our role is to provide a platform for democratic consultation and decision-making, along with the help the residents need."

The whole-process people's democracy, which encompasses law-based democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management, and oversight, became a key to solving this issue. In the early spring of 2022, with the assistance of local government and deputies to the district people's congress, the two residential communities respectively, for the first time, held their house-owner meetings, where all residents voted for their inaugural homeowners' committee.

The two seven-member committees later served as the main body for democratic consultation on this matter. Chen was elected as the head of the homeowners' committee for the western commercial residential complex. And Cai became a member of the homeowners' committee for the eastern resettlement housing community.

The two individuals, who had previously clashed fiercely over the interests of their respective communities, began to sit down calmly in their new roles to engage in consultation on behalf of their neighborhoods.

Over the following seven months, the two homeowners' committees had dozens of discussions and negotiations regarding to various matters. In most cases, deputies for the district people's congress like Lin and Guo were present on-site. But instead of directly participating in the negotiations, they stayed on the sidelines, providing legal and policy advice and sometimes mediating quarrels.

Once during a heated argument at a negotiation, Guo shared with the residents an ancient Chinese story of "Liu Chi Xiang (literally an approximately 2-meter-wide alley)," which tells of two neighbors who moved their respective walls about one meter back for each other, resulting in friendly neighborhood relations.

Finally, later in 2022, a draft of the "boundary dispute settlement agreement" was completed. The resettlement community agreed to give most part of the pathway to the commercial housing community, and to erect a railing wall on the pathway to formally separate the two compounds. In exchange, the commercial housing community granted another piece of shared to the former.

The following steps then went much more smoothly: the two sides publicly announced the draft agreement, respectively held house-owner meetings again, and invited all the residents to vote to approve or reject it. In the end, over 90 percent of residents voted in support, bringing a decade-long neighborhood dispute to a close.

Cai and Chen shook hands in reconciliation after the agreement was approved. "We were very pleased with this result," they told the Global Times.

A vivid example in grass-roots governance

The happy ending of the pathway ownership solution, now widely known as a "Liu Chi Xiang case in the new era" in Quanzhou, becomes a vivid example of the whole-process people's democracy being practiced at the grass-roots level.

"For us, the community environment has improved, neighborly relationships have become harmonious, and our sense of happiness and fulfillment has increased," Chen told the Global Times.

Inspired by whole-process people's democracy, Fengze subdistrict has addressed several grass-roots issues, including the renovation of a dilapidated building and the revitalization of an aging residential community. In May 2013, a district-level practice base for whole-process people's democracy was built there, the first of its kind in Fujian Province.

Today there are tens of thousands of practice bases for whole-process people's democracy at different levels throughout China. These bases serve as a testament to the deepening of people's democracy at the grass-roots level. They reflect public sentiment and opinions, while also gathering the wisdom and collective will of the people.

The concept of the whole-process people's democracy first came to light in 2019, when Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out that Chinese people's democracy is a type of "whole-process democracy," during his inspection tour in Shanghai.

The essence of the people's democracy is that people get to discuss their own affairs, to reach the greatest common ground based on the wishes and needs of the entire society, Xi said.

The people's democracy allows people to discuss their own affairs to reach the greatest common ground. As a result, it has not only gained deep resonance among the Chinese people, but also is being appreciated by more countries globally.

In 2023, the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies conducted a survey in 23 countries across five continents on practice and modern development of democracy in China. Results showed that the value and practice of whole-process people's democracy has won widespread plaudits throughout the international community.

Whole-process people's democracy is the defining feature of socialist democracy; it is democracy in its broadest, most genuine, and most effective form.

Walking on the clean and tidy pathway in the middle of the two communities, seeing smiles on the residents' faces, Lin told the Global Times that the pathway has now not only connected the hearts of the two sides, but has also brought together the practice of whole-process people's democracy, with the voices of grass-roots Chinese residents, as well as their most simple wish for neighborhood harmony.