Grid Governance in China's Urban Middle-class Neighbourhoods

Since 2004 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) called for the “advancement of social management innovation” (shehui guanli chuangxin 社会管理创新),¹ the building of a new social management system has been a governance priority in China.² Aimed at achieving social stability and securing the Party's leadership, the tasks of social management innovation focus on improving governance efficiency, coordination and capacity.³ As a major component of the comprehensive innovation scheme, so-called “grid governance” (wanggehua zhili 网格化治理) has in recent years been widely implemented as a grassroots governance tool in urban China. The grid governance scheme centres around a comprehensive governance structure at the grassroots level. This structure brings municipal administration, public security and social service management into one wide-ranging governance network that includes district-level government (qu 区), street offices (jiedao 街道) and residential communities (shequ 社区). Under this scheme, street offices and residential communities are divided into grids (wangge 网格) according to their geographical and administrative boundries, with each grid being assigned government personnel for all three levels (district, street offices and residential communities).

The party-state identifies grid governance as a shift from a government-dominated administration model to a co-governance (gongzhi 共治) one in which multiple actors and social organizations work together to implement government programmes at the grassroots level.⁴ In addition, grid governance is used to evaluate the work performance of government administration staff. In urban neighbourhoods, grid governance places special emphasis on public service provision as well as neighbourhood governance capacity building through the residential community grids (shequ wangge 社区网格), which coordinate the interactions and relations between the state, market actors, residents and social organizations when dealing with practical governance affairs. In this context, grid governance is expected to help prevent large-scale socal unrest and also build social stability by improving local governance efficiency, including the effective resolution of neighbourhood conflicts.

The grid governance scheme was introduced in response to the rising diversified needs of neighbourhood governance in urban China, the cornerstone of public support for China's party-state. Urban neighbourhood governance functions as the “roots of the state”⁵ in the form of “government next door.”⁶ Through its agent, the residents’ committees (juweihui 居委会), the party-state carries out numerous administrative...