Good governance at the grassroots level is instrumental towards achieving sustainable development of the community. This issue is particularly important in the peri-urban areas of mainland China which has been subject to tremendous pressures from rapid urbanization during the past four decades. Many Chinese villages have been transformed into urban communities. While there are a lot of success stories in the process of transformation, many problems still exist. It is essential to systematically and comprehensively document these diverse experiences so that local Chinese leaders at the grassroots level can learn the best practices and past lessons from these cases about how to enhance effective governance.  To expand the scope of mutual learning and East-West dialogue, a summary of the key literature about grassroots governance and community development will be translated into both Chinese and English, and will be openly accessible through our CIURG website. A workshop and a symposium will be organized to support technical visits to selected case study areas, consolidate experiences of and facilitate face-to-face exchanges among interested village leaders, government officials and academic researchers.  

 

Our project aims to achieve the following objectives: 1) to summarize the best practices and key lessons about grassroots governance for community development in urbanizing villages from the key literature and case studies from fieldwork; 2) to enhance mutual learning and exchange between China and the international community about the relationship between grassroots governance and community development of urbanizing  villages; and 3) to contribute to improving grassroots governance with a view to enhancing community development of urbanizing villages in mainland China.

Acknowledgment 
Research findings of this study come from a research grant from The Hong Kong Research Grants Council
https://www.ugc.edu.hk/eng/rgc/index.html

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