From Gendered Staff to Diversified Participatory Composition:A Shift in Community Building of Urban China

Sammanfattning: In this paper, it is going to discuss community building in local China by exploring peculiarity of the phenomenon of gendered staff of local community. It argues that the feature of gendered staff is a reflection of the function of local community and the more advanced of the function of local community the less of the feature of gendered staff. Additionally, the function shift of local community not only has effected gender preference of staff but also has an impact on the composition of participants who are engaged in activities arranged by the local community. Herein, through comparative case studies between local communities in Qinzhen and Shanghai, we can have a close look at the function of local community which is largely determined by the level of economic development and social transformation and the effect of function shift of local community on the gender preference of staff and composition of participants. Furthermore, this paper attempts to explain reason and implication of the effect of function shift on the gender preference of staff and the composition of participants based on the differences of local communities between Qinzhen and Shanghai, and extend its implication to understand the general political construction of China. It supposes that with development of local economy and dramatic social transformation the demands of local community have been diversified and the local community has faced more and more different challenges and tasks compared with that in the past. Therefore, local community which is embedded in the well-developed economy and society has turned its function from political-orientated to the social-oriented and enjoyed more autonomy in managing local community to serve for the local residents better.Accordingly, the staff composition of local community has made some major changes in gender and education background and age, and also local community has encouraged more and more various participants to take part in local activities. In long term, community building could play an essential role in ‘state building’ as to cultivate Chinese citizens with good qualification and to promote appropriate power-decentralization to share the burden of central government in governance and to conduct some sort of trial of breeding autonomy for future Chinese civil society under the absolute leadership of CCP which is constant and overwhelming power over any political construction in China.