Research on Dynamic Optimization Path Design of Rural Public

Goods Supply System

Wuning Xia

1,2 a

Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

School of Economics & Management of Northwest University, Xi'an, Shanxi, China

Keywords: Rural Public Goods, Supply System, Dynamic Optimization.

Abstract: The supply of public goods is a dynamic system involving in the supply subject, the supply content and the

mode of supply. Promoting overall revitalization of rural areas and making plans for urban and rural

development as a whole are challenged by insufficient supply, process reengineering, structural adjustment

and dynamic optimization of rural public goods. This paper studied current situation of the rural public goods

supply system with such solid evidences as statistical data, interviews and questionnaires. Then, based on the

characteristics and structural problems of the supply system, the paper expanded the “Two-dimensional and

Two-level” model and designed a dynamic optimization path so as to promote the flexibility and adaptability

between supply and demand, and to promote agricultural and rural modernization.

1 INTRODUCTION

The essential requirements of socialism are

continuous improvement of people’s livelihood and

realizing common prosperity. The “people-centered”

development thought will be more distinctive as to

the constant improvement of people’s living standard

since the 18

CPC. With Xi Jin-ping's socialist

economic thought with Chinese characteristics in the

new era, China’s supply system of public goods and

services had been continuously improved. In all the

eight central “No. 1 documents” from 2013 to 2021,

both the supply system construction and the

alleviation of historical debt problem for the supply

rural public goods were mentioned, which indicated

the public demand expansion of the rural society.

However, current supply system of rural public goods

was still affected by institutional constraints and was

suffered from supply structure imbalanced and low

supply efficiency because of following factors: the

long-term unbalanced development strategy, the path-

dependence of institutional change, the wide

geographical distribution of rural areas, the different

endowment of agricultural resources and three-

industry integration development in different regions,

and the different peasant disintegration degree and

rural population structure as well as cultural

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9613-5419

traditions. The supply of rural public goods was far

beyond to guarantee the demand in terms of both

quality and quantity (Zhao 2020).

China’s rural public goods supply system was

more complicated and particular than that of cities

from historical and structural perspectives. Relevant

researches on the supply of rural public goods had

been carried out in the academic circle and were

increasingly growing especially after the

implementation of the rural revitalization strategy.

We should focus more on the construction of software

conditions needed for farmers to become rich in rural

areas (Yang 2019). It is proposed to combine the top-

level government design with encouragement of mass

participation in order to mobilize autonomous

participation of villagers and establish a performance

evaluation system with more participants (He 2020).

Proposed a multi-level and multi-type rural public

service system with government ultimate

responsibilities and market participation as well as

society coordination (Li 2021). The existing

researches were still to be deepened in terms of

multidisciplinary synthesis, statistical data and door-

to-door interview. The accuracy of the research

results were restricted by the relatively small sample

size. This paper, by means of comprehensive

characteristics of rural public product supply system

Xia, W.

Research on Dynamic Optimization Path Design of Rural Public Goods Supply System.

DOI: 10.5220/0011151800003437

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Public Management and Big Data Analysis (PMBDA 2021), pages 52-57

ISBN: 978-989-758-589-0

from macro-statistical data with the micro-interview

and questionnaire survey, and based on the theories of

economics, sociology, politics and public

management, further developed the Two-dimensional

and Two-level model and studied the dynamic

optimization path of rural public product supply in

order to solving existing problems in the supply

structure. This path, by coordinating between

government supply policy arrangement, dynamic

adjustment of the supply content, rational selection of

the supply subject, and supervision and management

of the supply process, aimed to adapt to the changes

of the main social contradictions in the new era, and

follow the dynamic supply and demand balance as

well as the rule of cooperative development urban and

rural areas. As a result, it was expected that supply of

rural public products will be more adaptive and

flexible to the demand; people’s well-being will be

improved continuously; the common social needs of

agricultural development, rural governance and

farmer’s living will be satisfied and farmers will

obtain much sense of gain and happiness.

2 MATERIALS & METHODS

Based on the reality of the rural public goods supply

system and by means of quantitative analysis and

qualitative analysis, this paper studied the structural

problems and the implicated political and economic

logic of rural public goods supply, and further put

forward a dynamic optimization path. Methods: 1.

Statistical data comparison. Historical longitudinal

comparison and urban and rural horizontal

comparison of fiscal expenditure data were made

based on the 2011-2020 Statistical Yearbook. 2.Field

visit survey. Firstly, the interview outline and

questionnaire were designed; Secondly representative

samples (2150 questionnaires in 18 villages and

towns from 6 provinces) were selected; Thirdly, door-

to-door interview and questionnaire filling were

carried out to obtain evaluations and potential

demand information of farmers on current rural

public good supply.3. Official website browsing.

Official websites of government organizations in

agriculture, health, education, water conservancy,

transportation and so on were browsed to obtain and

analyze policy documents, specific projects and

financial data on the supply of public goods in rural

areas.

3 RESULTS & DISCUSSION

3.1 Growth of Total Supply under

Imbalanced Demand and Supply

According to the historical longitudinal comparative

analysis, total supply of rural public goods tended to

increase. By the end of 2016, 99.3% villages had

access to highways, 99.3% per cent to electricity,

96.8% to libraries and cultural stations, 99.9% to

medical and health institutions and 96.5% to

kindergartens and nurseries. The general public

budget expenditure of the state finance increased to

RMB 2456790.3 billion in 2020. Taking education as

an example, in 2020, the average national general

public budget for education was RMB15280.54, with

a growth of 1.89%, i.e., RMB 14997.44 on year-on-

year basis. The proportion of education funds in the

general public budget to the general public budget

expenditure was 14.78%, with a growth of 0.27%

from 14.51% last year. The total amount of education

funds increased from RMB 238692.9 billion in 2011

to RMB530338.7 billion in 2020. The growth of

education expenditure during 2011-2020 was shown

in Figure 1.

Figure 1 ： Growth of education expenditure 2011-2020

(RMB 100 million).

However, from the perspective of horizontal

comparison between urban and rural areas, the supply

of public goods was unbalanced between urban and

rural areas. Taking the medical and health

undertakings as an example, according to the main

data bulletin of the agricultural census: 83.39 million

households hadn’t got any water-flushing sanitary

toilets at the end of 2016, accounting for 36.2%; 7.21

million households had water-flushing non-sanitary

toilets, accounting for 3.1%; 28.59 million

households had sanitary latrine pits, accounting for

12.4%; 106.39 million households had ordinary

latrine pits, accounting for 46.2%; 4.69 million

households even didn’t have any latrine pits,

accounting for 2.0%. The number of village clinics

Research on Dynamic Optimization Path Design of Rural Public Goods Supply System

fell by 8.16% , from 662894 in 2011 to 608828 in

2020. During 2011-2020, the number of health

technicians per 1000 people in rural areas did not

reach 1/2 of that in urban areas. Returning

to poverty because of illness, difficulties in seeing a

doctor, high cost of getting medical treatment still

existed. There were still gaps in the input of health

resources, the stock of resources per capital and the

accessibility of health services between urban and

rural residents. Comparison of health technicians and

clinics wards per 1000 people between urban and

rural areas was shown in Table 1.

Table 1：Comparison of urban and rural medical and health

resources.

Year

Health technicians

per 1000 people

Clinics wards per

1000 people

Urban Rural Urban Rural

2011 7.90 3.19 6.24 2.80

2012 8.54 3.41 6.88 3.11

2013 9.18 3.64 7.36 3.35

2014 9.70 3.77 7.84 3.54

2015 10.21 3.90 8.27 3.71

2016 10.42 4.08 8.41 3.91

2017 10.87 4.28 8.75 4.19

2018 10.91 4.63 8.70 4.56

2019 11.10 4.96 8.78 4.81

2020 11.46 5.18 8.81 4.95

3.2 Supply-demand Imbalance under

Total Supply Growth

Even with the increase of national financial input to

support agriculture, the advancement of urban-rural

integration and the development of rural market

economy, which resulting in total supply of rural

public goods increasing, the structural problem of

supply-demand imbalance was still there, which

contains both excess supply and supply shortage.

According to the data of interviews and

questionnaires collected from 36 villages and

communities in 18 townships of 6 provinces, it can be

seen that with the imbalance of supply and demand

under the condition of total supply growth was mainly

reflected in following respects: 1.the vanity projects

and face-saving projects provided by the grass-roots

governments, such as upgrading projects and idle

rural bookstore didn’t match with the real public

demand of agricultural production and

livelihood;2.Supply of agricultural science and

technology promotion, information services,

environmental protection and other public products

and services were not sufficient;3.the supply of public

goods in agricultural production and rural life

infrastructure and also in education, health care and

social security was not balanced and in a state of

supply shortage. Results of surveys on demand and

supply structure were shown in Table 2.

Table 2：Order table of demand structure of rural public

goods.

Type of public products Frequency

Percentage

Planting and breeding

technologies and market

information of agriculture

products

1962 91.26

Medical and health

check-up

1913 88.98

Elderly system of villages

956 44.47

Recruitment information

and skill training of

migrant worker

680 31.63

Safe drinking water

609 28.33

Water conservancy

facilities and agricultural

machinery

858 39.91

Bank/rural credit

cooperative loans

420 19.53

Centralized treatment of

garbage

1560 72.56

Public sports, cultural

and entertainment

facilities

1125 52.33

3.3 “Involution” and the “The

Matthew Effect” of Rural Public

Product Supply with Project

System

After 2013, the “One Case, One Solution” fiscal

award was gradually detached from fund-raising and

labor-raising, which promoted the construction of

village-level public welfare undertakings such as

rural roads and bridges, cultural, sports and sanitation

facilities, and village features. In 2019, Langxi

County in Anhui Province arranged 89 cases for “One

Case, One Solution”, and arranged a budget of RMB

8.469 million in 2020. Under the project system

supply, the “Involution” dilemma and the “Matthew

Effect” caused that villages with powerful collective

economic strength, advantageous geographical

location and rich cultural background were more

easily to win project support and become a Model

Village. In Xintai Country Shandong Province, 20

rural public welfare facilities projects were

PMBDA 2021 - International Conference on Public Management and Big Data Analysis

implemented in seven townships in 2019, of which

one township won 12 of the projects, accounting for

60%, while only three townships won only one

project each. In addition, due to wide spread of

Chinese rural areas and geographical heterogeneity, 6

representative provinces were investigated based on

the index of expenditure on general public services,

education, science and technology, social security and

employment, health care, agriculture, forestry and

water conservancy. The investigation results showed

strong imbalance among regions as in Figure 2.

Figure 2: General public budget expenditure in 2020 (RMB

100 million).

3.4 Low Recognition of Multi-subject

Cooperative Supply of Rural Public

Products

Government-only supply of rural public products was

changed after going through the compulsory system

change and the induced system change. Now, the

supply subjects extended to all levels of

government(department), market (enterprises), social

organizations, community collective organizations,

village elites, farmers or farmer organizations.

Different structural characteristics and structural

efficiency were reflected in different historical

periods. According to the different stages and

different processes of different levels different

categories of public goods and their supply, multi-

subject supply resulted in different dynamic

combinations through information sharing and

complementary advantages. However, restricted by

the path-dependent effect of institutional change, the

resource endowment of different subjects and the

game of interest relations, coordination of multiple

subjects in supply was insufficient. Goal publicity

was not organically united with interests conjunction.

Total of 186 valid questionnaires, collected from

Anhui, Shandong and Shaanxi provinces showed that

92.47% of the villagers believed that the rural public

goods should be supplied by the government

completely, and no additional funds should be

provided by the villagers; 84.95% of the villagers

believed that rural public goods should be provided

by the village agricultural cooperative; The supply

mode of voluntary organization and market supply

was not highly recognized, accounting for 50%.

Summary of questionnaires regarding supply subjects

of rural public goods was shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Summary of questionnaires regarding supply

subjects of rural public goods.

3.5 Further Thoughts and Discussion

Generally speaking, “structure” is a state where each

part of the whole match with each other in certain

order. The rural public goods in essence aim to meet

common interests of rural economic and social

development, which are non-competitive or non-

exclusive in consumption, exogenous in income and

indivisible in utility. The supply structure of rural

public goods is the supply efficiency state where

diversified supply subjects, diversified supply modes,

multi-level and multi-category products are

combined in certain ways. Any change to such

efficiency state, including structure of supply content,

the structure of supply subjects, the structure of

supply mode, the structure of supply region and their

interaction, will cause effect on social and economic

development of rural society.

Compared with previous related studies, this

paper focused on the combination of macro and

micro, objective data and subjective evaluation. As a

result, through analysis to macro-statistical data and

micro-survey data, the panorama supply system

structure of rural public goods was more accurately,

and the optimized path based on the fact of system

structure was more pertinent.

The above mentioned supply system facts and

problems was based on deep level of macro and micro

political and economic logic, and was the product of

the change of political legitimacy, the national

strategy, the limited rational behavior of the

government and the game of multi-stakeholders.

Rural areas have a wider geographical spread.

Therefore, the natural endowment of agricultural

production resources and the status of the integration

Research on Dynamic Optimization Path Design of Rural Public Goods Supply System

of the three industries,rural households

differentiation,rural population structure and cultural

traditions varies from region to region. In order to

improve and perfect the supply system of rural public

products and dynamically optimize the supply

structure, it is necessary to expand the Two-

dimension and Two-level model to harmonize supply

and demand from the macro-medium- micro-

level:1.Implementing a balanced development

strategy to construct a public service-oriented

government from macro level;2.Identifying

responsibilities of different governmental organs,

matching financial power and authority of office and

optimizing the structure of financial expenditure from

medium level; 3.Coordinating the relations of

interests, promoting the cooperative supply of

multiple subjects, from micro level. As a result,

general governance mechanisms such as cooperation,

competition and counterbalance could be embedded

into the practical mechanisms such as supply

decision-making, supply input and supply quality

assurance (as shown in figure 4). At last, the supply

system and realization mode of rural public goods can

be improved, where government takes the leading

role and non-government subjects supply endowed

resource.

Figure 4: Mechanism of multi-subject cooperative supply

of rural public goods.

4 CONCLUSIONS

On the road of development, it is inevitable that

public goods are always interacted with private

goods. The supply of public goods is the dynamic

evolution system composed of the supply subject, the

supply content and the supply mode. Compared with

cities, problems encountered in public product supply

in rural areas is more urgent.The cooperative supply

is influenced by resource endowment and social

preference.As an important field of people’s

livelihood construction, the supply boundary of rural

public goods should be adjusted according to the

needs of rural social development, the level of

productive forces and local traditions. Selection of

supply subjects should follow the dynamic

development of coordination and complementation.

Dynamically optimizing the supply system of rural

public goods is an important part of promoting the

overall revitalization of rural areas and making

overall plans for urban and rural development. It is

also an effective means to carry out the people-

centered development thought and to continuously

improve people’s livelihood and promote agricultural

and rural modernization.

Based on analysis and research of macro-

statistical data, micro-interview information and

policy documents of rural public goods supply, this

paper pointed out following main problems in current

supply system of rural public products: 1.Total supply

quantity was increasing, but the supply was

imbalanced between urban and rural areas. So it was

difficult to embody the principle of fairness;2.The

supply was less matched with the demand, which

resulted in both excess supply inefficient in one place

and supply short in other place. Overall speaking,

farmers were not satisfied with current supply

mechanism; 3.The involution of supply of rural

public goods under project mechanism caused the

“Matthew Effect”; 4.multiple subjects participated in

the governance and supply of rural public goods, but

coordination among their interests was difficult,

which hardly drove the cooperative supply. The

supply of rural public goods is a complex dynamic

evolution system. Current situation of and existing

problems in supply system were the result of

comprehensive coordination between historical debt

and realistic resources, between politics and

economy, and between public service-oriented

government and micro interest stakeholder.

Therefore, at the stage of high-quality development,

in the process of promoting the overall revitalization

of rural areas and realizing the modernization of

agricultural and rural areas, we should follow the

standards of productive forces and root on changing

common interests of rural society. Furthermore, we

could design a path of supply system adjustment and

optimization from both supply and demand

perspectives with a view to macro,medium and micro

level.The dynamic development process should be

identifying the big picture priorities of the supply,

financing through multiple channels, expanding

supply subjects and enhance supply vitality, realizing

short-term, mid-term and long-term objectives

gradually and finally reaching organic harmony

among supply policy, supply content, supply subject

PMBDA 2021 - International Conference on Public Management and Big Data Analysis

and supply process with external driving force of

structural imbalance and internal driving force of

interest coupling among different supply

subjects.Particularly,such principles as space-time

differences, adaptation demand, multi-subject

cooperation and transparent participation should be

taken into consideration.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Inner Logic and Transformation of the Income

Imbalance between Urban and Rural Areas in

China:Based on Local Government Behavior

Choice(19XJC790002); The Study on the Multi-

subject Cooperative Supply of Rural Public Goods in

Jiangsu Province under the Strategy of Rural

Revitalization(JSSCL2019B015).

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Research on Dynamic Optimization Path Design of Rural Public Goods Supply System