From the Mass Line to "Joint Creation": Theoretical Development and Practical Exploration of Grassroots Governance in China

Abstract

The proposal and implementation of the concept of "jointly creating a beautiful environment and a happy life" represent a significant and profound transformation in China's grassroots governance model.  This paper seeks to establish an interpretive framework spanning history, theory, and practice, elucidating how "joint creation" constitutes a creative inheritance and institutional development of the Party's "mass line" within the governance context of the new era. The article first traces back to Comrade Mao Zedong's On Practice and On Contradiction, outlining the core epistemological and methodological essence of the Mass Line. It then discusses how "Co-Creation" transforms traditional political philosophy into concrete, actionable governance techniques through the "Five Shared" operational system: shared decision-making, shared development, shared management, shared evaluation, and shared benefits. Building on this foundation, the article further indicates that "co-creation" has progressively formed a four-dimensional operational model in practice: "Party leadership-process reengineering-institutional adaptation-technological empowerment." This model helps resolve long-standing challenges such as the fragmentation of bureaucratic systems, the dispersion of governance resources, and insufficient social participation, thereby reshaping the interactive relationship between the state and society in grassroots governance. Finally, the article briefly reflects on tensions and difficulties encountered in practice, explores its contributions to the theory of socialist governance with Chinese characteristics, and discusses its implications for modernizing the national governance system and governance capabilities.