Recently, in the second page of Wen Wei Po, Li Youmei, First Vice President of Shanghai Academy, put forward policy recommendations on how to make Shanghai a livable city with greater attraction for talents.
While intensifying our efforts to attract talented people, recruiting talented people from all walks of life, and with commitment to retaining all kinds of talents, we should also build a more perfect and convenient public service system, adaptable to meet the different levels of needs for all kinds of talents to "live a good life" in Shanghai.
The improvement of the social public service level needs the joint efforts of government, market, and society. Since the reform and opening up, Shanghai, with its broad mind that can accommodate all, has attracted all kinds of talents from home and abroad. Talent resources are Shanghai's first resource. In order to make Shanghai a more attractive city for all kinds of talents in the future, it is necessary to create a social living environment in which all kinds of talents can be retained. This puts forward higher requirements for Shanghai's social governance ability. Specifically, Shanghai should develop new ideas and introduce new measures in order to speed up the socialization, legalization, intelligentization, and specialization of social governance, striving to provide new experience for the social governance of China's mega-cities in the new era.
At present, "the contradiction between the growing needs of the people for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development" has become the main contradiction in our society. The transformation of social principal contradictions is a historical transformation related to the overall situation. Shanghai needs to start from its own reality, clarify its own key problems, and then formulate effective solutions. Shanghai is actively exploring new ways of social governance, in line with the characteristics and laws of mega-cities, and has formed a lot of practical experience with reference value. Shanghai needs to think deeply about how to optimize social governance in co-administration and how to guide co-construction and sharing in social governance, on the basis of systematically summarizing the past exploration experience, and with top-level design of institutional construction as the core.
Shanghai is carrying out many major national strategies, such as the construction of a pilot free trade zone and the construction of a global science innovation center, etc., which requires a vast number of talents to be able to devote themselves to the work in order to play an effective role. On one hand, we should strengthen efforts to attract talented people, recruit talented people from all walks of life, and be committed to retaining talents; On the other hand, we have to clearly realize that the reason talents are “willing to stay here” is inseparable from their “living well here”. It can be said that an important precondition for all kinds of talents to “live well” in Shanghai is that Shanghai has a higher level of social governance. We need, therefore, to build a more perfect and convenient public service system that can adapt to different levels of needs.
As I’m working in the university, I have personal experience: the institutions of higher leaning in Shanghai are now thirsty for talents, they are eager to attract talents with internationally competitive salaries. Imagine if these talents come to Shanghai to work and because our public service system can’t keep up with their needs, they are unable to fully devote themselves to their work and must always be distracted by all kinds of troubles in their life, then the existence of such a problem itself shows the high cost of human resources.
As an ordinary citizen, I also have experience from everyday life. At present, many families living in Shanghai have a lot of needs for domestic service, and the specific domestic service needs of residents differs, according to the varying ages and backgrounds of the families. Some families focus on child care, while others hope to be provided with meals, aged care, and other services. Through these specific demands, we can find that improvement of the coping ability and level of social public service requires the joint efforts of government, market and society. In fact, this has put forward higher requirements for the socialization of social governance, and such socialization depends on a division of labor based on specialization. In terms of safety, it needs to be standardized according to law, and in terms of convenience and efficiency, it needs intelligentization as the support.
All in all, social governance related to people's livelihood involves many aspects. Sometimes, even if some things cannot be completely resolved at once, we must do what we can. We should let the public be more rational in dealing with the sense of acquisition through the guidance of expectations; that is, there is always a good expectation for the final solution of the problem. To improve the way of social governance, it is necessary for the government to be adept at solving difficult problems. The government can not only resolve public opinion well and guide social self-management, but also form a linkage mechanism with Shanghai's ongoing reform of "streamlining administration, delegating powers, and improving regulations & services", and optimization of the business environment, so as to build Shanghai into a livable city with greater attraction to all kinds of talents.
(The author is the First Vice President of Shanghai Academy, and director of Chinese Sociological Association)
