Some elements of national governance, though a term that can be defined in terms of many aspects like economy, society, politics, culture, diplomacy, stay essential. Elements of such, this paper, with an analysis of available literature and theories, finds, lie in director, detector, controller and buffer-all decide the level of national governance ability and the strength of institutional advantages. Here draws a conclusion, the modernization of national governance system and governance capacity relies much on the optimizing of the four elements, and their organic link and dynamical coupling. In other words, China, with internal and external challenges, should maintain the institutional strength, promote institutional innovation, and continuously transform institutional advantages into governance efficiency. Factors such as matching, self-consistency, adaptation, implementation are crucial to the vitality of the system and the effectiveness of national governance. The key to China's governance, the paper concludes, rests with how to design, support and implement various systems, and transform the advantages into governance efficiency.

Guidance of the Party building has been the key to promote the efficiency transformation of the mass self-government system, the basic political system in China. Governance efficiency, in terms of grassroots, is embodied in three dimensions: the construction of organizational system, the improvement of residents' participation and the improvement of response. Efficiency of such kind follows the mechanism of “a stimulus of low-cost of strong organization”: 1) the community is divided into small units, thus reducing the scale cost of grassroots autonomy; 2) the ideology and discipline bring into full play of some residents, the Party members with dual identities of organization members, with the aid of which the community building is enhanced, thus reducing the organization cost of grassroots autonomy. Such a mechanism, therefore, conforms to the “cost-benefit principle” as it serves as a way out of the dilemma of large-scale community and difficult mobilization on the one hand, and reduces the cost of collective action on the other, thereby a rational choice for the transformation of system efficiency. This kind of mechanism, however, has to struggle with “organization expansion” and “effective incentive” in practice. Evenso, to help make full preparations, leverage the social forces and foster the consciousness of autonomy, have been major tasks to take on for the Party organizations.

Community is a micro storage of culture, in which life code of one country can be unveiled. China's community as a whole is neither a living field nurtured by religious spirit nor an independent field dominated by the extreme logic of property rights, a truth which infuses it its own special spiritual endowment, derived from the philosophy of “three born from one”. To be specific, such an endowment covers six elements namely sense of community belonging, community ties the span over that of blood and geography, connectivism, connection with real right, Confucian personality, and community socialism. In contemporary Chinese urban communities has been found not only the life philosophy of the Chinese people, but also the transformation and rebirth of the community spirit under the background of drastic social transformation.

Deliberative democracy, as it is put on the agenda by the Party and the State, at the grassroots level has developed diffusely-formal recognition, improved system, improved procedural mechanism, more diverse forms and richer topics, with a prospect that has rendered positive governance efficiency, i.e. cultivating the social spirit of consultation and dialogue, alleviating the social conflicts at the grass-roots level, relieving the governance pressure for the Party and the State, reconciling the diversified social values, integrating the scattered personal knowledge, and reshaping the system of governance at the grass-roots level. The development of such attributes to multiple factors, mainly, for achieving governance efficiency, the flexible adaptive mechanism. Such mechanism is embodied in the unity of centralized leadership and decentralized exploration, the integration of formal system and informal system, the complementarity of electoral democracy and deliberative democracy, and the coupling of traditional value and modern consciousness. Such a conclusion not only shows how the diffuse development of grassroots deliberative democracy is realized, but also explains how such democracy is transformed into governance efficiency.

Deliberative democracy, as it is put on the agenda by the Party and the State, at the grassroots level has developed diffusely-formal recognition, improved system, improved procedural mechanism, more diverse forms and richer topics, with a prospect that has rendered positive governance efficiency, i.e. cultivating the social spirit of consultation and dialogue, alleviating the social conflicts at the grass-roots level, relieving the governance pressure for the Party and the State, reconciling the diversified social values, integrating the scattered personal knowledge, and reshaping the system of governance at the grass-roots level. The development of such attributes to multiple factors, mainly, for achieving governance efficiency, the flexible adaptive mechanism. Such mechanism is embodied in the unity of centralized leadership and decentralized exploration, the integration of formal system and informal system, the complementarity of electoral democracy and deliberative democracy, and the coupling of traditional value and modern consciousness. Such a conclusion not only shows how the diffuse development of grassroots deliberative democracy is realized, but also explains how such democracy is transformed into governance efficiency.

The rural-urban fringe zone, as the forefront of rural urbanization, is the epitome of the pain in China's profound economic and social transformation, and the most sensitive area where social problems in urbanization are clustered. Its governance involves the transition and convergence between the urban and rural management systems as well as the adjustment of interests. It is, therefore, in urgent need of the reform and innovation of the government management system. The reform is a major adjustment of interests involving the relationship between industry and agriculture and that between urban and rural areas, which constitutes a major issue involving the governance of the grass-roots government and the overall development of urban and rural areas. Meanwhile, in the rural-urban fringe zone are found different dimensions of power game between the State and market, government and citizens, local residents and migrants, low-income groups and middle class, through which China's social changes and power game can be observed. The social development form of rural-urban fringe zone is quite different from that of urban and rural areas, which renders it the “blind area” of both urban and rural governance research. Urban governance is undergoing a process of “suburbanization” and the fringe zone is introducing social contradictions while accepting citizens and migrants. The zone accommodates local villagers, emerging middle class, urban low-income groups and migrant workers, forming a mosaic of class spatial distribution; incompatible multiple interests make the grass-roots government at the confluence of contradictions. The development of the fringe zone is actually a process of “spatial redistribution”, which has an important impact on China's stratum structure and social governance.

“North paradox”, from the perspective of institutional process, is, in institution and governance, a dilemma, to resolve which is to exert institutional advantages and enhance governance efficiency. In view of the inherent tension of the state's dual identity of public interest representative and rational “economic man”, the reform of residential land system initiated by the state to promote the maximization of public interests, not only impacts the institutional advantages formed in long-term practice, but also inhibits the exertion of institutional governance efficiency, for the local government, as the state agent, haspursued the maximization of its own interests in rule-making,in forced return of residential land, and in competing interests with the people. The pilot areas have adopted a series of exploration practices such as adjusting the reform objectives, innovating the system design, perfecting the main structure and standardizing the system process, which have significantly improved the whole performance of the system. Besides, with the response of the “Four Governance”, the system with the embodied governance efficiency of keeping farmland, retaining residents and stabilizing society. The key to resolve the dilemma of system and governance caused by the tension of government role, a case study shows, lies in transforming institutional advantages into institutional performance, strengthening institutional governance, and organically integrating institutional performance with governance practice, so as to solve the “North paradox”.

It is easier, for the high and middle administrations, to bring into full play the institutional advantage of mobilizing resources for major undertakings. To the grass-roots governance with decentralized tasks and mainly relying on localized management, whether and how can the institutional advantage be transformed into governance efficiency deserves a further study as in such a process there may come out a certain institutional distance, i.e. the gap of institutional effect produced by institutional texts through regulation, cognition and understanding under the centralized system. It mainly refers to the long-chain administrative level, and the cognitive attenuation of instructions from transmission to implementation. Recent years have witnessed local governments' having actively explored new models and paths of grassroots governance, thus gradually bringing forth a number of well-performed reform models, among which the most influential one is the whistle reform. In the reform, the new integration mechanism embodied in the same structure of government and society has obviously promoted the transformation of “system and efficiency” at the present stage. The isomorphism of government and society is a new integration mechanism oriented to solving problems, and it is the basic point to solve the problems of grass-roots governance. In order to reduce the institutional distance, the vertical and horizontal cooperation is realized through the isomorphism, and the target is more consistent. The government achieves the extension of the control tentacle through the isomorphism of the goal and business with the social subject. At the same time, the social subject in this mechanism bears remarkable vitality, which reversely stimulates the behavior of the superior governments in the grass-roots governance through the effective evaluation mechanism. Political and social isomorphism not only reflects the diversity of governance, but also avoids the fragmentation of governance. However, isomorphism also needs to be grasped, and importance should be attached to maintaining the cohesion and flexibility among the governments, society and residents.

It is easier, for the high and middle administrations, to bring into full play the institutional advantage of mobilizing resources for major undertakings. To the grass-roots governance with decentralized tasks and mainly relying on localized management, whether and how can the institutional advantage be transformed into governance efficiency deserves a further study as in such a process there may come out a certain institutional distance, i.e. the gap of institutional effect produced by institutional texts through regulation, cognition and understanding under the centralized system. It mainly refers to the long-chain administrative level, and the cognitive attenuation of instructions from transmission to implementation. Recent years have witnessed local governments’ having actively explored new models and paths of grassroots governance, thus gradually bringing forth a number of well-performed reform models, among which the most influential one is the whistle reform. In the reform, the new integration mechanism embodied in the same structure of government and society has obviously promoted the transformation of “system and efficiency” at the present stage. The isomorphism of government and society is a new integration mechanism oriented to solving problems, and it is the basic point to solve the problems of grass-roots governance. In order to reduce the institutional distance, the vertical and horizontal cooperation is realized through the isomorphism, and the target is more consistent. The government achieves the extension of the control tentacle through the isomorphism of the goal and business with the social subject. At the same time, the social subject in this mechanism bears remarkable vitality, which reversely stimulates the behavior of the superior governments in the grass-roots governance through the effective evaluation mechanism. Political and social isomorphism not only reflects the diversity of governance, but also avoids the fragmentation of governance. However, isomorphism also needs to be grasped, and importance should be attached to maintaining the cohesion and flexibility among the governments, society and residents.

In the grass-roots governance, the incentive mechanism is matched with the governance affairs, i.e. affairs of different nature go with different types and intensities of incentive measures, among which governance affairs, also known as political tasks, bear strong political incentives. In grassroots units such as county-level departments, township streets are found two kinds of affairs of different nature, namely, routine work and “tasks assigned by leaders”. The former refers to administrative affairs within, falling into staff's responsibility who occupies the post. The latter refers to those without but leaders attach importance to, and thus labeled as “political task” with a strong incentive effect. In practice, there is a flexible space in-between: the staff may either choose to fulfill his/her duty, or choose to take both into account, an important indicator to an assessment of one's performance in grassroots units as a uniform criteria is hard to make due to a great disparity between jobs of different posts. Those taking extra work are labeled as so positive, progressive and capable that they are easily recognized and valued by leaders, thus their political status higher and promotion more likely. Such a mechanism does not follow the logic of Western bureaucracy while keeps a certain distance from Chinese Relationism; in addition, it integrates the characteristics of matter- orientedness and personality. On the one hand, this mechanism takes the governance affairs or problems as the benchmark to make the incentive match with the governance affairs, thus bearing strong pertinence, guidance and stipulation. On the other hand, it offers main leaders greater autonomy in the selection and evaluation of governance affairs or problems, thus the personnel incentive with stronger flexibility, adaptability and personality brand.

As the digital transformation of the state-society relations is promoted by digital and intelligent technologies through dual mechanisms of technology empowerment and technology empowerment, big data has been increasingly widely used in social governance innovation. Social governance based on big data aims to build a collaborative governance platform between government and society. Based on the empowerment of emerging information technology, it employs rich data resources and advanced analysis technology to digitize and algorithmize the complex and multidimensional social operation so as to grasp the law of social operation; it relies on the interaction between government and citizens to accumulate knowledge and strategies of social governance so as to improve the intelligence of social governance. On the one hand, with a great leap of marketization, urbanization and digitization in China, all sectors of the society have strong recognition and urgent expectations for social governance driven by big data. On the other hand, the application of big data in many aspects of social governance renders it urgent to speed up the building of intelligent social governance system. Big data has been widely used and born great potential in social governance, and become a new driving force for the government and society to promote social governance, improve governance efficiency and governance ability, this paper, based on a survey of cadres and the folks all over China, tells; in addition, in big data innovation in social governance, its application in public transportation, social security, government services, health care and so on works best as the internal connection of data can be found, and one-size-fits-all approach in social governance avoided; the policy-making can be precise so as to provide more personalized social governance. By collecting a large amount of data, the public's preference for various policies can be learned and the specific evaluation of the public on the implementation of policies obtained. Even so, there liesome challenges, such as difficulty in data opening and sharing, lack of top-level design, conflicts of interest between departments, and uneasy accessibility. On that account comes some suggestions: 1) promoted by leading officials' overall promotion and supported by corresponding mechanisms; 2) strengthen government leadership and coordinate the participation of government, enterprises and social groups; 3) coordinate in a unified way by specialized agencies and strengthen the response to assist decision-making; 4) adhere to the “thepeople-centered” approach and let the data serve the public.

As the digital transformation of the state-society relations is promoted by digital and intelligent technologies through dual mechanisms of technology empowerment and technology empowerment, big data has been increasingly widely used in social governance innovation. Social governance based on big data aims to build a collaborative governance platform between government and society. Based on the empowerment of emerging information technology, it employs rich data resources and advanced analysis technology to digitize and algorithmize the complex and multidimensional social operation so as to grasp the law of social operation; it relies on the interaction between government and citizens to accumulate knowledge and strategies of social governance so as to improve the intelligence of social governance. On the one hand, with a great leap of marketization, urbanization and digitization in China, all sectors of the society have strong recognition and urgent expectations for social governance driven by big data. On the other hand, the application of big data in many aspects of social governance renders it urgent to speed up the building of intelligent social governance system. Big data has been widely used and born great potential in social governance, and become a new driving force for the government and society to promote social governance, improve governance efficiency and governance ability, this paper, based on a survey of cadres and the folks all over China, tells; in addition, in big data innovation in social governance, its application in public transportation, social security, government services, health care and so on works best as the internal connection of data can be found, and one-size-fits-all approach in social governance avoided; the policy-making can be precise so as to provide more personalized social governance. By collecting a large amount of data, the public's preference for various policies can be learned and the specific evaluation of the public on the implementation of policies obtained. Even so, there liesome challenges, such as difficulty in data opening and sharing, lack of top-level design, conflicts of interest between departments, and uneasy accessibility. On that account comes some suggestions: 1) promoted by leading officials' overall promotion and supported by corresponding mechanisms; 2) strengthen government leadership and coordinate the participation of government, enterprises and social groups; 3) coordinate in a unified way by specialized agencies and strengthen the response to assist decision-making; 4) adhere to the “thepeople-centered” approach and let the data serve the public.

Collaborative governance of urban environment is a systematic process, and it is carried out in terms of target and technology. The technology-target framework formed by the two dimensionsbears outstanding value in the analysis of collaborative governance, which, according to the two-dimensional index, falls into the four types namely formal, symbolic, fragmented and refined. To improveits performance, the transformation into refined governance is needed. And its effective promotion is inseparable from the support of goal coordination and technical support. From the technology-target dimension analysis, it needs to strengthen the overall urban environmental governance concept, optimize the subject structure, strengthen the institutional construction, and promote technological innovation.

Collaborative governance of urban environment is a systematic process, and it is carried out in terms of target and technology. The technology-target framework formed by the two dimensionsbears outstanding value in the analysis of collaborative governance, which, according to the two-dimensional index, falls into the four types namely formal, symbolic, fragmented and refined. To improveits performance, the transformation into refined governance is needed. And its effective promotion is inseparable from the support of goal coordination and technical support. From the technology-target dimension analysis, it needs to strengthen the overall urban environmental governance concept, optimize the subject structure, strengthen the institutional construction, and promote technological innovation.

The Party and the State,since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, have attached great importance to the governance of formalism, and eradication of the formalism, a headache, has become the key task for both the Party and government departments at all levels. The topic has also drawn attention of Chinese academic circles, and thus come out many research findings of value by adopting diverse perspectives, among which a histological is brand new. Form becomes necessary because of the rationality and structure of organization, but formalism is the arrogation of instrumental rationality over value rationality, which deviates from the goal of organization and destroys the unity of content and form. Formalism has haunted over organizations for a long time, thus harming the purity of organizations. The pressure transmission in organizational behavior will promote the fermentation of formalism. The elimination of formalism, therefore, requires self-regulation of the organization. The fundamental way to resist formalism is to seek truth from facts and pursue the legalization and standardization of organizational behavior.

There is “Achilles Heel” in liberal political thought, an issue of master-slave relationraised by Hobbes. Through the whole modern natural law theory, from Hobbes to Rousseau,runs the distinction between master and slave. Hobbes' master-slavestruggle is an eternal war. Locke's price for establishing peace is man's conquest of nature and the establishment of man as the illusory“master”, from whom western politics developed even though Rousseau's “politics of recognition” tries to solve at length the conflict between master and slave-all are revealed by Hegel's master-slave dialectics, which enlightens Marx's alienation theory in a sense. Only by understanding the master-slave distinction can we gain an insight into the truth and dilemma of Western political thought since modern times,thus establishing the critical basis for liberalism.