Social Governance Innovations in Shenzhen: An Interview with Liu Runhua (刘润华)

Editor’s Note Over the past thirty years, as a special economic administrative region, Shenzhen has blazed many new paths of reform. Now, after thirty years, Shenzhen is once again leading the way with innovations and trials in the area of social reforms. From the Yantian Model (盐田模式) to “three half-steps”, the reformed method of social organization registration; from non-governmentally run social work units to establishment of community service centers; from encouraging the growth of the One Foundation’s operations in Shenzhen to inviting national philanthropic figures to participate in Shenzhen’s public-interest work, Shenzhen’s reforms have been inseparable from the encouragement of its Civil Affairs departments, inseparable from the innovative reform mindedness of the “Former Civil Affairs Bureau Chief”, Liu Runhua. In 2011, a team led by Professor Wang Ming (王名), Director of the NGO Research Center at the Tsinghua School of Public Policy and Management, conducted in-person interviews with this “social reformer”. Liu Runhua, then still Director of the Civil Affairs Bureau, stood both atop history and outside of his departmental context, to offer us far-reaching reflections on Shenzhen’s social management innovations. At the time of writing, Mr. Liu had been promoted up to Guangdong, where, as Managing Deputy Director of the Guangdong Provincial Social Work Committee, he is now able promulgate his ideas on public-interest activities in practice from a higher platform.