As night fell, there was a long queue at the live broadcast base in Beishan Village, Shiba Town, Guangxin District, Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province. The villagers carried bags of kudzu root, sweet potatoes, and dried beans, delivering the goods with one hand and receiving money with the other. As Chen Jianguo, secretary of the village party branch, "linked", these local products from the mountains were sent across thousands of mountains and rivers to the dining tables of people all over the country. Similar scenes are happening in rural areas all over the country.
Nowadays, more and more village party branch secretaries and village cadres step into the camera and transform into agricultural anchors to promote local products to consumers across the country. Village broadcasts have opened up new channels for selling agricultural products, but public officials doing live broadcasts face special conflicts brought about by their identities: on one hand, they have complicated village-level duties, and on the other hand, they have traffic pressure, public opinion risks, and imbalances in power and responsibilities brought about by live broadcasts. The practical dilemma of grassroots cadres acting as anchors has become a question worth pondering in the process of comprehensive rural revitalization.
dual role
Wuchuan Gelao and Miao Autonomous County in Guizhou Province is located in northern Guizhou Province. It is rich in pepper, pepper, honeysuckle, mugwort and other specialty crops. It has a number of national geographical indication products and national famous, special and high-quality new agricultural products. Tian Xiaolong, executive deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the Wuchuan Autonomous County Party Committee, told reporters that the local area has always had a tradition of going to the market, but due to the distance between the village and the market town, the cost for villagers to carry mountain goods to the market is high, and the actual benefits are not high. In addition, the radiation radius of traditional markets is limited, and a large number of high-quality agricultural products have been stagnated in the mountains for a long time, making it difficult to effectively connect with external markets. The same dilemma is also common in remote mountainous areas of our country. During the harvest season, the fields are full of vegetables and fruits, but no buyers can be found.
For the sake of village development, how to expand the sales of agricultural products has become a difficult problem faced by the village committee. These villages invariably set their sights on the same field - village broadcasting.
But for the village cadres who shoulder the heavy responsibility, this road is far from smooth as imagined. The work at the grassroots level is complicated. Conflict mediation, project promotion, visiting the masses, etc. occupy most of the cadres' working time. Most of the live broadcasts can only be carried out during rest periods such as nights and weekends. Staying up late to broadcast has become the norm for many cadre anchors.
"I was very nervous in front of the camera at the beginning. I had to do all the filming, editing, customer service, and packaging all by myself. After the live broadcast, my voice became hoarse." Ren Yongguo, secretary of the Party branch of Qu Village, Daodongbao Town, Cheng'an County, Hebei Province, said that in the early days of the broadcast, he was a veritable "splendid commander", doing all the work by himself, and subsequent operations relied on squeezing out time.
Chen Xiaohua, assistant to the party branch secretary of Tanchang Village, Longjing Town, Renhuai City, Guizhou Province, also works as a village broadcaster. She chooses to arrange different tasks in different time periods: the live broadcast is fixed in the morning of the town’s market day. After the live broadcast, she immediately returns to the village work. After get off work, she handles packaging and after-sales, trying to balance her own work with helping farmers and delivering goods.
When grassroots cadres conduct live broadcasts, they must first face doubts from within the countryside. Before the live broadcast produced real benefits, many villagers did not understand: The main job of village cadres is to manage the village. If they face the camera every day, are they not doing their jobs and wanting to be Internet celebrities? There are many such voices.
Unlike commercial anchors, public official status also defines the boundaries of live broadcast expression. Ordinary anchors can rely on script interpretations and jokes to gain traffic, but cadre anchors must seek truth from facts and cannot exaggerate propaganda or hype topics to attract attention.
"Introducing agricultural products honestly, the traffic is mediocre; we can't touch those eye-catching tricks." Yao Yanbin, a village cadre in Yisan Village, Beixiang, Cheng'an County, said, "Internet celebrities can call Mai and make fun of them, but we must adhere to the bottom line of public officials in every word and deed."
However, restrained expression can sometimes form a unique endorsement of trust. "Unpretentious explanations are slow to gain fans, but fans have high trust, and sincerity is the surefire way." Yao Yanbin said with a smile.
Behind trust, the risk of public opinion follows closely. Once negative reviews appear in the live broadcast room, netizens argue, or even village affairs conflicts are brought into the comment area, the anchor will have to face the pressure of public opinion and psychological burden. It is necessary to sell agricultural products while maintaining the bottom line of words and deeds. Every live broadcast is a test of the comprehensive capabilities of grassroots cadres.
Imbalance of power and responsibility
Outside of the live broadcast room, the deeper contradictions come from the imbalance of power and responsibility. Live broadcast operations involve equipment procurement, packaging supplies, express delivery losses, and after-sales compensation, each of which requires capital investment. Some villages do not have special funds, and when there are losses or after-sales disputes, cadres even need to advance money personally.
In many places, all proceeds from live broadcasts of assisting farmers belong to the village collective. Most of the cadres participating in the live broadcasts do not receive commissions for bringing goods. Incentives are mostly limited to evaluating the best, and the large amount of time and energy devoted is often supported by personal sentiments.
Different explorations have also occurred in reality. When Chen Jianguo first became the party secretary of Beishan Village, the village collective was still in debt. Although there are support funds, I feel unsure and dare not move lightly. After much deliberation, he used his own money to set up a company, and the village collective became a shareholder, adopting a village-enterprise cooperation model. Part of the commission earned will be distributed to the village collective for construction, and part will be used for the operation of the live broadcast room.
Tanchang Village in Longjing Town adopts a public welfare service model. Individual anchors do not receive revenue sharing or special subsidies for bringing goods. However, for the sake of long-term development, the town is exploring the establishment of an incentive mechanism that is both in line with the public welfare positioning and can reasonably reflect the value of labor, so as to continue the live broadcast to help farmers in the long term.
Assessment orientation is also a double-edged sword. In some places, the number of live broadcasts, viewing volume, and sales are included in the assessment of rural revitalization, which has given rise to the phenomenon of "passive broadcasting to complete tasks", emphasizing data over actual results, which deviates from the original intention of helping farmers.
What is more easily overlooked is the risk of digital assets. Many accounts are registered using cadres’ personal real-name information, and their operations rely on collective resources. Once the cadres are transferred, they will face the dilemma of "people will die if they leave": if the account leaves with the person, the digital assets belonging to the collective will be lost directly; even if the account stays, it may face a decline in traffic because "fans only recognize the anchor himself".
Many grassroots cadres interviewed said frankly: "It is their job to do their job well. Once there are operational mistakes and negative public opinion, the responsibility must be borne by the individual." The imbalance of power and responsibility has deterred many cadres who are interested in trying village broadcasting.
Explore the breakthrough
To make good use of the "new farm tool" of village broadcasters, we cannot rely solely on the enthusiasm of cadres. We need to break all kinds of fetters from the institutional level and remove the shackles on cadres.
In order to clarify the ownership of digital assets, Qucun, Cheng'an County, compiled a "Live Broadcast Instruction" with clear regulations on scheduling, quality control, after-sales, income distribution, etc. "Don't wait until you are exhausted before you build a system. If you have an iron camp and smooth soldiers, you must set up the camp first." Ren Yongguo said that even if he is transferred one day, the team will still be there.
All Longjing Town uses collective enterprise accounts, and the live broadcast accounts are included in the village collective asset ledger, making it clear that ownership belongs to the village collective. Cadres are rotated and transferred, and account permissions, operational data, etc. are completely transferred.
In order to optimize the assessment indicators, Longjing Town has included the live broadcast of agricultural assistance into the performance evaluation indicators of village cadres, giving priority to them in the evaluation of excellence. At the same time, it has established an error-tolerance and correction mechanism to allow room for tolerance for general errors caused by non-subjective factors. In terms of assessment orientation, we insist on not rigidly including the number of live broadcast sessions and sales in the assessment, to prevent cadres from passively starting broadcasts, and to allow live broadcasts to return to their essence of helping farmers.
At the same time, the cost-bearing entities should be clarified to prevent individuals from evading the costs. Equipment purchase, packaging logistics, and after-sales compensation are guaranteed by the village collective or special funds, and individual cadres are not allowed to pay for the risks of village broadcasting operations.
Experts said that village broadcasting is not a personal show for village cadres. Only by straightening out the relationship between power and responsibility, making up for the shortcomings of the system, and transforming personal feelings into organizational strength can village broadcasting be able to make steady progress and truly benefit the majority of farmers.
