Wujiang District, Suzhou, Jiangsu: “Sunshine Property” protects people’s dream of living in peace

On the afternoon of November 5, as soon as the reporter entered the Wuyue Shangyuan Community in Wujiang District, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province for an interview, he caught up with workers pruning camphor trees. As soon as the branches fell to the ground, sunlight "splashed" into the windows on the first and second floors.

"This tree used to grow almost to the fourth floor, and you had to turn on the lights when entering the house in broad daylight." Uncle Zhang, a resident of the community, saw the reporter's curiosity and came forward to talk. "The community changed to a new property model a while ago. The bidding and price comparisons are all open. It costs 170 yuan to prune a tree, and the labor and materials are included in the cleaning. Most of the owners unanimously agreed. After the tree is repaired, the accounts are clear, and the hearts are open."

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to "protect people's livelihood" and called for "strengthening universal, basic and comprehensive people's livelihood construction" and "improving the urban and rural grassroots governance system that combines autonomy, rule of law and rule of virtue under the leadership of party organizations." Property services connect thousands of households and are the most direct aspect of people's livelihood. They are also the "last mile" of grassroots governance. However, for a long time, opaque public benefits and unclear accounts have been the focus of property conflicts.

The Wujiang District Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision has deeply promoted the centralized rectification of unhealthy tendencies and corruption issues around the masses, closely focused on outstanding issues in the field of property services, and urged the housing and construction department to conduct comprehensive inspections of 456 residential communities in the district, and found 1,159 problems such as failure to separately account for public benefits and vague information disclosure. Problems forced reform: Wujiang implemented property restructuring in willing communities, converting the "contract system" into a "trust system" - money goes into the owner's joint account, and all income and expenditure are disclosed. The masses gave this method a simple name - "Sunshine Property".

"Under the 'contract system', the property fees go into the company's account, and the property owners save money by compressing services. What they save is their own, and the public benefits are even more confusing." Ma Weihua, deputy secretary of the Jiangxing Community Party Committee, explained, "Now the money goes into the joint account of all owners, and an open budget is prepared for the amount of property fees collected. Where and how much is spent, the owners participate in the decision and the whole process can be checked."

"Properties no longer rely on 'province' to make money, and income has been changed to 'according to expenditure.'" Following the footsteps of Wu Yueshangyuan property manager Zhou Peng, the reporter came to the bulletin board at the door of the community party and mass service center. The open budget table was clear. Zhou Peng explained that the current property revenue is divided into two parts: one is personnel wages, which is a cost and is paid according to the budget; the other is management fees, which is assessed at 5% of the total expenditure. "The more you work, the bigger the reward will be; the more you work sparingly, the less the reward will be."

Under the leadership of the community party organization, the community party branch, property owners committee, and property management companies jointly set up a "four-party discussion platform" to discuss the annual budget for property services. Once the budget is set, the owner must be able to see every money spent. Zhou Peng opens the "Huilin Family" applet on his mobile phone. The most eye-catching thing on the screen is the account balance. Swipe down to see how much was spent on which day and on which project. The corresponding electronic bills are uploaded one by one.

Up to now, the Wujiang District Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision has pushed the competent authorities to regulate a total of more than 95.21 million yuan in public benefits, benefiting more than 360,000 residents, and issued the "Wujiang District Property and Community Information Disclosure Catalog" to make "disclosure of services and disclosure of accounts" a system. "The property restructuring has realized the 'three transformations' of operating logic, fund supervision methods and residents' roles - the property industry has shifted from 'making money by saving costs' to 'getting what you pay for', funds have shifted from self-receipt by the property to co-management and real-time disclosure in a special bank account, and residents have shifted from passive acceptance of services to full supervision and participation in co-construction and co-governance," said Wen Yibo, director of the Eighth Discipline Inspection and Supervision Office of the Wujiang District Commission for Discipline Inspection.

"Our 'Sunshine Property' must continue to follow the spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and provide more detailed and practical services to make everyone's life more comfortable." In the conference room of the Party and Mass Service Center, a new round of discussions has begun. "In the past two days, we have started to prepare the annual budget for the new year. Based on the current collection situation, there is still some money left this year, which can be distributed to the owners as dividends." After the voice fell, the members of the property committee and the owner representatives sitting around talked to each other, discussing how to update the underground garage facilities of the community next year and hire more greening workers...