Tongzhou district, located in the prefecture-level city of Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province, recently received recognition for its excellent social governance.

Social governance is defined as governance that gives healthcare a role and responsibility in promoting a fair, healthy and sustainable economy and society.

Officials said Tongzhou performed particularly well in a survey of China's top 100 counties, cities and districts for social governance which was released by the Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences of Zhejiang University on Dec 31.

Guangming district in Shenzhen city in South China's Guangdong province, Tongzhou district and Nansha district in Guangdong province's Guangzhou city stood out. Among the 2,759 counties, cities and districts from 27 provinces and autonomous regions assessed in the Chinese mainland – excluding four municipalities directly under the central government – they came in as the top three.

The rankings were calculated based on the China county region social governance index model created by the academy. The model focuses on four dimensions: social management, political and social governance, social self-governance and technological support.

According to Chen Lijun, chief expert of the academy, the county is the most complete micro-unit in the national governance system and county-level government is also the main agent responsible for public services, interfacing with the people directly.

Therefore, it is of great significance to take the county-level region as a basic analysis unit for evaluating China's social governance, especially the levels of grassroots governance.