Abstract: The village-contract movement, as a poverty alleviation means, has revived in some places due to the emphasis put on the Mass Line by the new central government and the impulse of the executive departments in their political performance competition. Although the village-contract movement could effectively solve the poverty problems to some extent for farmers in some areas, it has such disadvantages as focusing on short-term effect, serious formalism, low efficiency, cultivating dependence on poverty alleviation, and worsening the unfairness of political performance competition. In the long run, such competition built on the legal right to hurt by the executive departments will further intensify power rent-seeking, upgrading the common material rent-seeking to show-off rent-seeking, which will lead to the vicious expansion of government powers and twisted resources allocation. Only by establishing the correct Mass Line concept, limiting the scale and power of the government to a reasonable extent, enhancing supervision toward the government powers and building up a relatively fair political performance evaluation system, will we be able to get rid of the dependence on mobilized poverty relief, so as to build up a long-term poverty alleviation mechanism with lasting effect and speed up the poverty alleviation process in China.

Key words: village-contract movement; the mass line; power alienation; conspicuous rent-seeking