Shanghai is set to expand its homeowners' committee secretary system across the entire city, with the first batch of more than 630 trainees expected to officially assume their roles after passing certification exams. The initiative, formalized through a trial implementation opinion issued in June, aims to strengthen standardized operations for residential community governance.

How one elevator replacement project and a color-coded filing system illustrate the value of community secretaries

Community secretaries primarily address two practical challenges faced by homeowners' committees: insufficient professional expertise and limited time availability. In the Chengshang residential complex, a large commodity housing development in Zhabei West Road Subdistrict, all 38 aging elevators are scheduled for replacement this year. The homeowners' committee, predominantly composed of retired residents, found itself overwhelmed when confronted with a bewildering array of elevator brands and construction companies, with residents holding divergent opinions.

Xie Jie, who serves as deputy secretary of the neighborhood party branch and has been doubling as the community secretary since November, stepped in to assist. Drawing on his previous experience in financial approval work, where information verification and document organization were his specialties, he compiled comprehensive background materials on mainstream elevator brands and construction firms in Shanghai. After an initial shortlist, he identified residential projects in the city where these brands were already in operation, enabling residents to conduct on-site visits and experience the elevators firsthand. This thorough preparation allowed residents across all 38 buildings to reach a consensus on the elevator brand selection with remarkable efficiency.

Beyond providing professional support, the secretary also handles routine daily operations. Xie Jie systematically organizes scattered meeting minutes into chronological files, employing a color-labeling method to categorize engineering repairs, financial records, and meeting documentation for easy retrieval. During a community standardization assessment, he was able to swiftly locate corresponding meeting records, income and expenditure ledgers, and homeowner voting documents in response to evaluators' questions on public revenue, maintenance fund applications, and renovation approvals. He recorded expert feedback on-site and handed it over to the committee for follow-up improvements.

Grassroots innovation and market exploration paved the way

The secretary system emerged from bottom-up experimentation rather than top-down design. In 2018, Liangcheng New Village Subdistrict in Hongkou District introduced an executive secretary position within homeowners' committees to address inadequate performance and low professional standards. Social workers received training and were appointed to assist committees, marking the city's first such initiative.

Subsequent years saw expansion across districts. In 2020, Bansongyuan Road Subdistrict in Huangpu District encouraged committees to hire part-time secretaries through market-based arrangements. By 2023, Jing'an District's Jiangning Road Subdistrict had developed a hybrid model supporting both market-based hiring and the assignment of part-time social workers or resident volunteers. Various districts also adopted different terminology, such as Yangpu District's Yangui New Village Subdistrict launching a community steward pilot in 2018, with full-time stewards assigned to coordinate multiple residential areas.

Market-driven solutions also emerged. Yan Hang, founder of the Huiyoulin platform, observed in 2020 that homeowners' committees were managing high-value property assets through relatively primitive methods, relying heavily on WeChat groups without digital tools. His team developed a digital platform featuring document archiving, work order approvals, information disclosure, and online voting. However, market adoption proved disappointing. Subsequent investigation revealed that committees lacked both professional knowledge and time, requiring not only digital empowerment but also dedicated secretarial support. From 2021, his team began offering market-based secretary services funded by community public revenue, currently serving 68 residential communities with 12 secretaries at an average annual contract cost of approximately 32,000 yuan.

Financial transparency drives genuine demand for secretaries

The exploration reflects real governance pain points. In 2025, Changbai New Village Subdistrict in Yangpu District piloted a mini-secretary system across three residential areas, addressing issues like informal meeting records, missing contract files, and unfamiliarity with maintenance fund procedures. At Jingyu Building, a 160-unit high-rise completed in the 1990s, Shi Xiaoting was assigned as community secretary in July following the homeowners' committee's application. Her primary responsibility became clarifying the community's finances under a fee-based property management model where all property fees are deposited into a public account with the management company extracting an agreed remuneration percentage. Unlike fixed-fee arrangements, this model offers greater transparency, with all income and expenditures clearly traceable — but it substantially increases the committee's workload.

Shi helps organize records of three main revenue sources — property fees, public earnings, and maintenance funds — alongside every expense item, making information accessible for residents. She also documents all committee meetings, manages resident complaint registration with tracking ledgers, and assists in drafting official documents. Such transparency is vital for reducing neighborhood conflicts, noted Wang Bei, director of the Social Work Office at Jiangning Road Subdistrict, since financial mismanagement often triggers disputes among residents and between residents and property companies.

Subdistrict officials observed that many committee members, while enthusiastic and dedicated, struggle with unfamiliarity with property regulations, weak documentation skills, and limited digital literacy. Many elderly committee members explicitly requested younger secretaries equipped with computer skills.

Secretary responsibilities remain flexible based on community context

In August, Yangpu District launched a training camp for community secretaries with 50 participants from 12 subdistricts, covering eight responsibility areas: meeting coordination, archive management, fund oversight, property company selection assistance, supervision support, resident outreach, communication coordination, and compliance reminders. In practice, secretaries adapt their focus based on whether communities are commodity housing, public housing, or mixed-type developments.

Zhang Jieqi, assigned to Changbai 229 Street as secretary, concentrated on communication and coordination work. The area comprises four old public housing complexes where 178 households shared only about 30 electric vehicle charging points, leading to frequent neighborly conflicts. Many residents owned two or three e-bikes, and space constraints encouraged dangerous charging practices. Zhang proactively contacted municipal and district authorities, accompanied site inspections to explain residents' difficulties and safety concerns, and successfully secured installation of new charging stations at the community entrance.

Different subdistricts have developed tailored approaches. Zhabei West Road Subdistrict divides secretary duties into three areas: standardized document archiving, resident opinion collection and mediation, and policy coordination. The color-labeling method emerged from practice, using categorized tags for financial, contract, and filing materials. Jiangning Road Subdistrict has refined 32 specific responsibilities across four categories: institutional implementation, fund management, property supervision, and professional resource coordination.

Currently, secretaries are typically community workers selected by neighborhood party organizations and residents' committees, chosen for their familiarity with local conditions, administrative processes, and residents. In Zhabei West Road Subdistrict, candidates are drawn from deputy party secretaries and serving social workers, with 85.7% holding bachelor's degrees or higher.

Support without overstepping: boundaries must remain clear

The core positioning for secretaries throughout all explorations is consistent: they do not make decisions or participate in voting, providing only administrative assistance and procedural guidance. As Ji Yun, director of Zhabei West Road Subdistrict's Social Work Office, emphasized: fill gaps without exceeding authority, assist without replacing.

Community workers note that many conflicts arise when secretaries become involved in decision-making. Yangpu District's work guidelines include a negative list of eight prohibitions: no unauthorized decision-making, no unauthorized representation, no access to funds, no unauthorized handling, no bias, no designating service providers, no accepting benefits, and no information leaks.

Secretary appointments require committee approval rather than unilateral assignment by subdistrict authorities. Committees can apply for secretaries or specify arrangements in their rules, with neighborhood party organizations assessing needs and proposing candidates for subdistrict confirmation. For young social workers like Wu Shuangting, a post-2000 community worker at Zhijiang New Village, the secretary role offers valuable professional growth. Through her work, she rapidly familiarized herself with committee operations and built closer relationships with residents.

Sustainable development requires improved supporting policies

While many committees welcome the new system, supporting policies require refinement. Since secretaries are largely volunteers serving part-time alongside other duties, committee meetings often scheduled outside regular hours create routine overtime. The additional workload of file organization and major project preparation remains uncompensated.

Zhabei West Road Subdistrict has begun exploring solutions, compiling work prompt manuals that translate abstract regulations into practical checklists and templates. A front-line secretary plus back-office expert support system has been established, leveraging the subdistrict's homeowner service center for professional guidance on regulatory, engineering, and financial matters. Digital ledger systems are being developed, with a standardization platform providing online tools for processes like committee re-elections involving 11 procedural steps or elevator replacements requiring nine approval stages.

Grassroots officials also recommend establishing performance evaluation mechanisms linking secretary performance to career development opportunities for social workers. Diversifying recruitment sources is encouraged, including market-based hiring of full-time secretaries as an alternative option. Homeowners can specify secretary employment terms, compensation, and payment arrangements in their community governance documents. Further refinement of positive and negative responsibility lists would clarify boundaries between assistance and substitution, preventing overreach.

The community secretary system represents Shanghai's ongoing effort to improve residential self-governance. Success requires balancing secretarial operational support with respect for homeowner autonomy while leveraging institutional and technological innovation to reduce grassroots burdens, ensuring community governance advances steadily and sustainably.