These are the city's goals as reported, not the goals of villagers. Executive vice-mayor Sun Ping (interview, 2010) framed the funds as equalising basic public services between city and countryside, giving villages both money to act and a duty to deliberate every expense, consolidating the party's base in the countryside and improving cadre-villager relations. Jiang and Huang 2011, working from municipal materials, add that rural services should reach urban level quickly and that the councils return rights, empower and reposition village organisations. Zhuang 2014 names narrowing the urban-rural gap and transparency. Frenkiel and Tawa Lama-Rewal 2019, from interviews with cadres, read the operative purpose as reducing conflict, petitions and instability after the 2007 property law and the 2008 earthquake, with the funds as the material content of monthly village councils. Project-level is the stated first purpose; the trust and capacity goals sit behind it and no source states a hierarchy. The founding municipal decision of November 2008 is cited by the researchers but was not available, so its own wording of the goal could not be checked.