Abstract: Presently the construction of communities into peaceful ones with good security order mainly takes two forms: governmentdirected and communitypropelled. The former plays a dominant role. This research proposes that the key to constructing the current safe communities lies in turning the construction from the government domination towards the community autonomy. As China is in a period of social transition, public security problems are common in communities. In the construction of safe communities, too much reliance on the government is prone to leading to community dependency and wearing down their willpower. Community is a micro social body. The autonomy shift in “safe community” construction is of substantial significance either to fully exploiting and using community resources or to cultivating and developing the mechanism of community selfgovernance.

Key words: community, safe community, community construction