Abstract: Building social governance community is a major initiative of social governance in the new era and an important issue of concern in both theoretical and practical circles in recent years. However, the existing theoretical construction of bureaucratic governance and autonomous governance cannot fully explain the shift in grassroots social governance practices under the background of building a social governance community. By placing the social governance community in the theoretical spectrum of social governance, and using cultural heritage protection as a case study, it is shown that social governance community construction has shaped a new logic of grassroots social governance through “differential governance” in practice. Its operational mechanism is manifested as a value mechanism of hierarchical reshaping, an organizational mechanism of stratified integration, and an interactive mechanism of classified motivation. Differential order governance presents new characteristics in terms of governance value,structure, process and resources, and is a composite form of grassroots social governance nurtured by Chinas unique cultural background, institutional environment, and social foundation at present stage. This finding opens up a new perspective for understanding grassroots social governance and also enhances the theoretical understanding of social governance community.

Key words: social governance community; differential order governance; grassroots social governance; cultural heritage protection