Shenzhen pioneers administrative reform

• Source: Global Times
• [21:30 August 19 2009]
• Comments

Editor’s Note:

Shenzhen has launched China’s first administrative reform and will streamline government institutions by more than 30 percent by the end of October. This reform is called an experiment in the “separation of powers.” The following is an interview by the Global Times (GT) reporter Li Yanjie with Chen Tianxiang (Chen), a professor at the School of Government at Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University.

GT: What drawbacks, in your opinion, lie in the current administrative system? How can Shenzhen’s reform overcome these drawbacks?

Chen: China’s current administrative system has many hierarchies, which affect the power distribution among different levels of governments.

Take city-level government for example. There was no city-level government at first and the current city government used to be a detached office of the provincial authorities. At that time county-level governments had broad powers.

Since the 1980s, the city-level governments began to have authority over the county-level governments. The city-level governments grabbed some powers that once belonged to county-level authorities, which hindered the development of the counties’ economies.

That’s why the central government now promotes provincial governing over counties directly. The current administrative system has too many departments and usually there are departmental and regional barriers. At the same time, many departments have powers over the same domains, which increases the cost of communication between different divisions. Many bureaus consider work from their own angle and don’t take the whole picture into account, which makes it hard to draw up scientific and reasonable policies.

These factors lead to low efficiency and confused management. Too many people’s responsibilities mean no one’s responsibilities.

That’s why many problems, such as food safety and a disorganized medicine market, cannot be solved.

The US sets a good example in this respect. Many different offices in charge of the same area are composed into a giant department system, resulting in scientific policymaking and high efficiency.

The market economy requires high administrative efficiency. Low efficiency will prevent enterprises from quick development and lead to failure in market competition. Therefore political reform needs to be carried further.

The globe has marched into the information age, requiring an open and transparent government.

Shenzhen pioneers China’s political reform. Merging and reducing departments and offices to increase government efficiency and the experiment in the “separation of powers” are both good tries.

GT: The administrative reform was first proposed in Shenzhen 8 years ago and then was delayed.
Do you think now is the proper time to carry out the reform?

Chen: Why is the present reform going slower than in the 1980s? Because the primary reform didn’t affect the core interests of some groups, while the current reform means decentralization, transferring power to lower levels and allocating resources by the market.

In this way, officials find it’s hard for them to acquire “gray” income and rent their powers in exchange for money. Surely some officials will reject it. That’s why the political and administrative reforms are repeated and hindered.

The “separation of powers” sounds like using the Western political system, which was not accepted in China in the early years due to ideological differences. But now Chinese believe that they can borrow the useful parts of the Western political system.

The central government also promotes giant department system reform now, which pushes local governments to try political reform.

China’s economic development and especially its WTO membership make it pressing to carry government reform on, too.

So now it’s a relatively mature moment to further the administrative reform.