Modernization of Government Governance in China by Ronghua Shen & Sheng Cao

Author:Ronghua Shen & Sheng Cao
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789813294912
Publisher: Springer Singapore

Rational Choice of Provincial Governing County

Above-stated conceptions of reform verify the old saying in China, “different people have different views”. In the opinion of the author, although the suggestion of “reducing provincial setting” is popular, its feasibility remains further discussion. Since provincial administrative system in China has been already formed in history, every aspect of the province is closely related to one another such as economy, society, humanity and transportation. Because of the common sense of identity toward geographical conditions, artificial division of province not only severs the relation between history and reality, but also requests new layout in politics, economy, society and management. This move wastes manpower and fund. In foreign countries, provincial division also takes shape in history. Despite the great disparity among provinces (states) in area, population, economy and culture, no state greatly changes provincial (state) administration setting out of certain reasons. Therefore, except few major provinces, it is improper for China to reduce provincial setting in large scale now.

The opinion of “establishing administrative office as detached agency” actually recovers the system before 1983. Even if local administrative office is just a detached agency or half-level government, it is also an administrative management level. At this point, this suggestion cannot reach the goal of reducing administrative level. Moreover, historical experience shows that detached agency usually evolves to entity government.

The opinion of “weakening province and county” seems to be rather simple. Although urbanization is a prime trend of development and economic growth depends on the city, the city is often located in the center of a district. Urbanization does not mean that other regions are excluded from city planning for ever. Admittedly, a power cannot be completely made up by cities. Province and county administrative division remains indispensable. Even states with high degree of urbanization mostly set up provinces or counties.

By comparison, it is a rational choice to reduce prefecture management level and implement provincial governing county. Actually, it is a necessary and feasible decision up to the major trend. What is the reason?

As for necessity, the intention for China to implement city governing county system is to propel the city to drive rural socio-economic growth and gradually coordinate the development of urban-rural economy and society. But in practice for years, most places do not drive or radiate rural area. Many cities often pay close attention to urban construction and development and even deprive capital, projects and talents of counties. Therefore, the gap of development and the gap between city and village continue to enlarge. In some places, owing to the restricted power of prefecture city, it fails to motivate the development of subordinate counties. Now that most places have merged prefecture cities to change former local administrative office into grassroots government, the new full set of government organizations adds one more administrative level, aggravates government operation cost, lowers administrative efficiency and causes detrimental influences to county socio-economic development. Under the system of provincial governing county (city), central and provincial projects, information, financial subsidy, special fund, financial transfer

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