Reforms moving with the times
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E-mail China Daily, March 11, 2013
Removing obstacles
Previous reshuffles were governed by the same logic. In 1993, steps were taken to increase the power of the market after former leader Deng Xiaoping vowed to build a "socialist market economy" on his tour of South China in 1992, said Zhao Chenggen, a professor at the School of Government at Peking University.
However, by 2008, several ministries in the industrial sector were obstructing market forces and their influence needed to be either removed or reduced so that the market could play its role efficiently, said Zhou Zhiren, also a professor at the School of Government at Peking University.
That led to the establishment of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the disappearance of two other ministries in the industrial sector. As part of a series of reforms in 2008 - the most recent of the six previous reshuffles - three departments were merged to create the National Energy Administration to tackle China's soaring energy demand.
In the same year, the State Environmental Protection Administration became the Ministry of Environmental Protection and its responsibilities were expanded to include a number of specific environmental and ecological challenges.
These reductions and mergers inevitably led to a reduction in staff. The reforms of 1982 saw 39 ministries and departments cut, resulting in 21,000 officials leaving the central government payroll.
In 1998, the State Council was further streamlined, and approximately half its employees were moved to other departments and State-owned enterprises, resulting in lower administrative involvement in economic matters.
While the earlier reforms were driven by domestic market forces and the need for China to become more integrated with the global economy, the country can still learn the lessons of history, especially the experiences of Japan in the 1980s, said Bai Zhili, associate professor at the School of Government at Peking University.
At the time, Japan's economic and market control was highly bureaucratic and government involvement pushed forward the nation's economic takeoff, he said.
However, when the economy stopped growing in the 1990s, Japan's central government was forced to relinquish some of its power to local governments and privatize state-owned enterprises to stimulate the market. The reforms successfully prevented further economic deterioration, he said.
In addition to the market, there is also society. As social networking platforms such as micro blogs become more popular in China, the government will need to update the administrative model and pay greater attention to public opinion as a means of sustaining social stability and harmony, said Chi Fulin.
