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The government must truly place service above anything else in
performing its duties, according to Wang Hongju, mayor of
Chongqing, the leading industrial and commercial city in southwest
China.
Wang, who is a deputy to the National People's Congress, China's
legislature, said, "To build a service-oriented government and an
honest and efficient government, we must weaken the government's
administrative power and intensify its service functions."
The mayor emphasized the importance of studying the questions such
as what the government should administer, to what extent it should
exercise administration and how it should exercise
administration.
"We ought to explore these questions actively and give explicit
answers," he said.
It
is now necessary to reduce the number of administrative permits and
simplify examination and approval procedures. Meanwhile, it is
imperative to establish a new administrative permit and examination
and approval mechanism.
In
Wang's view, to transform government functions and change its style
of work, it is also necessary to break industrial monopoly and
improve services.
For example, serve large companies have been set up in the
telecommunications sector to bring in competition. As a result,
telecom service standards and quality have improved substantially.
This is in sharp contrast to the power industry, in which resources
are monopolized by power companies.
He
said that in the next phase, it is necessary to break the monopoly
in the power, cooking gas and tap water sectors in order to create
the environment in which operators will be able to compete fairly
and consumers to choose services on their own.
(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2003)
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