This book examines contemporary Chinese political reform through an examination of a number of policy initiatives taken in recent years. These include programs designed to improve administrative efficiency, transparency, and accountability, as well as directives aimed at rebuilding the regime's political support though strengthening local legislatures, overhauling the health care system, enacting labor contract laws, opening up mass media, and improving governance in China's minority regions.
Good governance is necessary for effective public administration and delivery of public goods and services. This is an important issue for all countries, but in particular for rapidly developing countries such as China where reform of governance and public administration is a key element of the public policy agenda. This book explores the key issues in governance and public administration facing China’s policy-makers today. Edited by Wang Mengkui, the former President of the Development Research Center of the State Council, and Chairman of the China Development Research Foundation - one of China’s leading think-tanks - it contains 36 papers selected from nearly 300 case studies presented by participants in the China’s Leaders in Development Executive Program. The authors are outstanding and experienced officials, and together represent the voice of China's new rising generation of leaders, policy-makers and officials. The cases are based on first-hand information and experiences either from the officials’ personal involvement, or their own in-depth investigations. The chapters cover a wide range of issue areas, such as institutional reform, urban construction, social governance, crisis management, resource and ecological environmental management, education and public health, and economic reform and development. Taken together, it provides an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand China’s own thinking on its governance and public administration.
In the last 30 years, China’s record economic growth lifted half a billion people out of poverty, with rapid urbanization providing abundant labor, cheap land, and good infrastructure. While China has avoided some of the common ills of urbanization, strains are showing as inefficient land development leads to urban sprawl and ghost towns, pollution threatens people’s health, and farmland and water resources are becoming scarce. With China’s urban population projected to rise to about one billion – or close to 70 percent of the country’s population – by 2030, China’s leaders are seeking a more coordinated urbanization process. Urban China is a joint research report by a team from the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China’s State Council which was established to address the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in China and to help China forge a new model of urbanization. The report takes as its point of departure the conviction that China's urbanization can become more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable. However, it stresses that achieving this vision will require strong support from both government and the markets for policy reforms in a number of area. The report proposes six main areas for reform: first, amending land management institutions to foster more efficient land use, denser cities, modernized agriculture, and more equitable wealth distribution; second, adjusting the hukou household registration system to increase labor mobility and provide urban migrant workers equal access to a common standard of public services; third, placing urban finances on a more sustainable footing while fostering financial discipline among local governments; fourth, improving urban planning to enhance connectivity and encourage scale and agglomeration economies; fifth, reducing environmental pressures through more efficient resource management; and sixth, improving governance at the local level.
This book provides an all-round analysis and exploration of the course, status quo and future of the Chinese Government's governance reform under the framework of government governance modernization. The authors bring their decades of experience in crafting policy in China to explain the relationship between China's government and market, between government and society, between the central government and local governments, functional transformation, organizational structure optimization, reform of public institutions, allocation of fiscally supported personnel, the building of a law-based government and other major issues, while also laying out a case for structural changes in the years to come.
The pursuit for better governance has assumed center stage in developmental discourse as well as reform initiatives of all organizations working for the public welfare, and includes such issues as service delivery and responding to citizens’ needs and demands. In the era of globalization, multilevel and new modes of governance are changing the traditional governance models of nation states, accelerated by technological innovation, rising citizen expectation, policy intervention from international and multilateral donor communities, and the hegemony of western ideology imposed on many developing nations. However, a universally accepted and agreed upon definition of 'governance’ still remains elusive. There is no consensus or agreement as to what would be the nature and form of governance and public administration. The question that is raised: Is there a universal governance mechanism that fits in all contexts or governance mechanisms should be based on home grown ideas?One can see various programs and policies of reforms and reorganizations in public administration in the developing countries, but these efforts have not been effective to address the challenging issues of economic development, employment generation, poverty reduction, ensuring equality of access to public services, maintaining fairness and equity, security and safety of citizens, social cohesion, democratic institution building, ensuring broader participation in the decision making process, and improving the quality of life. Therefore, there is a widespread concern for better governance or sound governance to bridge the gap between theory and practice, making this book of interest to academics as well as policy-makers in global public administration.
Despite a centralized formal structure, Chinese politics and policy-making have long been marked by substantial degrees of regional and local variation and experimentation. These trends have, if anything, intensified as China’s reform matures. Though often remarked upon, the politicsof policy formation, diffusion, and implementation at the subnational level have not previously been comprehensively described, let alone satisfactorily explained. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book explores how policies diffuse across China today, the mechanisms through which local governments actually arrive at specific solutions, and the implications for China’s political development and stability in the years ahead. The chapters examine how local-level institutions solve governance challenges, such as rural development, enterprise reform, and social service provision. Focusing on diverse policy areas that include land use, state-owned enterprise reform, and house churches, the contributors all address the same overarching question: how do local policymakers innovate in each issue area to address a governance challenges and how, if at all, do these innovations diffuse into national politics. As a study of local governance in China today, this book will appeal to both students and scholars of Chinese politics, comparative politics, governance and development studies, and also to policy-makers interested in authoritarianism and governance.
Dynamics of Local Governance in China during the Reform takes a close look at China's current transformation and its broader implications. Through their thought-provoking essays, the contributors to this volume dissect China's transformation by examining various topics in the ...
Written by scholars from both inside and outside China, this wide-ranging collection of essays explores the complexity of the relationship between governance and civil society by combining theoretical exploration and empirical case studies based on the governance practice in China.
Using a comparative and thematic approach, this textbook looks at key aspects of the new dynamics in East Asian politics: security, political economy and society.
Using detailed case studies of the first nine mainland Chinese companies to be listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange (1993 94), Alice de Jonge examines the evolution of corporate governance law and culture in China s H-share market. A story emerges not of tensions between ideas of corporate governance from two different legal systems Hong Kong vs. mainland Chinese nor about legal convergence as China adopts concepts from Anglo-American jurisdictions. Rather, it is a story of individual firms being pragmatic in mediating the different agendas of state-agencies that own or control them. Corporate Governance and China s H-Share Market looks at corporate governance in a cross-border context is unique in providing a detailed understanding of China s H-share market reveals why a beer company was the first ever Chinese firm to be listed overseas. This fascinating work will appeal to postgraduate students and scholars of corporate governance, Asian law and legal systems and Asian business, as well as Chinese scholars more generally. Professionals such as law practitioners working in Chinese law will also find the book of interest.
