Marching through the deep-water zone: Chinese public sector reforms and the way forwards

ABSTRACT

The post-1978 public sector reform in China has entered a new stage of building a modern state governance system as its grand reform strategy. This essay reviews China’s public sector reforms in the 2010s and further reform challenges and trends. It argues that a public administration with Chinese characteristics has been gradually and firmly established, which fundamentally deviates from the western models. To introduce coordinated and deepened reforms, political leadership has been and will be more than ever employed. The Chinese practices offer new opportunities for comparative studies to build theories of global relevance.

KEYWORDS:

• Modern state governance
• public sector reform
• political leadership
• Chinese characteristics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Data are from the World Bank website: https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/doingbusiness (accessible on 10 March 2020).

2. GDP per capita data are from United Nations Website: http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=Per+capita+GDP+at+current+prices&d=SNAAMA&f=grID%3a101%3bcurrID%3aUSD%3bpcFlag%3a1 (accessible on 10 March 2020). GINI coefficient is from https://www.ceicdata.com/zh-hans/china/resident-income-distribution/gini-coefficient (accessible on 10 March 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [Grant 15ZDA031] and the National Research Foundation of Korea [NRF-2016S1A3A2924956].

Notes on contributors

Yijia Jing

Yijia Jing is a Chang Jiang Scholar, Seaker Chan Chair Professor in Public Management, Dean of the Institute for Global Public Policy, and Professor of the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University. He got his BA/MA in Economics from Peking University, MA in Sociology from University of Maryland College Park, and Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Ohio State University. He conducts research on privatization, governance, and collaborative service delivery. He is editor-in-chief of Fudan Public Administration Review and co-editor of International Public Management Journal. He is the founding co-editor of the Palgrave book series, Governing China in the 21 Century.