Administrative Reform in China Strategic Choices, Structural Adjustments and Institutional Innovations(2006年公共管理国际会议论文).docVIP

Administrative Reform in China: Strategic Choices, Structural Adjustments and Institutional Innovations DAI Chang-zheng School of Humanities and Social Science University of International Business and Economics, P.R. China Beijing, 100029 Abstract Taking a retrospect on the administrative reform in China, we may conclud that the administrative reform was more dependent on the development tendency of the economic reform than being deliberately designed and implemented. In other words, the administrative reform was originally the passive response to the economic policy involvement. This has clearly indicated a nature of “incremental changes” as demonstrated in the policy evolution of economic reform. Thus, it is not hard to find that the administrative reform was strategically confined within the scope of streamlining the government organs and strengthening the capacity of government of implementing the new policy of reform and opening up initiated by the Party and state. While as the economic reform deepened and more structural problems exposed, the 1988 and 1993 administrative reform inevitably targeted the structural adjustments and functional differentiation of overlapping government organizations and mixture of state and society, government and enterprises, government and market. And following the same logic, the 1998 administrative reform was mainly to build a framework of institutionalization, e.g. to formulate rules and procedures through institutionalization and institutional innovations to guarantee the further development of market-oriented economic reform. In this sense, this paper mainly devotes to analyzing the historical process of administrative reform in China, examining the interactive relationship between the economic reform and the administrative reform, and also contributes to the assessment on the administrative reform in China in a transitional period. Key words economic reform, administrative reform, strategic choices, structural adjustments