While
Western-style political reforms remain illusory,
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership has
pledged that it will improve governmental
efficiency, boost central authority and eradicate
corruption and other ills associated with
maladministration.
Major structural
reforms within the State Council (or central
government) are being worked out even as Premier
Wen Jiabao is putting together his second cabinet.
Foremost among the changes is the so-called "big
ministries system" (dabuwei tizhi )
meaning that a number of
central-level ministries, commissions and
departments will be merged to facilitate the
formulation and execution of policy.
Other
measures are being taken to ensure that edicts
passed by party and state authorities will be
carried out without fail by local-level
administrations, which are prone to water down
Beijing’s instructions and act without proper
authority. The State Council currently has 28
ministries and commissions, in addition to four
dozen subsidiary offices and agencies that have
ministerial or vice-ministerial status.
Substantial streamlining will be achieved through
the creation of a number of "super-ministries".
This structural reform is the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao
administration’s response to widespread criticism
that the party-and-government apparatus has been
ineffective in pushing through difficult measures
ranging from cooling down the overheated sectors
of the economy to curbing corruption and
administrative malaise.
The concept of
"big ministries" has come about after Hu, Wen and
other leaders have studied bureaucratic systems in
countries ranging from Singapore to the United
States. At least three super-ministries are
expected to be created when the new cabinet is
endorsed by the First Plenary Session of the 11th
National People's Congress (China's legislature),
due to open on March 5.
They are: Ministry
of Transportation (MOT). Said to be based on the
US Department of Transportation, the proposed MOT
will incorporate current State Council units
including the Ministries of Transport and
Railways, the General Administration of Civil
Aviation, and the State Post Bureau.
Ministry of Energy (MOE). This
mega-department will incorporate energy-related
units within the National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC), in addition to State Council
units and state-controlled corporations in sectors
including oil and gas, coal, electricity and
nuclear energy.
Ministry of the
Environment and Construction (MOEC). This eagerly
anticipated mega-ministry will incorporate the
State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), and
the Ministries of Construction, Water Resources,
as well as Land and Natural Resources. MOEC will
also formulate the nation's strategies on issues
ranging from global warming to the pace of
urbanization.
Since news about this
bureaucratic surgery leaked out in November, the
response from experts and officials has largely
been positive. First, streamlining the government
is essential to the long-standing goal of "small
government, big society" that the CCP leadership
has been pursuing since the late 1980s. The Hu-Wen
team is under pressure to cut ballooning
administrative expenditure, which shot up from
5.49 billion yuan (US$755.0 million) - 4.71% of
total government outlay - in 1978 to 651.34
billion yuan - or 19.19% of total spending - in
2005.
Much more important than making
savings and pruning sinecures is that a strategic
merger of related ministries and departments will
boost efficiency. It is hardly a secret that the
Wen cabinet has for the past few years been
criticized for being "too soft" in mobilizing
central- and regional-level bureaucracies to
tackle problems ranging from environmental
despoliation to inflation. As Xinhua News Agency
commentator Xiao Hua put it: "Restructuring and
streamlining will minimize negative phenomena such
as overlapping functions, multiple directives from
different units, poor coordination and
bureaucratic infighting."
Chang Xiuze, a
senior researcher at the National Development and
Reform Commission's (NDRC) Institute of
Macro-economics, added: "Putting various
government functions and powers under one
department will boost Beijing's ability to provide
services to the community and to enforce
macro-level control and adjustments [if things go
wrong]".
Take the problematic fields of
energy and the environment. One reason why Beijing
has lagged behind oil-importing countries such as
Japan in developing a strategic oil reserve is
that energy policy is being devised by a host of
party and government departments. There have also
been widespread complaints by corporate and
individual consumers that the nation’s three oil
monopolies have indiscriminately raised prices
despite their having piled up profits of hundreds
of billions of yuan in 2007. The official media
has run dozens of stories on the high pay and
perks of oil company executives, which are more
than 10 times those of other state-owned
companies. Moreover, the new MOE may be better
placed to coordinate the exploitation of wind,
solar and other alternative energies, yet another
area where China has a lot of catching up to do.
Given the sad state of China's
environment, there is an even greater need for a
more potent anti-pollution unit. SEPA has been
deemed ineffective because of its limited powers
and frame of reference. The proposed MOEC, which
will have jurisdiction over land use as well as
waterways, would have more muscle in cracking down
on abuses including excessive industrialization
and urbanization. Other candidates for mergers
within the State Council include the Ministry of
Finance and the State Administration of Taxation,
as well as units dealing with agriculture and
forestry.
Big, however, does not make it
aesthetically pleasing - or the least bit
efficacious. The State Council already boasts
arguably the biggest single department in
post-1949 administrative history - the mammoth
NDRC - which is often dubbed a mini-State Council.
Working closely with the premier's office as well
as the State Council Secretariat, the NDRC vets
and fine-tunes major policy initiatives and
decisions affecting financial and monetary issues,
seminal infrastructure projects, industrial and
agriculture development, foreign economic
relations, energy and the environment, and so
forth. Despite the fact that the NDRC is headed by
Wen protege Ma Kai, the super-ministry has hardly
acquitted itself as the cabinet’s chief enforcer
and troubleshooter. A big reason is that
individual NDRC departments, which are often
headed by veteran bureaucrats with ministerial
ranking, are often engaged in debilitating turf
war with the other ministries.
It is still
too early to predict that the MOE, for example,
will be more effective than the NDRC's energy
department in pushing through policies in this
red-hot sector. It is even doubtful whether the
MOE will have full authority over the three oil
monopolies - including Petrochina, whose market
capitalization was double that of ExxonMobil when
it first went on the Shanghai bourse in November -
each of which is headed by a CEO with full
ministerial status. Since the early 2000s, the
three behemoths - like about 160 other
state-controlled corporations including the power
companies, the four major commercial banks and the
airlines - report to the powerful State-owned
Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
The extraordinary level of prerogatives enjoyed by
the oil and power monopolies is evident from the
fact that they are outside the purview of the
just-passed Anti-Monopoly Law.
How about
the proposed super-ministries' ability to enforce
edicts and regulations at the regional level? Take
the case of the large number of provincial and
municipal leaderships that have ignored wanton
pollution within their jurisdictions. There is no
guarantee that a provincial chief that has a
record of flouting environmental legislation will
necessarily be more conscientious or law-abiding
simply because SEPA has morphed into a bigger
MOEC. As the outspoken vice-director of SEPA, Pan
Yue, put it, his agency is pitted against "strong
vested interests" that are very often in cahoots
with local cadres.
While it may take years
to nurture a rule-of-law culture even among senior
officials, Beijing has resorted to the
time-honored "personnel card" to ensure
compliance. This means that officials who have
repeatedly run afoul of central fiats will be
fired, demoted or transferred to less important
provinces and cities. Beijing's hope is apparently
that beefing up the ministries - as well as
central authorities' ability to punish
recalcitrant cadre - will help crack the problems
of administrative malaise and stagnation. For
example, the State Council issued a directive late
last year, which said that local-level officials
who had failed to meet environmental targets -
such as reducing the discharge of effluents and
other pollutants in their areas by 2% a year - may
not be eligible for promotion.
Even before
the watershed 17th CCP Congress, the Hu-Wen
leadership started the experiment of having
central-level organs appoint provincial or
municipal cadres handling disciplinary and
personnel portfolios. Within each ruling
provincial or municipal party committee, there is
a senior cadre - who may in some cases be the
vice-party secretary - in charge of disciplinary -
including anti-corruption - matters. Until the
recent changes, the provincial party secretary had
a big say in the appointment of his disciplinary
chief. From early 2007 onwards, however, the
Central Commission for Disciplinary Commission
(CCDI), China's highest anti-corruption agency
that is headed by a member of the Politburo
Standing Committee, has begun naming senior
disciplinary cadres in a number of localities.
Alternately, these cadres are being rotated
frequently among different regions to ensure
administrative neutrality.
Political
sources in Beijing said the CCP Organization
Department was considering the direct appointment
of regional cadres in charge of personnel matters.
In theory, these measures should at least make it
easier for Beijing to penalize local officials who
have either defied central edicts or been found
guilty of corruption and dereliction of duty.
From a broader perspective, incremental
reforms such as the "big ministries system" is
crucial to the CCP leadership's claim that the
party-and-state apparatus is capable of delivering
economic growth, administrative efficiency, and
clean governance in the absence of "Western-style"
institutions such as multi-party politics or
universal suffrage. In the rest of their second -
and last - five-year term, the Hu-Wen team will
also experiment with the partial empowerment of
the eight so-called "democratic parties,"which are
CCP-affiliated organizations of professionals and
businessmen that have vowed to give advice and new
ideas to Beijing while observing Communist party
leadership.
The legacy of the Hu-Wen era,
not to mention the viability of the "China model",
will hinge in no small measure on whether such
distinctively Chinese, "within-the-system" reforms
can satisfy a populace that has exhibited growing
impatience over the constraints and distortions of
one-party authoritarian rule.
Dr
Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a senior fellow at The
Jamestown Foundation. He has worked in senior
editorial positions in international media
including Asiaweek news magazine, the South China
Morning Post and the Asia-Pacific Headquarters of
CNN. He is the author of five books on China,
including the recently published Chinese
Politics in the Hu Jintao Era: New Leaders, New
Challenges.
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