Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.7, 2014

 

An Examination of Governmental Institution Reform during the Last Thirty Years from the Change of Management Perspective

(Abstract)

 

Zhou Zhiren and Xu Yanqing

 

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee stressed “giving more attention to implementing systematic, integrated and coordinated reforms,” and decided to establish a leading team to be in charge of overall planning, balanced coordination, all-round progress, and supervision and implementation, with a view to the all-round deepening of reform. This implies that change management is high on the agenda. The course of the State Council’s seven rounds of reform of governmental institutions since reform and opening up, organized and scrutinized from the point of view of change management, has been marked by gradual progress and robustness, with the transformation of functions as the key point at the heart of the process. This transformation obviously involves two phases: the first phase emphasized the transformation of the government’s economic management functions, while the second stresses and improves macro-level regulation and control, giving more attention to social management and public service functions. With respect to the design of the plan, however, there is a clear deficiency in the goals set and measures taken in the transformation of functions over the past decade. It is difficult to establish the relationship between particular measures and their effects on the one hand and the design of the three rounds of institutional reform on the other. Therefore, the question of “whether institutional reform itself needs reforming” has become a new proposition for our practice, one that needs to be considered from such aspects as strategic orientation, means of progress, public responsibilities, and overall planning and detailed process management.