Public Sector Reforms in China - Essay Example

Public Sector Reforms in China Name: University: Public Sector Reforms in China Many would agree that, an effective government is of paramount importance in every country or state. A government that performs its role and duties well and effectively achieves this through good governance. An effective government can be described as one that ensures that its citizens obtain best there is of the services it provides as well as maintain its economic growth and development and political stability. With this in mind, many governments across the globe have undertaken the process of implementing reforms in their public sectors. Each government uses different strategies in their quest to have good governance. The move to reform the public sectors by the government is mainly brought about by her objectives on; efficiency, effectiveness and the economy. The reforms are made with the aim of improving the quality of the services offered by the public organizations (Kamarck, 2004). Reforms in the public sector account for different contexts in the state. These contexts include; social, cultural, political, constitutional and economic contexts. For the implemented reforms to result in the desired outcomes, involved parties should work in harmony. Though reforms in the public sectors are a global phenomenon, different countries implement them for different reasons (Kamarck, 2004). Some of the reasons for the reforms include corruption within the sectors, poor administration and pressure on the government from its citizens among others. China is among the countries which were involved in early stages of reforming their public sectors. This paper seeks to explore the reforms in China’s public sectors and what prompted them, the contexts under which their occurred, strategies used as well as the achievements following their implementation. Public management broadly encompasses government policies which are aimed at increasing productivity and efficiency of public service. The concept of public sector reforms gained popularity in 1980s when governments wanted to increase service delivery to the public. Public management aimed at improving the medical services offered in hospitals and dispensaries. It also intended to provide cheaper and high quality services at relatively low costs of production (Batley and George, 2004). Public sector reforms were brought about by political reforms that were experienced in many countries. Politicians always often promised better and high quality services to their populace during campaigns and they had to find efficient managers that would help to deliver their promises of better service delivery. Similarly many countries are facing serious financial challenges due to the ballooning public wage bill. To come out of these challenge they have to look for and adopt better management services that will ensure maximum productivity at a lower wage. Public management is based on several key concepts. China made sure that for it to have a successful public management there must be efficiency in any public office. This ensures that a lot of quality work is done that satisfy public demand. Offering of public services should be done at the right time so that the citizens of a country are not inconvenienced in any way. Government services can enhance the productivity of a nation because when it offers the services efficiently then the public can find time to engage in other economically viable activities. The services offered by the government like medical services educational services among others are highly efficient. Chinese government also ensures that there is a lot of accountability when it comes to financial and management issues. The civil servants in China are held responsible for any failures that can occur in their line of duty. This ensures that each and every individual working for the government has to do their best in order to satisfy the public demand (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). There are several cases where top management organs of government parastatals have voluntarily resigned from jobs to show that they are accountable for their actions. Public sector in China has demonstrated utmost transparency in dealing with public funds and employment of managers in both high level and low level government agencies. The management teams found in Chinese government parastatals are hired through intense vetting to ensure that they are not corrupt and can be trusted with public funds. The government of China has for a long time ensured that it opens up for public participation in areas that involve dealing with public funds and employment. One of the factors that make the Chinese government to adopt public sector reforms is the ever increasing wage bill and the increased demand by the citizens that they provide better services. It is every governments desire to improve the economy and change the lives of its citizens to middle class and upper class. In order to achieve this, they have to adopt better management practices and hire more productive managers (Burn and Bowornwathana, 2010). Public reforms in China have had several areas of convergence and divergence. First, the notion that government institutions should be run like a business is not generic in the sense that it cannot be applied in all areas. The universal trends of management and organization of public sector are not similar and they depend on several factors and more specifically, the willingness of the government to induce change (Independent Evaluation Group, 2008). Local inventions on management methods of public sectors sometimes bring conflicts when applied to other areas of the public sector. Similarly, other international methods of public sector management that have been borrowed by the Chinese government failed to be productive when tried on their parastatals. Application of new ideas in for improvement of public sector reform is contextual in the sense that they may or may not work depending on the circumstances that surround the adoption of the idea. Factors that may lead to success or failure of public reform include the constitution, political systems and culture. A country’s constitution may be made in such a way that it creates a red tape and therefore does not allow for ideas or structures that do not agree with the constitution. Political systems on the other hand may impede adoption of certain policies that might have ended up being beneficial to the public. People’s culture especially religion greatly affects public policy reforms since those who involved in implementing the reforms are sometimes restricted by their culture. It is also important for a government wants to borrow a given public sector reform to carry out thorough research and comparisons for the success of the reform. Some public sector reforms end up failing simply because governments borrow and try to adopt them without doing a detailed research. Similarly, the reforms should be implemented in such a way that they move from higher government organs or management levels down to the lowest ranking employee. In some cases this does not take place making reforms to remain only on the management level of a sector. China has done public sector reforms in several areas like health, public finance, public administration, human resource and public agricultural extension system among others. In health the Chinese government decided to upgrade primary health delivery to ensure that the public gets quality healthcare. This is also enhanced by the government’s effort to provide basic drugs free of charge to the public. Similarly the Chinese government has ensured that the disparity between urban and rural health services is reduced as much as possible. The government also employed public hospital pilots to cater for emergencies in public hospitals. This ensures that they are able to cater for clients from far off places in case of emergencies. Public health reforms came about around 1970s to 1980s after market liberalization had gained ground. Before then the public health sector used to be funded by the government or pooled community funds. The economic reforms that came about made the healthcare sector to be treated like an enterprise that had to make profits and be solvent. The guarantee of central support was no longer there. Consequently, the regional governments had to ensure that the healthcare providers are independent and do not solicit for funds from them. In order to fit in the changes, the providers started to use cheap drugs and perform cheap medical tests. Those who were not privileged to afford healthcare had to suffer since they could no longer be provided with free healthcare. Need for efficiency, quality, and equity led to major health sector reforms in China that had since then caused public uproar (CSIS, 2011). Public administration has equally witnessed several reforms that ensure that government institutions are performing to their best and that the public is contented with their productivity and environmental conservation efforts (Cheung and Anthony, 2005). Administrative reforms have since been applied in the country’s political development, improving efficiency and changing government’s image, globalization and opening up of the rest of the world and economic transition. The government also allocated some of its functions which were initially being handled by the central government to middle level organizations, reduced the number of ministries as well as downsized the number of organizations and reduced the number of its staff (Berman et al., 2010). Public finance reforms have been done in China to address several challenges. In the public reforms, they were guided by six main principles. These principles include sufficiency, equity, simplicity, neutrality, incentives and being forward looking. Sufficiency ensures that adequate government revenue is collected so that the government can have enough to spend in development and payment of salaries (Fock and Christine, 2007). The principle of equity and simplicity ensures that tax is well collected easily without any complications and money will be distributed fairly to every section of the government without biasness. Neutrality in finance management prevents the rise of any conditions that may interfere with the country’s economy while incentives are provided so that the right action can be achieved from the relevant stakeholders (Dahlman et al., 2006). Human resource development part of Chinese public reform platform has not been left behind. Since the start of the series of public reforms in China, human resource has been a fundamental part that ensures that the staff and personnel hired by the reformed Chinese public parastatals. Human resource reforms came about as a result of economic globalization. China had to ensure that her personnel were equipped with the desired information so as to be a part of the globalized economy (Dahlman et al., 2007). The policies that ensured public reforms in the human resource departments included, enhancing the training of personnel, ensuring the personnel meet the minimum required educational level as well as ensuring that the employees’ professionalism is attained. This was achieved by evaluating pubic administration and talents using skills drawn from the developed countries. Innovation has also been encouraged in china to maintain the national economic development (Gregory, 2002). Reforms in the agricultural sector in china also took place. Before the reforms, China had a poor agricultural sector. Due to the poor agricultural practices in the country, China was experiencing food shortages time after time. Following the problems experienced, Deng Xiaoping started a project to see to it that each household produced enough food to cater for their needs. With the implementation of the project, agricultural produce increased. Following the increased output, the food prices decreased as well as China’s agricultural income was raised. Later on, China adopted the growing of cash crops. Vegetable and meat production also increased. Later on, China started exporting foodstuffs after liberalization of her trade in agriculture. This was a great contrast to her previous situation of famines and shortages (Brandt et al., 2008). Public reforms in China have several areas of convergence and divergence. The Chinese government has witnessed success as well as failures in the process of implementing the reforms. For instance, the public administration reforms that have brought about several changes and downsizing of government ministries enabled China to significantly reduce expenditure by several billions. The new administration methods ensured that citizens who were working in the public service are given exact roles, duties and responsibilities to avoid overlapping of tasks. The records management system was also improved to ensure that the number of ghost workers in the government is reduced. Despite these achievements, public administration reforms were not considering the number of Chinese citizens who had to lose jobs during the downsizing of government ministries. Similarly, reduction of the number of ministries reduced the areas of service to the population and the level of consideration some issue were receiving by having independent ministries (Lane, 1997). In the health sector, the public reforms have created public outrage since the reforms undertaken have made provision of healthcare expensive and business like (Caiden and Su, 2003). Those who are not privileged do not receive proper medical attention and some may not even be able to access it at all since healthcare providers consider providing their services to those who are able to reciprocate by paying well. However, this situation was later changed by the introduction of health insurance cover for all. Public reforms have been experienced in developed and developing nations. This paradigm shift from the old methods of management has been received with much enthusiasm all over the world. However, governments should know that any reform- whether national or international- comes with implementation challenges and has several advantages as well as disadvantages. It is therefore the responsibility of every government which is in the process of reforming its public institutions to critically analyze the reforms to ensure that they are more beneficial to the public and sustainable (Politt, 2007). Chinese government has made significant economical, political and cultural achievements since it initiated public reforms in its institutions. It should therefore work towards responding to the challenges created by the reforms to ensure public satisfaction. This will also make its citizens to welcome reforms that might come in future and prevent them from having negative attitude towards reforms. References Batley, R. and George A. L. (2004). Changing Role of Government The Reform of Public Services in Developing Countries. Basingstoke Hampshire (UK): Palgrave Macmillan. Berman, E., M.J. Moon and H. Choi (eds.) (2010). Public Administration in East Asia: Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, CRC Press. Brandt, Loren et al. (2008), "China's Great Transformation", in Brandt, Loren; Rawski, G. Thomas, China's Great Transformation, Cambridge: Cambridge university press Burns, J.P. and B. Bowornwathana (eds.) Civil Service Systems in Asia, Edward Elgar, 2001. Caiden, G.S. & T. Su (eds) (2010) The Repositioning of Public Governance: Global Experiences and Challenges. Cheung, Anthony B. L. (2005). ‘The Politics of Administrative Reforms in Asia: Paradigms and Legacies, Paths and Diversities’ Governance, 18 (2), pp. 257-282. 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