“Downsizing” the Chinese State: Government Retrenchment in the 1990s

Abstract

The Chinese Communist Party has maintained tight control over the institutions and processes for creating and deleting official posts. The Party's goal of maintaining as many official positions as possible to preserve political patronage and social stability conflicts with the need to curb administrative expenses and cut government deficits. Aggregate data indicate that the downsizing campaigns of the 1990s have not been particularly successful and that staffing levels in local government are probably to a large extent politically determined. A case study reveals that some local governments may have officially downsized while expanding the total size of public employment.

Determinants of government size: evidence from China

“…Official accounts indicate a decrease of 1.15 million government administrative positions from 1998 to 2002. The number of public officials was reduced by 20% for central-and provincial-level party organizations, 47.5% for the State Council, 48.2% for provincial governments and prefectures, and 19.4% for counties and townships (Burns 2003). Nevertheless, the number of budgeted employees (civil servants plus employees, such as teachers, in public service units) actually kept increasing.…”

“…The main reasons for the expansion of China"s government, as suggested in the literature, include "maintaining political patronage" (Burns 2003), "party control" (Brødsgaard 2002), the "authoritarian nature of China"s political system" (Ngok and Zhu 2007) and "unsuccessful government function shifts" (Ni and An 2008). While this literature may have identified some causes of government growth in China, emphasizing solely the unique characteristics of the Chinese political system may overlook some important factors that also play roles in determining government size.…”

The Tension Between Governance and State-Building

“…Its aim was to accommodate development of the market economy. However, as [5] found, despite the new bureaucratic restructuring, "the CCP continues to maintain control over the bianzhi system because of its importance for Party patronage and social stability. Fundamentally conflicted, the CCP needs both to maintain official positions … and to cut positions for the sake of the economy".…”

Civil Service Reform in China

“…These data indicate the stability of the non state-owned enterprise portion of public employees. In spite of numerous downsizing campaigns (supervised in the 1990s by the State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform [SCOPSR, Zhongyang jigou bianzhi weiyuanhui]), the number of government employees, including civil servants, has apparently changed little over the past decade (see Burns, 2003a). …”

“…In addition to the loopholes discussed above, the government's restructuring policy, which from 1998 to 2002 sought to downsize government bodies, clashed with the goal of improving the quality of the civil service through new hires (Burns, 2003a). In 1998, 1999, and 2000, to meet their downsizing targets many bodies could hire no new staff at all, thus undermining one of the objectives of the reform.…”