Xi Jinping emerged from the 19th Party Congress with a mandate to push China into a ‘new era’. To support this agenda, the Party has proposed a scheme to retool the machinery of government.
Passed at the NPC 17 March, it is the most ambitious restructuring in decades, creating seven new ministries and adjusting the structure of nearly every national agency.
It will change how government works with the Party, the market and the outside world. It could deliver streamlined governance, but risks enormous growing pains as the system copes with a disruptive change. This report explains each of the 26 changes to state structure included in the reform document: what’s changing, why and what to expect.
Liu He 刘鹤 Politburo member describes the plan as a ‘revolutionary’ reform that will touch every part of the state. It attempts to overcome endemic problems of policy implementation by creating cradle-to-grave accountability for policy goals, entrusting new, specialised ministries with singular missions.
Leaders have warned for years that ‘vested interests’ and inefficiency pose an existential threat to the Party-state. The roots of these problems were planted in the Mao era: ministries were created to meet production targets in ‘sectors’ 行业 of a planned economy.
But the biggest worry is no longer production, and those sectors are a bad fit for contemporary policy.
Former finance minister Lou Jiwei 楼继伟 joked ‘frogs in the river are governed by the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA); frogs on the shore are governed by the State Forestry Administration’.
As it attempts to pivot toward meeting what Xi calls the ‘ever-growing needs of the Chinese people’, the Party needs a government fit to regulate a demand-driven economy. The new integrated system addresses the question of oversight and accountability and designs new, purpose-built agencies.
China Direct would like to thank China Policy for sharing this wide-ranging Report with our readers.
For more information please contact: Ekaterina Kuroedova: ekaterina.kuroedova@policycn.com
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