| At present, the number of civil servants, "the proportion of civil servants in population" have been among the most important issues which the public concern. During 30 years of reform and opening up, the Chinese government has promoted 6 times reforms of government institutions and administrative system, and made great efforts to streamline the organizations and personnel, but it's difficult to change the established views on this issue. To be specific, most people feel that all previous reforms have achieved limited success which mainly is owing to the dissatisfied facts on reducing the civil servants. So how to scientifically determine the optimum size of the civil servants in this country became the key problem. Actually, for any country, the size of civil servants has to meet the public management needs. Identifying an ideal proportion of civil servants in population is viewed as the crux of the problem. Through a comparative analysis of other countries about the total size, the internal structure of civil servants and the influential factors concerning the civil servants, the research suggests that "the proportion of civil servants in population" in a country should be no less than 1%, and if the financial resource allows and public management demands, the proportion could be more than 2%,3%. As a large developing country, China is now experiencing social transformation, economic and social development, urbanization, so even at this stage, it's necessary and feasible to position the ratio about 1%.Now the absolute and relative size of Chinese civil servants is within the reasonable bounds, the problem does not simply refer to the "bloated" organization. Too much emphasis on reducing in the past will confuse the core issue; in fact the key problem for china is not about the total size, but some structural and functional difficulties lying inside the system. The unreasonable structure has caused some problems, for example, there coexists the phenomenon of "overstaffed" and "understaffed" which restricts the executive force of government and the ability of providing public service. This paper maintains, the government should adjust constantly the ideas of reform, and attempts to integrate the reformed ideas, government functional adjustment, administrative system reform and constructing service-oriented government into the broad framework. It is believed, though overall planning, replacing "emphasizing reduce" with "adjusting structure and function", the recent problem will be resolved.Service-oriented government has been identified as the ultimate goal for reform and development in our country. Now governments at all levels are accelerating the process. Government functions begin to attach more importance to social management and public service. Accordingly, the reform of institutions and administrative personnel should meet the new requirements. On account of the expansion of government public services, "Small Government" can hardly be suitable for future development. Service-oriented government needs a moderate size of civil servants. But at the same time, all types of constraints should be taken into account when it comes to any reform. This paper proposes, in the short term, we will adhere to the principle of "moderately tight control", control strictly the total amount of civil servants, and try to address the structural and functional problems, improve the quality of government operation and the professional skills, which will undoubtedly facilitate next reform. In the long-term, social development has given birth to a large number of requests to expand the size of civil servants. So we will determine the influential factors, expand the size appropriately, and try hard to find the way in the reform to resolve the conflict between strictly control and development needs.This paper is composed of seven parts. Chapter 1 is the empirical observation about other countries (regions), we describe the characteristics of the total size and internal structures of four types of countries (regions), and carry out horizontal comparison, try to explore and identify some laws about the size of civil servants. Chapter 2 is the theoretical analysis about the trend of long-term expansion; we try to provide some new ideas on adjusting the direction of the Chinese government institution development in the future. In Chapter 3, we take Japan as a case, and analyze the total size, the internal structure of the central and local government which verifies the observation experience and theoretical analysis in the previous chapters. In Chapter 4, we analyze the total size and internal structure of Chinese current government, and take Suizhou city as a case to describe the actual problems, and we draw a conclusion that the key perplexity for China is not the total amount of the civil servants, but some structural and functional difficulties inside. Chapter 5 analyzes the various factors which influence the size of civil servants in China. We adopt the empirical method to analyze the provincial government. The research shows that urbanization and economic development will determine the size of civil servants, which means we should focus on these new factors in the future reform. Chapter 6 proposes the principles of adjusting and reform. We will consider the constraints as well as the forward-looking factors in the process of reform; we should adhere to the combination of "moderately tight control"and "moderate expansions", "size control" and "structure adjustment", "overall control" and "partial expansions", and "quantitative management" and "configuration management". Chapter 7 is the specific measures of the reform, including the main measures and the related supporting measures.In short, the reform of civil servants requires a long time. So long as we exert efforts to plan and implement the reform of civil servants with an active attitude and far-sight, take hold of the logical relation between service-oriented government and institution reform in terms of the current situations in China, the ultimate goal will be gradually achieved.
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