Study On The Supply Policy Of Equal Access To Basic Public Services In China

Basic public services, directly concerning the survival and development of human beings, are the most nuclear and essential part of public services. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, it has witnessed the rapid development of China's economy and society, increasing growth of comprehensive national power and great improvement of basic public services supply. However, China's basic public services supply at present is still confronted with two prominent issues. The first is the deficiency of the general amount of basic public services supply, the highlighting well-being issues concerning the public's benefits and the vehement reaction from the public. The second is the serious structural imbalance between urban areas and suburban areas, and among different regions, different groups and individuals, which is featured with an obvious unequal access to distribution. With the equal access tendency of public services throughout the world and the faster pace of China's transformation of economic development model, it is being a world focus to push forward the equal access to basic public services.Currently, there have been many academic researches on connotation, background, theoretical basis, supply scope, performance assessment and realization routes of equal access to basic public services. Nevertheless, the current researches are lacking in reasonable theoretical framework of analysis and study system. Hence, it's difficult to conduct overall and systematic policy analysis from the features of public service. As a result, it will easily contribute to the indefiniteness of policy goal and the ambiguity of value orientation, which then causes the difficulty in constructing a reasonable index system of policy assessment to conduct quantitative study. Also, to realize the supply policy of equal access to basic public services will lack targeted idea and methods, which is disadvantageous to practicing policy.In this sense, this study starts from the perspective of public policy, refers to the theoretical achievements of western policy science and public services supply and combines the reality survey of China's basic public services supply policy. It conducts an overall and systematic analysis about the goal, value orientation, policy-making methodology, policy-implementing model and policy assessment criteria of the supply policy of equal access to basic public services through establishing the Pyramid model from four dimensions of value orientation, policy making, policy execution and policy assessment. Meanwhile, by choosing Zhoushan City of Zhejiang Province, China, as the subject of policy assessment to conduct the empirical research, it constructs an index system to test the public's satisfactory degree to the supply policy of equal access to basic public services and puts forward effective routes to push forward the supply policy of equal access to basic public services.Through the above-mentioned theoretical exploration and empirical study, this article comes to the following five conclusions. First, to promote the integrated development of human being is the ultimate goal of the supply policy of equal access to basic public services. Equal access is the intermediate goal to realize the ultimate goal while to satisfy the basic demand of the public's survival and development is its starting point and essential purpose. Two, below the ladder of the ultimate goal of to promote the integrated development of human being, integration of efficiency and equity is the value orientation of China's supply policy of equal access to basic public services. Third, bounded rationalism is the methodology to make the supply policy of equal access to basic public services in China at present, which determines that the policy making is being conducted between the bounded rational conditions of almost absolute rationalism and absolute irrationalism. That is to say, the policy making pursues the satisfactory standards rather than the optimal criteria. Four, at present, China should insist on the supply model of one subject and multiple supply routes, making efforts to form the complementary pattern of multiple supply mechanisms featured with the dominator of government and extensive participants of private sectors and third sectors during the process of the supply policy of equal access to basic public services. Five, as an effective administrative tool, the public's satisfactory degree should be the assessment standards, which holds on the-public-orientated idea and stresses satisfying reasonable demands of the public as the final assessment criteria. It fully embodies the management idea of public responsibility and priority of the public.Throughout the whole study, by fully referring to and applying the existent theories and research methods, this article attempts for four creative aspects as follows. First, based on the analysis of multi-dimensional perspectives from three aspects of value, purpose and process, it systematically defines the connotation of the equal access to basic public services so as to lay a foundation for an overall policy analysis. Second, based on the perspective of public policy from four dimensions of the value orientation, policy making, policy implementation and policy assessment, it establishes a Pyramid model for theoretical analysis so as to provide a new analytical framework for the supply policy of equal access to basic public services in an overall and systematic way. Third, based on the Pyramid model and considering reality and challenges, it conducts an overall analysis and proposes the general demand of the supply policy of equal access to basic public services in China at present. In other words, it consists of the ultimate goal of to promote the integrated development of human being, the value orientation of integration of efficiency and equity, the methodology of bounded rationalism to make policy, the fundamental model of one subject and multiple supply routes to implement policy as well as the policy assessment criteria of the public's satisfactory degree. This not only enriches the theoretical fruits of the study on the supply policy of equal access to basic public services, but also offers reference for pushing policy implementation. Four, based on the standard of the public's satisfactory degree, it develops a measuring table to test the public's satisfactory degree to the supply policy of equal access to basic public services from five dimensions of public anticipation, perception quality, perception effect, credibility and public complaint. It makes a scientific and reasonable measuring index system by combing the qualitative and quantitative methods to test and analyze the table. This not only provides a new perspective for the assessment of the supply policy of equal access to basic public services, but carries out the exploratory attempt to construct the assessment index system as well.Admittedly, due to the academic level of the author, there are many defects in this study. Therefore, the last part of this article clearly points out the limitations and the direction for further improvement and depth research.