New Public Management And Its Adaptability To China

The subject studied in this paper is Western new public management and its adaptability to China. It attempts to disclose the inherent law, values and limitations of the global administrative reform symbolized by the new public management, discuss the feasibility of implementing the new public management reform in China and provide the beneficial train of thoughts for how to refer to the detailed contents in the process of administrative modernization of our country. The paper is divided into three parts.Part 1 Theory and Practice of the New Public ManagementIt is thought in the paper that the new public management reform movement occurring at the end of 1970s has its profound social background of the times. Globalization brings the opportunities of using the international resources and challenges of reducing the management cost to all the countries. The financial crisis and prominent social contradictions at the stage of social reform show that the management mode of traditional public departments has not meet the demand of development. The reformed international propagation makes the reform gradually evolved to the global new public management reform movement.The new public management is the reform movement of transforming the governing modes of public departments via policies based on the market-oriented encouragement mechanism and enterprise-oriented management methods. The contents of the new public management are divided in the broad sense and the narrow sense. In the broad sense, the new public management includes functional transformation and innovation of management modes. In the narrow sense, the new public management only involves the latter one. Its theoretical framework includes the governmental functional theory of redefinition of the governmental role and the theory of managerialism of improvement of the governmental operating mechanism and management methods. The governmental functional theory thinks that both the government and the market have defects. The governmental expansion is the important reason for the failure of the government. The defects of the market are not the adequate conditions for delivering problems to the government for treatment. It claims to let the service institutions selected by the citizens and the market to compete against each other with the marketization reform and overcome the low efficiency and bureaucratism of the governmental monopoly. The managerialism thinks that there is no essential difference in management between the public departments and the private departments and the management of the private departments is superior to that of the public departments. It claims to refer to the management experience of the private departments to reform the public departments and build the continuously innovative enterprise-type government. The definition of the new public management in the paper is different from the mainstream idea, which is helpful to explain the reform practice of the different types of countries, and especially the developing countries.The classified descriptions are made in the paper in order to clearly observe and compare the actual reform cases of the countries at the same or different stages of social development. The basic conclusion is that the new public management movement is global, indeed and the new public management is the important tool that the government uses to deal with globalization, economic development and crisis or difficulties in the social reform. The new public management movement, which has dominated the world administrative reform for 30 years, is not the loss or fault of an age but the luck and wisdom at the age of great reform of human society. All the practical cases of the countries taking it for reference show that the developing countries can selectively apply the new public management in accordance with their own national situations.The reform has the three important characteristics. First, the reform has the double missions. It is not only a management reform but also a deep adjustment of politics and administration as well as relations between countries and citizens. Second, the reform is characterized as a process and two stages. The emphasis at the previous stage is functional transformation and the emphasis at the latter stage is innovation of management methods and improvement of management efficiency and quality. Third, the reform has been striking common characteristics which are decentralization marketization, enterprise management, socialization, contracts, publicizing, informationization and globalization.Part 2 Values and Limitations of the New Public ManagementThe innovation of the new public management relative to the traditional public administrative is represented in 6 aspects. First, it breaks through the traditional concept of the governmental monopolized public service and develops the governmental functional theory. Second, the hierarchical organizational theory of the central centralization of state power is developed into the organizational theory of a more equal team with separation of more powers. Third, the traditional principle of dichotomy of politics and administration is developed into the principle of dichotomy of politics and management. It separates the executive function from decision-making, lets the managers carry out the independent management and inherits the spirit of the traditional dichotomy that politics shall not interfere in administration too much and at the same time strengthens control of politics over administration, which is actually separation of political administration from managerialized execution and of landmark significance. Fourth, the theory of indirect responsibility for standardized rules and the upper level is developed into the theory of direct responsibility for results and customers, which realizes consistency of responsibilities with rights in management. Fifth, the theory of bureaucratic governments is developed into the theory of competitive governments. Sixth, the theoretical foundation is greatly developed. Therefore, the new public management relative to the traditional public administration is a landmark. It is of high value of reference, so it is of originality although it has been there earlier.Its practical achievements are reflected as follows. The trend of the continuous growth of the governmental scale is effectively controlled and decreased, to a different extent. The vigor of the private departments is strengthened. The developed countries basically get rid of the difficulties of economic stagflation and financial crisis and create the new prosperous period of the world economy. The reform has established the colorful administrative management modes and started the age of the new public management. Practice proves that the new public management can be expected and pursued by the developing countries.The new public management has the theoretical limitations. 1. It does not describe the applicable scope of the hypothesis of economic man in the public fields and how to deal with the human altruistic motive and behavior. 2. The management method of running as enterprises is only applicable to the private products and services demanded and the market can provide. Most of the steering functions, that is, function of formulating policies, rules and regulations and many functions of law enforcement can only belong to the government. 3. There is lack of the internal consistency in the theory. There is lack of the systematic theoretical explanation to various paradoxes occurring in the reform.There exist the defects of policies and practical difficulties in the reform. 1. The design of the customer-oriented system is mainly applicable to the fields where the governmental services are provided, and it is difficult to realize the customer orientation if the customers'rational requirements contradict the statesmen's policies. 2. There is lack of the systematic policies in the reform. The reformers often attend to one thing and lose another as well as ignore the cooperation and coordination between departments, which brings about the shattered system structure and difficulties in supervision and management. In addition, too much attention is paid to the measurable indexes and the important quality that cannot be quantized is lost. 3. The policies tend to impose uniformity on all enterprises in the reform.In the paper, the values, limitations, achievements and defects are completely and systematically dealt with. It is in the domestic advanced level in the research in the filed and helpful to accumulation of knowledge and reference in practice.Part 3 Analysis of Adaptability of the New Public Management Reform to ChinaThe international propagation or adaptability to a foreign country of the new public management reform is subject to the three factors. The first is the national situation, including the times, stages and political systems or modes. The second is the dynamic constraint conditions for whether the reform is successful or not, including magnitude of dynamic force of demand for reference and cost as well as income. The third is the contents and property of the reform experience of a foreign country. The adaptability or matching degree of the reform experience in a foreign country to the national situation determines the necessity, feasibility and optional objects of the reform and the dynamic constraint conditions of the reform determine the priority of reference of the reform and the process of the reform management.The detailed analysis of various opinions on adaptability of the new public management to China and the national situation is made in the paper. It is thought that the conditions for China to refer to the new public management have been mature. The reasons are follows. 1. The entry into the WTO helps China accelerate establishment of the market premise and foundation for the private departments necessary to the new public management reform. The economic marketization degree of China reaches 73.8% and the proportion of the output value of the private departments in GDP is about 65% in 2003. 2. The international concept of human rights is accepted politically. The development of human rights has become the principal target of the national construction and one of the important components of the concept of governing the country, which creates the unprecedented favorable conditions for the governmental reform centered on the citizens'rights. The promulgation and implementation of some laws such as Law on Administrative License and Civil Servant Law, etc. perfects the"governing system based on ruling by law". 3. The qualitative change occurs to society. China enters the mature period of the basic realization of the first modernization in 2005. 4. There have been the new public management factors and they are continuously strengthened in the practice of the administrative reform of China.However, the administrative reform of China bears the missions of the two modernizations. The two-step strategy shall not be selected, that is, the bureaucratic system shall not be established first and then the new public management shall be used to reform the bureaucratic system. The transitional strategy shall not also be selected, that is, the contents of the new public management shall not be absorbed on the basis of the traditional bureaucratic system. The development law of the developing countries in the process of running after modernization shall be followed, the new public management shall be selected as the standing point and the mission of perfecting the traditional public administration shall be considered to make the two administrative modernizations in the harmonious development and realize the target of the service government with the mode of cross-span development.The method and procedure of determining the contents of our country referring to the new public management are as follows. The candidate items for the new public management reform shall be first determined and then the process of elimination is used to determine the optional items according to the actual requirements of the administrative reform of our country and finally the priority of the optional items shall be arranged according to the standards of big dynamic force of demand and high cost and benefit.In the paper, the ideas of basing on the new public management, considering the mission of perfecting the traditional public administration and realizing the target of the service-orientated government with the mode of cross-span development and the analysis thoughts of the detailed contents of referring to the new public management are first clearly presented, which are of obvious realistic significance for promoting the healthy development of the administrative reform.