A Study On The Improvement Of Local Government Capabilities Under The Circumstance Of Economic Globalization

As an irreversible trend of world economic development at present, economic globalization closely links the development of different countries and regions together. Against the background of economic globalization, development elements such as funds, technology and qualified personnel are effectively distributed worldwide with international competition more domestic-oriented and domestic competition more internationalized. Products of any region are not only produced to meet the needs of local people, more importantly, to participate in the international labor division and enter the international production and distribution system. Although there are incessant anti-globalization voices, practice shows that any attempt to break away from globalization and to make "a solo flight" is useless and even detrimental. Active participation is the rational choice.In China, after more than 30 years of reform and opening-up, the system of market economy has basically been established. Particularly, along with the continuous decentralization of the power of central government, the growing autonomy of local economic and social development is becoming a representative of local interests day by day. Meanwhile, Chinese market economy is still under continuous improvement. Therefore, compared with the mature market economy of Western countries, its sense of organization and coordination in development, anti-risk capability and self-regulation capability need to be strengthened. Moreover, in order to effectively prevent Western countries from taking the advantage of globalization to erode Chinese economy, the "visible hand" of government still plays an extremely important role in the system of Chinese market economy and dominates local economic and social development.Economic globalization is a "double-edged sword", making all levels of local government face severe challenges at the time of bringing us opportunities. Its real nature is that multi-national corporations carry out integration of elements worldwide with the aid of capital and technological movements. During this process, institutional factors are an important factor affecting costs of element integration of multi-national corporations. As each local government is a main body of institutional supply, its understanding of economic globalization, choices in policy-making and extent of policy-enforcement play an important role in promoting or impeding local economic development. Therefore, competition among regions seems to be competition among enterprises but it is actually competition among governments and competition of government capabilities. Therefore, under the circumstance of economic globalization, how to enhance government capabilities, how to seize the opportunity of globalization and take full advantage of two kinds of resources and two markets while avoiding their disadvantages, how to enable local economy and society to achieve leapfrog development and how to continuously narrow the gap with developed countries in the world are major practical problems for all levels of government in China.The building of local government capabilities is not only a theoretical issue but also an important practical issue requiring continuous exploration. Local government capabilities have such main characteristics as coerciveness, limitedness, service, wholeness, hierarchy and mobility. From the perspective of government functions, capabilities of local governments mainly include capabilities of planning and development, system innovation, resource distribution, market regulation and management, providing public products and services, organization and coordination, social control, human resource development and crisis management, etc. Therefore, government capabilities are a manifestation of comprehensive capabilities and improvement of local government capabilities is a complicated systematic project.Suzhou is a prefecture-level city with relatively fast economic and social development in Southern Jiangsu Province. It is the place where Deng Xiaoping, the chief designer of China’s reform and opening up, enriched and perfected the concept of "Well-off Society". As an important seedbed of Southern Jiangsu Model, many Suzhou’s economic and social development indicators take the leading position in the whole country. To some extent, Suzhou’s development is a miniature of China’s reform and opening-up. Therefore, its successful practice not only has a significance of reference and guidance to the development of most parts of China but also has many universal experience and practice during the process of government capability building. Suzhou’s leapfrog development seems to have benefited from its unique regional advantage of being adjacent to Shanghai and vigorously developing open economy but it actually has benefited from having a strong government of Suzhou. Precisely because all levels of government of Suzhou continuously emancipate the mind, actively participate in economic globalization, give full play to the role of scientific guidance and strong promotion, Suzhou is able to seize every major development opportunity, continuously expand the breadth and depth of its participation in economic globalization, vigorously bring in international quality capital, advanced technology and development philosophy, enthusiastically seize opportunities for development and achieve rapid economic growth and social changes. It can be said that Suzhou promotes government capability building through active participation in economic globalization, while the improvement of government capabilities in turn enables Suzhou to hold a more favorable position in international competition and further promotes its participation in international labor division and cooperation.At present, China is in a critical stage of the construction of a "Well-off Society". Under the context of economic globalization, the current focus of the improvement of local government capabilities in China is to strive to do a good job in the following 5 aspects:to incessantly improve the capability of managing open economy by further improving leaders’and cadres’capabilities of strategic thinking, understanding of policies, working in accordance with market laws and international cooperation and exchange; to keep building a service-oriented government by further strengthening construction of the public service system, updating ideas, performing official duties in accordance with law, improving the public financial system, enhancing office efficiency building and raising the level of marketization of public service; to continuously improve the level of social management by further perfecting the main structure of social management, strengthening urban-rural community development, improving the interest coordination system, enhancing the prevention and control ability of social security and the ability of public crisis response; to continuously improve the competitiveness of organization and development by further transforming government functions, optimizing set-up of institutions, improving personnel quality, promoting the reform of the cadre and personnel system, strengthening the construction of clean and incorruptible government and learning-oriented institutions; to continuously enhance and perfect the government performance assessment system by further establishing the value orientation of assessment of government, promoting the diversification of main bodies of assessment, perfecting the assessment index system and strengthening the application of assessment results.