The Study Of The Public Hearing System In Public Decisions

The public hearing system was introduced to China since the late 1980's, during the past 3 decades, numerous hearings of broad scope, such as pricing, administrative decisions, legislation, urban planning and other fields, were held across all over the country.In practice, how exactly did those hearings function? Did they play under the principles of "science", "democracy", "transparent" and "public participation" as laws and rules promulgated? Through observation, we could find a very interesting phenomenon, that is:on one hand, the government continuously shows high level of enthusiasm to various types of hearings which are regarded with great success and meaningful initiative, on the other hand, the hearing participants—the public, do not act enthusiastically like the government does, and even show some cold and tired. We must ask why the government and the public's attitude to the hearing show so much contrast? Basically, during the process of public decision-making reform, the hearing system broke the original "solo" decision-making mode, and turned it to the public-government "chorus" mode. In this "chorus" mode, the participants and applicants became "lead singers" and government only played host and is responsible for organizing, or as a background "command" role. It seems nice since the government retreated to the background, but in fact, it cannot hide the truth that the government enjoys the exclusive decision-making power.When most people think that their opinions will not be effective for decision-making, they were participating in a government-arranged performance. When their desires of expressing themselves in the decision-making process crushed again and again, they lost the confidence to the public hearing system, which sounds so beautiful. In order to break this form of participation through the whitewash, the government must open the closed decision-making system, and share power with the public.