An Analysis Of Government's Performance Assessment Under The Background Of Harmonious Society

The Fourth Plenum of the 16th CPC calls us to strengthen the Communist Party of China (CPC)'s ability to govern. In response to this call we must adhere to the policy of mobilizing all positive factors by every means with the aim of improving our ability to build a socialist harmonious society. On the opening ceremony of The Symposium on Improving the Ability of Leading cadres at the Provincial and Ministerial Level to Build a Socialist Harmonious Society in 2005, Comrade Hu Jintao stressed that to build a socialist harmonious society is an important mission for our Party with a view of building a well-off society and creating a new situation of socialism with Chinese characteristics. To carry out this policy, it proves more critical to give our respect to the mass'innovative spirit. And through the deepening of reform and institutional innovation to mobilize all positive factors to stimulate the creativity and vitality of the entire society, we strive to ensure that all Chinese people can not only drain their talents and satisfy their own needs, but also live in harmony for better consolidating the social basis fulfilling the historic mission of the presiding CPC. Obviously, with the development of a harmonious society , the CPC as well as its central and local governments should work to make corresponding change in accordance with the requirements. As an effective means of administration, the central and local governments'performance assessment should also be adjusted to the times so as to achieve their regulatory functions and promote the process of a harmonious society in China.Based on the comprehensive assessment of the performance of our existing practice, this thesis analyzes and summarizes the existing problems for the current performance assessment system of the Government To conclude, this thesis designs some ideas to solve these problems. Behind this logic, CPC is attempting to establish a new assessment system for Government's performance with Chinese characteristics. The thesis consists of three parts :The first part explores the relationship between a harmonious society and the Government's performance assessment.Building a harmonious society is the background to assess and evaluate the performance of CPC central and local governments, which requires that the government's performance assessment should correspond to the characteristics of the times. Under this background, the central and local governments should go toward the comprehensive orientation when being assessed and evaluated. By scientifically assessing and evaluating, we may ensure that the Government's work can grow well with economy and politics. Therefore, we cannot simply copy the Western mode of performance assessment, but strive to build a government's performance assessment system with Chinese characteristics.The Government's performance assessment orients the social development process. As a means of management, assessing performance is a unified process of values and facts, which is good for the Government to improve its value-oriented performance and achieve the goals of good governance; however, value-oriented government functions will also lead to a distorted and erroneous offside. As a result the Government meddles in social development. In this sense, owning to the objective value-oriented assessment, with a scientific development concept and a correct view of achievements as a guide to assess the performance of Government, backed by a comprehensive index system, multiple-level assessment bodies, accurate assessing methods, a scientific assessment procedure, the Government can effectively guide and encourage public officials to fulfill their careers, pursue the goals of good governance and promote social harmony.The second major part conducts an analysis of the problems in assessing and evaluating the Chinese government's performance. Firstly, the performance assessment values errors. The main problems include ignoring public interests and public satisfaction, evaluating officials'duties unjustly and generalizing government-based economic system. These problems arise from both the systematic level and the operational level. For instance, the negative impact of traditional "official position" on administrative culture, the unsound Civil Public Accountability Mechanism, the imperfect Government performance evaluation system, the problems in Government's administration and so on.Secondly, the single performance evaluation system. Due to the character and values of the masses, Chinese citizens rarely participate in civic governance, while more difficulties are caused by the fact that information is not open to the public.Thirdly, the Government focuses more on assessing economic performance. For historical reasons and the pan-economic management values, Government performance assessment consists mainly of economic indicators. This is bound to cause disharmony in local development.Finally, performance assessment is mainly short-term. Due to the lack of standardization and being neglected of its implementation, it takes a form of short-term mobile warfare and various competitions have become a hotbed of corruption emerged.The third part puts forward corresponding suggestions for solving the above problems.First, we have to transform government functions and update the Government's performance appraisal values. Dance government to government efficiency by the government; change "the government position" as "people-based";and turn mechanical efficiency into caring system effectiveness.Secondly, we should reasonably increase the main body of evaluating performance in order to ensure a fair and effective performance evaluation system. There is a certain proportion of the main assessing body, eventually including comprehensive assessment organization, direct leadership, assessing their own and other organs in relation to the Government administration.Thirdly, we need additional performance indicators, more scientific and harmonious assessing operation. The additional indicators should comply with a harmonious society, the concept of scientific development, which takes into consideration both economic indicators and social and environmental indicators. Meanwhile, they should flexibly apply to various regions in China.Finally, promulgating and safeguarding related systems so as to overcome the side effects of performance evaluation. We should build a flow process of evaluating performance and convert it into an assessment system, which will help fundamentally eliminate the phenomenon of proforma.