China's Local Government Performance Assessment Study

Since the introduction of the reform and opening policy to cope with the reform of the economic structures, our government has implemented a series of reforms such as transforming government functions, regulating government's behaviors, reducing redundant employees and organizations, increasing the openness of the government's behaviors, etc. In this process, advanced foreign management conceptions and tools were introduced and the performance evaluation of government in China has stepped onto the practical stage. Performance evaluation of local government has been studied in different ways in recent years especially, and it is one of the main contents of administration reform. It is an urgent task for the construction of the socialist market economy in China to promote the development of government performance evaluation in all aspects and up build complete and standard index system and methods. Such work has remarkable reference and guiding significance to the administration reform and increase the government performance evaluation of our country presently.The purpose of this article is to analyze the existing problems in the performance evaluation of local governments in China, then construct a suit of scientific and rational assessing system according to the problems to evaluate the performance level of the local governments. According to the characters of the subject, qualitative and quantitative analyses, normative and empirical analyses were employed together in this article.Firstly, the article introduces the concepts, features, object, functions and methods of the government performance evaluation, on the basic of this analyze the situation and the existing problems of our country. Then, starts from the fruits and practical experiences of the studies both home and abroad, the article clearly define the function of our local government and constructs a suit of assessing system. Finally, the article applies AHP to determine the weight of the index, and uses the index system and weighting comprehensive evaluation method to evaluate the governmental performance of Qinghuangdao, and proposes operational advices and practical basis.