Chinese Cities Supply Of Public Goods

The quality and quantity of the urban public goods have become the mainbenchmarks of a city's, or even a country's civilization and progress. Since a longtime ago, supplying the urban public goods is considered as one of the inherentduties of the governments. Both this traditional competition and the mono-centersupply system under the Planned Economy System result in the inadequacy, lack ofcapital and lower effectiveness in supply of the urban public goods. Under thecurrent condition that the finance of municipal governments is limited while thepublic's demand for public goods is increasing, how to supply public goodseffectively has become a common target for the governments.Since the 1970s, the emerging New Public Administration in the western worldand China's transition form the Planned Economy System to the Market EconomySystem have changed people's view on this issue. To begin with the basic definitionsand theories on the urban public goods, through an analysis of current supply as wellas its problems, this article puts forward a Multi-center and Multiplication Systemfor the supply of public goods in cities, and moreover, tries to explain the probabilityof improving the efficiency of production and supply in public goods by introducingmarket competition into the production and supply in public goods. Multi-center andMultiplication System for the supply of the urban public goods requires that theactive roles of governments, market and non-profit organs; an effective model ofchoice and mutual adjustment by establishing multi-subject system and mutualsupply system; seeking the balance of governments, market and non-profit organs inthe area of public goods supply.This article consists of four parts. Beginning with the public goods theory and the public goods multiplication supply theory, the first part introduces the urbanpublic goods' definitions and classifications, and furthermore elaborates the researchmeaning of the urban public goods. The second part analyzes the current conditionand problems in the area of public goods supply, through an international-copecomparison in respect to the public goods supply in China. The third part which isthe key point and highlight of this article, discusses the reason why the urban publicgoods should be or should not be supplied by the governments, and analyzes theprobability and inevitability of the market model. The fourth part from the viewpointof decision-making and multi-center and multiplication, produces thecountermeasures and suggestions for the supply of the urban public goods acrossChina.