Trade Association Of China Accounting System Reform Of The Public Administration Perspective

As a form of nongovermental nonprofit organization, providing financialinformation is an important means for trade associations to communicate with thegovernment, its members and the public.Transparent and standard financialinformation ensures trade associations to obtain trust from the public to governthe trade. In order to improve the quality of nongovermental nonprofitorganizations' financial information in China, the ministry of finance issued TheNongovernmental Nonprofit Organization Accounting System, which was putinto effect on Jan. 1,2005. It is a great achievement in the process of accountingrecond system reform in Chinese trade associations. However, does the newsystem really improve the quality of trade asscociations' financial information?On account of the importance of financial informtion to trade asscociations'govemment ability, valuing the real effect of the reform is not only an importantquestion for accounting, but also should be concerned with public management.Until now, the new system has already been implemented by tradeassociations for nearly two fiscal years. The opportunity to study the reform hasbeen ripe. In the meantime, with the development of trade associations in publicmanagement field, their financial information will certainly receive more andmore attention. Therefore, it is necessity and urgency to study the reform and toimprove further the quality of trade associations' financial information. But atpresent there are not any relevant researches in domestic theory.This paper makes a research on the accounting record system reformhappened in Chinese trade associations from perspective of public managementand aims to improve their financial information and their ability of tradegovemance. The first part analyses the essence and the role that Chinese tradeassociations should be, by the theory of public govemace; and then based on this,analyses the accounting target of trade associations to set a standard for valuingthe reform. The second part analyses the reform's defects from system's designand implementation respectively, and try to find out fundamental reasons hiddenunder the problems from the view of public management. In order to prove thedefects existing in the system's implementation, this paper discribes the whole year's accounting record process of Chongqing Taxicab and livery Association in2005. The third part puts forwards some suggestions according to the problemsof the system's design and implementation.Though the content of the new system is more pertinent and adaptable totrade associations than other accounting systems implemented before, the qualityof their financial information isn't satisfying. The fundamental reasons are asfollowings. First, the supplying-model that financial systems are supplied only bythe government in our country can't meet various needs of accounting practice innon-profit organizations. Second, the trade assodations in our country can'tlocate its role correctly, and the notion holding by the government induces themto deviate from their accounting target. Third, owing to lack of self-identity,associations' members have little enthusiasm to supervise associations' financialactivities, while there are always shortages of inside controlling-systems ofaccounting in trade associations to assure the new system's effectivity. So to bringthe new system into action, we should relocate the trade association as agovernance subject to public affairs, enhance members' self-identity, perfect theinside controlling-systems of accounting, reform the supplying-model and issuerelevant accounting standards based on the financial characteristic of tradeassociations.The innovations of the paper are as followings. The first one is the object.The paper studies on the accounting record system reform happened in Chinesetrade associations, to which the domestic theory hasn't pay enough attention yet.The second one is the perspective. In order to grasp the essence of the reform'sdefects, and to get rid of pure accounting research which is confined to thedisclosure of information in minor details, the paper analyses the problems fi'omthe view of public management.