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CHINA: 'Reshuffling the Mandarins Won't Stem Corruption'
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING, Mar 11 (IPS) - China’s leaders are poised to unveil a proposal for creating super-ministries in the hope that centralised power can help overcome regional and industrial opposition to their plans for more moderate growth and better environmental protection.
But even voices within the ruling Communist party are warning that without deeper political changes the new government revamp would remain just another exercise in administrative reshuffling. Mere government streamlining and realigning may not be enough to fight endemic corruption, public discontent and ecological degradation that are threatening China’s social stability, they say.
Since the launch of its market reforms three decades ago, Beijing has gone through five rounds of government restructuring, trying to pare down bulky bureaucracies. The current one is billed as China’s boldest attempt yet to
reduce red tape and watchdog duplication.
The proposal for the latest cabinet revamp is to be unveiled at the ongoing annual session of the National People’s Congress today. It is aimed at creating a service-oriented and lean government that would be better exposed to checks and balances.
"People from all walks have been complaining that government departments enjoy a lot of power but have poorly defined responsibilities. The new reform would be about improving the public service role of the government,"
says Ding Ningning, a scholar with the Development Research Centre under the State Council.
Recent snow and blizzards over the Chinese new year that paralysed large swaths of central and southern China, leaving millions without electricity and stranding millions of migrant workers returning home for family reunions, have exposed Beijing’s problem with muddled responsibilities and lax policy enforcement.
Even as the team of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao mandate better balanced economy and the promotion of "harmonious society", Beijing has found itself unable to assert government control over wayward regional officials and vested industrial interests.
"There is a constant push and pull struggle to make any progress whatsoever," Sidney Rittenberg, a China business consultant who knew late communist leader Mao Zedong, told the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Beijing. "Even if they wished to, Chinese top leaders couldn’t fight every
battle."
Now in the beginning of their second five-year term in office, President Hu and Premier Wen are determined to implement more ambitious policies to moderate growth with view to distributing wealth more justly, developing the
impoverished countryside and curbing environmental degradation.
Chinese communist leaders have tabled proposals for a cabinet reshuffle that the National People’s Congress is expected to rubber-stamp during its current annual session. The proposals include the rationalisation of some
major spending ministries, notably in transport and industry, to concentrate policy making and implementation.
Other proposed reforms include the establishment of a mega health ministry to execute China’s new health care plan and to ward off future scandals with substandard food and drugs. A new super ministry on energy is in the works
but Chinese media reports have suggested it would face fierce opposition from the country’s big state-owned oil companies and existing energy agencies.
Another proposal discussed is the elevation of China’s environmental watchdog, the State Environmental Protection Agency, to full ministry status - a step that would give it a bigger say and a bigger budget to fight
environmental abuse.
All of those reshuffles face resistance within the bureaucracy and among the big state-owned companies that fear they would be called upon to contribute a larger share of their profits to finance welfare.
If approved as expected, the restructuring will take years to complete. China however, faces immediate challenges to sustaining its economic prosperity that derive from rising domestic inflation and global slowdown.
Some communist party officials have warned that China risks economic disarray unless it introduces genuine political reform to limit the power of the party.
"The backwardness of the political system is affecting economic development," says a recent research report on China’s political system reform, produced by scholars at the Central Party School, which trains top
officials.
"Citizens’ steadily rising democratic consciousness and the grave corruption among Party and government officials make it increasingly urgent to press ahead with demands for political reform system," the report, titled
‘Storming the Fortress", said.
The authors argue China should reform its rubber-stamp national parliament by introducing competitive voting and giving it powers to decide on the budget and audit government spending. They see the emergence of a free press as an "inevitable trend’ if the country is to make progress in its fight against corruption.
Chinese leaders agree there is a need for reform that would curb widespread corruption and enhance the rule of law in order to protect the interests of ordinary people. There however seems to be a lack of consensus on the type of reform China should undertake.
Li Jinru, a government adviser and vice-president of the Central Party School, sees the new government restructuring that would consolidate the power of the central leadership, as a "breakthrough in China’s political
reform''.
Yet others disagree. "An administrative reform has nothing to do with a comprehensive political reform," says Yang Fengchun, a political scientist with Beijing University. "If the goal is to make low-level officials more accountable to their upper ranks and not to the public, then we are not talking about any change in the political system".
(END/2008)
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