Benefits of a leaner govt
It's time to abolish the middle-level administrative organs between a provincial and its county governments, says an article on the website www.gmw.cn. The following is an excerpt:
The first central government document of this year shows that China is trying to reform the old administrative structure. It will strengthen a new financial system in which counties will be directly governed by a provincial government, jumping over the current prefecture-level city government. It will simplify the administrative levels, weaken the power of the middle level administrations between a provincial and its county governments, and gradually abolish the current three-layer - provincial-prefecture-county - administrative structure.
The abolition of the prefecture-level governments may have the following benefits:
First, it will cut the executive costs. According to statistics, every year, a prefecture-level city needs at least 500 million yuan of administrative expenditures on the average and the central government will therefore have to pay 130 billion yuan of financial revenues a year for more than 260 cities at such level.
Second, it will speed up implementation of the central government policies without a middle-level administrative organ.
Normally, cities have great power in deciding how to have central government policies implemented in counties. Only by scrapping this middle-level administrative organ can county governments take the initiative to develop rural areas under the direct guidance of a provincial government.
(China Daily 02/10/2009 page8)
