Remaking China's Public Management

Well-traveled throughout China and well-published on its political, cultural, and business aspects, the editors of this unusual new book and their contributing authors give a systematic analysis of public sector management—as it is now and as it is emerging—in a country of massive size, now in retreat from a centrally planned economy. Many features of the new reforms parallel the movement toward new public management in the West. Functions have been transferred away from China's public sector, including the government, and into the private sector, and many of the managerial tools common in the private sector have been introduced into the public sector. The book thus analyzes the logic, mechanisms, and designs of new public management in China. It examines context-bound issues, in the light of the legacies of massive state intervention, the transition away from centralized planning, the structure of the Leninist party-state, and Chinese bureaucratic culture. Finally it discusses and illustrates events in a variety of policy areas, and in doing so, draws upon unique interviews and field studies developed personally by each contributor. The result is an important insight into China and how its public sector operates, one that will have special value for professionals in international development, finance, banking, government, economics, politics, and for their academic colleagues as well.

A systematic analysis of new forms of public management emerging in China and how they are rooted in the fundamental deficiencies of an overly managed society in a centrally planned economy.

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The new public management (NPM) has emerged as one of the most salient theoretical trends in the countries of Europe and North America. Essentially a part of the "New Right", NPM advocates the introduction of such mechanisms as property rights, profit, and markets as remedies to the failures and limitations of the public sector. This book examines the relatively new phenomenon of China's implementation of NPM, beginning in the early 1980s with the extensive employment of service organizations for public management. Intellectually a result of the International Conference on Public Sector Management Reform in China (June, 1997) this volume includes sections on boundary issues and new organizational modes, alternative modes of welfare provisions, commercialization, corporation and marketization, and conflict resolution in remaking China's public management. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

PETER NAN-SHONG LEE is a Professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

CARLOS WING-HUNG LO is Associate Professor in the Department of Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.