Administrative Reform in Post-Mao China: Efficiency or Ethics (review)

While more profound changes in the governmental system of China have been shelved for the time being, the imperatives of economic reform have kept an overhauling of the country's administrative apparatus high on the political agenda. Of course, the borderline between political and administrative reform is a thin one, as all debates on increasing bureaucratic effectiveness soon touch on the sensitive question of the Party's role.

The present study by Stephen Ma, therefore, should command the attention of both specialists in organizational studies and those who are interested in the broader topic of political change in China. After having read the study under review here, however, these two groups of readers will be equally disappointed. Neither does the text offer significantly new empirical evidence on its subject nor does it present a well-reasoned argument with fresh perspectives. Because of its lack of clear structure, it cannot even be recommended for introductory reading. The sources used are limited to major Party newspapers and some journals from China, Hong Kong magazines, and a specialized periodical on the topic. The methodology employed is content analysis veering between anecdotal storytelling and the computation of data for article categories, subject matter, and authorship. The conclusions are inconclusive, and the line of reasoning is blurred.

The book opens with an introductory chapter on modernization and administrative reform. It presents the guiding questions behind the study: Are the existing administrative structures and processes in China adequate for the implementation of rapid modernization? Can they adapt to the rapid changes in environmental policy making? Have administrative reforms undermined the Party's ability to control, or even reduced the scope of, state power? It is the author's contention that the difficulties encountered in Chinese policy implementation are more related to the unethical behavior of government bureaucrats than to an unbalanced institutional or political development. A couple of pages later, though, he contradicts this assertion by remarking that post-Mao China has produced a bureaucracy with some autonomy and too little supervision. The text abounds with such incongruous statements. Usually, the contradictions are glossed over by profuse references to Max Weber, Samuel Huntington, Anthony Downs, and the like; but we sorely miss some clarifying thought by the author himself.

Two further chapters provide historical background to the main subject of the study. They discuss the administrative heritage of China and the role of intellectuals vis-à-vis the government. The main thrust is a claim for the existence of honest government prior to the reform period, followed by a discussion of the strained relations between intellectuals and power holders. Again, the arguments often contradict each other. And the situation is not improved by the author's practice of making broad statements that lump together imperial China, revolutionary history, and decades of PRC experience. It seems that bureaucratic problems prompting the Hundred Flowers campaign, the sharp inner-Party tensions over different administrative approaches, and the violent conflicts triggered by them during the Cultural Revolution do not exist for the author. Although the pre-reform campaigns are later mentioned in passing and the existence of earlier administrative problems is acknowledged, the book does not succeed in placing into political context the diverse Chinese voices cited.

While the opening chapters do not contain significant new points, the parts that follow make some contribution by analyzing the coverage of administrative problems in Chinese periodicals of the reform period. The main attention is focused on the journal Chinese Public Administration, the house organ of the Chinese Association of Public Administration. The author's findings include the following observations: theoretical articles and news on practical developments rather than concrete reform proposals have dominated the writing in the journal; practitioners from the ranks of the bureaucracy rather than intellectuals from outside have been the most active contributors; and questions of personnel management rather than structural issues have been the prevalent topics. Such observations are...