Speed up government reforms

Decision-making power, executive power and supervisory power should provide checks on one another, so that power is not concentrated in one of them. The adjustment of the government power structure can be summed up as the need to concede, decentralize and bind some of its power. To inject vigor into the market and society, the government should concede some of its power to them so the market plays the leading role in allocating resources and so the vibrancy of society is stimulated, creating new models of social governance. The government should also decentralize its power to ensure powers are effectively checked and coordinated. Binding the power of the government refers to increasing transparency to better regulate and supervise government behavior.

The government should make a plan for transforming its functions as soon as possible. There must be deadlines for the overdue reforms. The administration approval system reform should be completed in two to three years so as to reform monopoly industries and the pricing system of resources. Social governance reform should be finished in three to five years to concede more power to social organizations and communities and create new models of social governance.

In the next two to three years, China should also waste no time in matching government responsibilities at various levels with their tax revenues. Governments should have enough legal tax revenues to pay for the public services they provide, preventing them from seeking revenues from other non-tax sources.

China should increase the transparency of its judicial system, government affairs, government financial budgets and civil servant's property ownership in the next three years. Constructing a mechanism that ensures decision-making power, executive power and supervisory power coordinate smoothly and check one another is the foundation for ministry-level reforms.

The forthcoming five to eight years of reform will be very different than before. It will be a tough test of the Chinese government's political wisdom and courage. The central authority must coordinate the long-term and immediate interests of the country and prioritize the new round of reforms in the most rational order.

The author is president of the Hainan-based China Institute for Reform and Development.

(China Daily 02/22/2013 page8)