CONTINUITY VERSUS CHANGE: EVOLVING TRAJECTORIES OF CHINESE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Abstract

China’s public administration system has been shaped by incremental reforms since China started its reform and opening up in 1978. These reforms highlighted a delicate balance between continuity and change so gradual, incessant, and autonomous adaptation to China’s socioeconomic development as well as to its external environment could happen. Since China moved into the “deep-water zone” in the recent decade, does this reform strategy remain effective? This article examines the Chinese way of introducing public administration reforms, with a focus on the reforms in the past decade. Although incremental reform has in general been kept useful, changing internal and external conditions in China have made it more difficult to achieve innovations and systematic transformation through incremental reforms. An apparent approach to politicization has replaced the fragile politics-administration dichotomy and reshaped the way of value balancing in China’s administrative system.