公共管理英语(清洁版)

Unit One: Opening Administration to the Public

Citizens of Bengbu City, Anhui Province, now have the opportunity to be a visitor at municipal government meetings, thanks to the government?s recent efforts to open its administration –adopting the measures for Inviting Citizens to Listen to the Administrative Meetings, which came into effect on December 16, 2001.

Ten citizens are invited to be present at each meeting on administrative affairs. The number of citizen listeners invited to very important meeting can vary. The listeners can be deputies to the city's people's congress, members of the local committee of the Chinese People's Political Conference, personages of democratic parties, members of the Association of Industry and commerce and others. They must be at least 18 years of age, and willingly to be a visitor at the meeting.

Listeners can air their opinions through the government office in a written form.

Increasing Transparency

On the basis of pilot projects carried out in some cities and counties, Guangdong Province has asked its governments at or above county level to open their administrative affairs during the first half of this year.

All affairs relating to laws and regulations and to administrative decisions that people must follow, as long as they do not involve secrets of the Party or the Central Government, should be open to the public. Contents are as follows:

___Strategy of social and economic development, work targets and their accomplishments;

---- Process for making big decisions and policies;

---- Financial budgets and implementation;

---- Distribution and use of special funds and the purchase of important materials;

---- Major capital construction projects and their bidding;

---- Items of public welfare invested by the government;

---- Projects examined and approved by the government and their accomplishments;

---- The accomplishments of work the government promised to do for the public;

---- Law enforcement in relation to the interests and rights of citizens, legal persons and organizations;

---- Handing of major incidents;

---- Selecting and appointing officials, employing public servants and appraising of model workers, transferring workers and staff members in institutional reforms and other issue of public concern;

---- Administrative functions and the official duties;

---- Working content, conditions, procedures and timetable as well as the result;

---- Working Principles, commitment and the way to sue promise-breaching activities, as well as

the investigation results of the cases.

Apart from opening administrative affairs to society, various departments of the Guangdong Provincial Government have been required to open their internal system construction, work operations and management, specifically the self-discipline of officials; income and expenditure of the department; management of human resources, distribution of income to workers and staff members as well as their welfare treatment; and other issues.

Knowing government administration is one of people's fundamental rights, and the opening of administrative affairs is the obligation of the government. The rule to open administrative information has become an indispensable part in the government's administration. In the meantime, opening government administration is also a main principle of the WTO, listed on most of its documents. After China's entry into the WTO, it was required to do better in this field. China's transformation of government functions lags behind that of its economic growth.

A fresh move, the opening of government administration will needs improvement. Experts appealed to the state to place great importance on the issue by setting up special department to handle related affairs, and devising a law on opening government administrations.

Red-Title Document Open to the Public

At the end of last year, the Beijing municipal government, located on Zhengyilu Road, placed a reception desk at the entrance of its west gate from Monday to Friday to receive citizens who come to subscribe to the Beijing Municipal Government Bulletin. Since the bulletin was opened to the public in early 2002, the telephone at the editorial office has kept ringing. Many of the calls come from Guangdong, Zhejiang, Heilongjiang province and Hong Kong SAR, inquiring about subscription procedures.

The bulletin, which contains government regulations, administrative orders and decisions, is popularly known as a red-title document and is a mystery to most people, because it only reached leaders above bureau level in the past.

Wei Guiqin, director of the Beijing Huiyuan Law Office, is among the first to subscribe to the bulletin. "The public distribution of the bulletin helps us a lot in our job," he said.

The governments of many other provinces and cities have also opened their bulletins to the public, including Henan and Shanxi provinces, and cities such as Guangzhou, Wuhan, Qingdao and Yinchuan. The government bulletins are functionally the same as other official documents.

Shanghai is the first city to open its bulletin to the public. Since the beginning of last year, the bulletins have been sent not only to major institutions and enterprises under the jurisdiction of the municipal government, but also 100 selected newspaper and magazine booths, 50 postal zones and 50 Xinhua book-stores, where citizens can get them for free. The bulletins have attracted the attention of many people, most of whom are lawyers and accountants.

"Supermarket" of Administrative Affairs

Five years ago, Huang Songji, a laid-off female employee in Nanjing, invested 50 000 yuan to set up a kindergarten. However, she was soon asked to close down, as she failed to follow relevant procedures. She sought assistance at the Supermarket of Administrative Affairs, and with guidance by the staff, Huang quickly obtained all necessary procedures.

What is the supermarket of Administrative Affairs and how effective is it?

The first Supermarket was launched by the government of Xiaguan District, Nanjing City, in the residential communities of Xiaoshi and Rehenanlu on October 16, 2000. The government set up its offices in a big hall to handle various administrative affairs, including more than 40 services related to civil affairs, employment, municipal construction, economy, handling of complaints and law enforcement. It indeed has supermarket features of openness, efficiency and a variety of choice, hence the name, Supermarket of Administrative Affairs. Five other residential quarters followed suit a year later.

The Supermarket practices a responsibility system to solve problems, and serve clients. In addition, supervision and feedback procedures have also been adopted. The system, which enables citizens to learn about government administrative affairs, contributes to the government's efforts to open administrative affairs. Sun Wei, a "supermarket" staff member, said that in the past, policies were locked in the office drawer. Now they are placed on the wall, clearly indicating problems and possible time lines for their solution. Furthermore, the telephone number to contact in cases of complaint against the behavior of "supermarket" employees is also available to the public. Employees subject to customer complaints are given three chances, and penalties including criticism the first time, bonus deduction the second time, and dismissal the third time.

Since district government powers have been transferred to the "supermarket", the service items are wider than those formerly offered by the residential community, such as the approval of small loans to help the poor and victims of natural disasters; handling applications for subsidies if their living standards is below the poverty line; granting licenses to small restaurants; leasing newspaper booths and registering the unemployed. Apart from these services, the "supermarket" has also set up a training room, a law consultation room and a suggestion box, as well as a telephone hotline to answer questions. In addition, government leaders regularly visit the "supermarket" to interact with the public in person.

Many citizens have expressed their satisfaction with the "supermarket".

“It quickly solves problems, and shortens the psychological distance between leaders and the masses. Surveys recently conducted in five …supermarkets? indicated that citizens are satisfied with the measures,”said Xu Xueqin, who is in charge of the publicity of the Xiaguan residential community.

The "supermarket" of administrative service in Nanjing has exerted a positive influence to the entire country. Similar supermarkets have opened in Shenyang, Shanghai and Fuzhou.

The "supermarket" in Shanghai, known as the Center of Residential Affairs, now has 80 branches in the entire city, offering more than 50 services. A civil affairs official said that in the next three years, every community and town would set up such a "supermarket" to form a network covering the entire area.

Media reports recently stated that relevant departments have planned to set up a multi-functional and multi-level service system throughout the country, which offers services on personnel matters, domicile registration, matrimonial registration, enterprise registration, tax payment, license distribution and approval of land utilization. Service centers and related branches will be set up in densely populated communities. Meanwhile, a standardized service network and unified regulations will also be established, and related workers will wear name tags for the benefit of customers.

E-Government

Placing government administrative affairs on the Internet appears to be a growing world trend for governments working toward open administration. Resources on government work available on the Internet can be effectively utilized. Furthermore, this practice will enhance the transparency of the government, reducing administrative expenses, improve work efficiency and facilitate the construction of a diligent and honest government.

China has a long way to go before it can develop an on-line government. However, beginning in the mid-1980s when China first called for office automation, up until 1998 when China began to develop e-government project, it has promoted e-commerce in government departments, using the Internet to release information, handling day-to-day office business and offering other service.

In recent years, China has rapidly developed the e-government. First, departments of industry and commerce, customs and taxation, and public security have taken the lead in accelerating the pace of e-commerce development and implementation. Second, many government web sites with increasingly rich content and sophisticated functions have appeared. A recent survey stated that more than 2,200 government web sites currently exist in the entire country, and have played a major role in driving the construction of the information industry.

A bilingual web site, Chinashanghai, in both English and Chinese, was launched on September 28,2001. It serves as a platform for government information dissemination for the benefit of the citizens.

Chinashanghai is devoted to the establishment of an "e-government." Its home page, entitled Today's Events, provides information on major activities and events, and reports on various hot topics of discussion. Pages containing government bulletins, government documents, regulations and other information have also been released. The Laws and Regulations page introduces various

rules and regulations, the Shanghai Brief page provides information on the latest development trends in the city, and the Investment page offers information on the investment environment and various investment policies, explaining the urban construction plan, the development of the Pudong New Area, the development of development zones and investment projects. The Services page, on the other hand, provides information on topics more closely related to people's lives, such as weather, transport, healthcare, education and tourism. This page also offers legal assistance to disadvantaged groups. The Business Guidance page provides useful information on competent institutions, as well as their addresses, contact details, procedures for handling certain affairs, and channels for dealing with lawsuits. Finally, the Handling Affairs On-line page enables users to inquire on certain items, and download on-line forms and applications.

Chinashanghai will also connect with its affiliated stations to establish a better government network by the end of this year. In addition, Shanghai plans to set up a large portal within the next five years, which will be among China?s first-class ones and match international advanced level. By the end of the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001 –2005), all the government departments related to social management and services will be on the network.

Open Urban Planning

Over the past two years, Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin have made public their city construction plan, a change from their former closed-door working style. The procedures and timetable for the examination and approval of projects, regulations and laws, and techonological indexes in relation to the projects are now also out in the open, much to the great enthusiasm of the citizens.

Last October, Beijing held an exhibition on the overall city planning. During holidays and weekends, the 3000-square-meter hall received about 1500 people each day. "We have not expected so many citizens to be so interested in city planning," said Qiu Yue, a member of the Beijing Municipal City Planning Committee.

Many visitors filled thick suggestion books with feedback, providing constructive ideas, such as building another world trade center in the north; retaining the lay-out of the narrow alleys and the courtyard homes; and informing citizens on city construction projects on time. The exhibition organizers then sorted the suggestions and delivered them to the decision-making departments.

"Bringing city planning to the public shows the government's determination to promote the opening up of administration affairs, and this is a significant development," said a visitor.

Zhou Chang, Secretary general of the China Architectural Society, agreed. "The opening up of the urban planning process can imprve things greatly, as major decisions will go through the approval of experts, the suggestions of citizens and the supervision of the media," said Zhou.

Shan Qixiang, director of the Beijing Municipal City Planning Committee, said the opinions of both experts and the masses will be pooled together before a decision on any important plans for urban construction are reached.

Unit Two: Why Public Management Reform?

Public management reform is usually thought of as a means to an end, not an end itself. To be more precise we should perhaps say that it is potentially a means to multiple ends. These include making saving (economies) in public expenditure, improving the quality of public services, making the operation of government more efficient and increasing the chances that the policies which are chosen and implemented will be effective. On the way to achieve these important objectives, public management reform may also serve a number of intermediate ends, including those of strengthening the control of politicians over the bureaucracy, freeing public officials from bureaucratic constraints which inhibit their opportunities to manage and enhance the government?s accountability to the legislature and citizenry for its policies and https://www.360docs.net/doc/861756295.html,st, but not least, one should mention the symbolic and legitimacy benefits of management reform. For politicians these benefits consist partly of being seen to be doing something. Announcing reforms, criticizing bureaucracy, praising new management techniques, promising improved services for the future, restructuring ministries and agencies – all these activities help to attract favorable attention to the politicians who espouse them. A cynic might observe that, in these days when the power of individual governments to act independently is increasingly called into questions by a complex interplay of local, national and international constraints, the one thing that ministers usually can do -- with the appearance of dynamism but at little immediate cost -- is to announce changes in their own machinery of governance. There are also legitimacy benefits for those senior officials who, alomost invariably, play important parts in shaping and implementing such initiatives. They may gain in reputation by association with "modernizing" and "streamlining" activities.

If management reform really does produce cheaper, more efficient government, with higher-quality services and more effective programs, and if it will simultaneously enhance political control, free managers to manage, make government more transparent and boost the images of those ministers and mandarins most involved, then it is little wonder that it has been widely trumpeted. Unfortunately, however, matters are not so simple. There is a good deal of evidence to show that management reforms can go wrong. They may fail to produce the claimed benefits. They may even generate perverse effects that render the relevant administrative progresses worse (in some important senses) than they were previously. When a local authority "home help"(domestic care) service for elderly and disabled people is reshaped along quasi-market lines, with a split between the authority purchasing the service and the providing it, we may consider this a typical "reform".When, however, we discover that the contract drawn up for the service is 700 pages long and that the actual service provided seems to have changed very little in either quality or quantity, then doubt sets in. We wonder if more trust between the parties might not be a more efficient option, enabling a much shorter contract (or no contract at all) and radically reduced monitoring costs.

Furthermore, even if a particular reform clearly "succeeds" in respect of one or two of the objectives mentioned above (savings, say, and improvement in quality) it is unlikely that it will succeed in all. Indeed, we shall argue later that certain trade-offs and dilemmas are exceedingly common in administrative change, so that the achievement of one or two particular ends might

well be “paid for”by a lowered performance in other respects: “rule over specialized decision-makers in a bureaucracy is maintained by selective crack-downs on one goal at a time, steering the equilibrium – without ever acknowledging that tightening up on one criterion implies slackening off on another”. For example, if we subject public servants to more effective supervision and control, can we simultaneously give them greater freedom and flexibility to manage? The optimists will say yes, by laying down a clearer, simpler framework of rules within which managers can “get creative”. The skeptic will say no, pointing to survey evidence that the managers themselves think that politicians “leave well alone” on politically sensitive operations such as social security, health care, education or the prison service.

In any case, public management reform is only one way to achieve most of the desirable ends identified in the first paragraph. To be adequate, any account of its nature will need to take into account that governmental performance can be improved by a variety of routes and that management reform is frequently undertaken in conjunction with other types of policy initiative. Comparing administrative developments in a number of countries one academic observed recently:"Administrative reform...is a subject of all policy performance, not a separable set of technical efforts."

Other routes to improved government performance include political reforms (such as changes in electoral systems or legislative procedures) and substantive changes in key policies (such as new macroeconomics management policies, labour market reforms or fundamental changes in social policy). The example of New Zealand -- which combined management reforms with fundamental changes in both macroeconomic policies and , later, the electoral system -- was alluded to in our introduction.

To make matters more complicated still, there is, as commentators have noticed, a delay which affects a good deal of public management reform. The full benefits of major changes in the processes and structures of public agencies normally cannot be harvested until three, four, five or even more years after a reform program has been launched. To begin with, new legislation might well be needed. Then it will be necessary to analyze status quo, and subsequently to design, formulate and refine new operating procedures, train staff how to work with them, define new roles and appropriate reward and appraisal system, set new measurement systems in place, inform service users and other stakeholders, and work hard to reduce the anxiety all novelties have probably caused, both among users and among staff. But this is not the kind of timescale that most senior politicians are comfortable with. Their focus is more intensely short-term: on the next election, the next government reshuffle, or even today's television news. The searchlight of political attention moves about from one issue to another much more quickly than complex organizational change can be accomplished between the politician?s need for …something to show now? and the organization reform?s need for time, commitment and continuity, which has probably grown as a result of the general intensification and accleration of political process in many western democracies.

Unit Three: Reform of the Administration and Local Services: Introduction

Since the 1980s, a strong movement for the reform and modernization of public administrations has been deveoping. Decentralization and liberalization – allowing market forces to operate in the provision of public services –- constitute two significant thrusts of these reforms. An analysis of developments in France and Spain clearly illustrates this trend, although the paces and priorities differ, while in the United Kingdom the trend has been more towards centralization. Devolution to regional authorities in some regions raises no doubts about this diagnosis in those regions –- on the contrary. Although decentralization has fundamentally been a national choice, and even a choice of the Constitution in Spain, the liberalization of public services has been linked to Community integration and to the process of opening up markets that it has brought about.

The modernization of local management has not always conformed to a consistent, global plan but rather to impetuses arising from the permanent tension between the instability of local tax revenue and the growing demands on municipal services. Yet in the United Kingdom, a considerable continuity of concept has been evident since the late 1970s, aimed at introducing a …new kind of public management?inspired by the practices of private enterprise, which is increasingly distancing the British Civil Service from the great principles on which it had been founded since the mid–19th century.

Yet decentralization presupposed a strong revival of local democracy and the local government representatives that it produced quickly assumed their new responsibilities. The consolidation of local autonomy – or of free administration -- assumed that real public policies would be put in place in many and varied fields (social services, economic development, culture, infrastructure and town planning and environmental protection). Thus, the general jurisdiction clause gradually became established in the three countries, although it was recognized (indirectly) by law in the United Kingdom only by the Local Government Act 2000. This principle constitutes the foundation of the creation of services not provided for by law. It forms the basis of innovation and local responsiveness to the collective needs and demands of the citizens. The local area of action is gradually tending to expand although it is accompanied by a growing integration of spheres of competence. This interdependence of remits is at the root of a very strong upsurge of conventional pratctices and of the development of joint organizations or organizations common to different local authorities on the same level or on different levels.

Yet the starting points were very different in France and Spain, on the one hand, and in the United Kingdom, on the other. While in France and Spain decentralization meant the transfer of new spheres of competence to the local authorities and greater freedoms to exercise them, in the United Kingdom the development of the welfare state occurrde at local authority level and through the local public sector, which thus gradually came under the increasingly tight control of the central authority. The reforms of the 1980s and those of the Blair Government are not at odds here. The modernization of public management occurred through the aforementioned change of paradigm and it actually takes the form of new losses for the local authorities: on the one hand, through an increased control of the central authority over certain public policy areas (e.g. education, ceilings placed on the taxation of local authorities deemed too extravagant) and, on the other, through the privatization of local public services. In addition, the new management and performance standards are accompanied by the emergence of new forms of control.

In parallel to the decentralization movement, the liberalization of national public services, accompanied by the new European law on public works contracts, strenghened the place of competition in the provision of local public services. The advance of both movements presupposed an iccrease in the freedom of local authorities to choose the type of local service management. In principle, the law does not lay down private or delegated management. However, it has greatly extended the obligation to allow market forces to operate if delegation is chosen. In this context, analysis of the local public services law in France and Spain shows the scope and reality of the reforms. Examination of these two systems is particularly relevant as recourse to private management, to the contractual delegation of public services, is inherent in their tradition. Such private management often presupposed the private funding of the service and even of the necessary infrastructure – a management by private firms that leads to a commercial approach to the provision of the service. Marketing of the management, therefore, by means of recourse to an organization governed by privat law, although set up by the local authorities. Local public corporations have a very flexible statute, particularly in Spanish law, in which wholly local public capital companies have, for a long time, been established by legislation. Institutuions governed by private law, are managed according to managerial systems (including accounting) in which the employees are subject to the ordinary workers?statute. These new standards are perceived as a reduction in local autonomy with respect to the choice of management method.

Unit Four: State and Market

Creating the Condition for Private Sector Development

Private firms generate jobs and bring growth to the entire economy, the biggest factor in reducing poverty. But to do so they need a sound climate – with good macroeconomic management, trade and investment policies that promote openness, and good-quality infrastructure and services. They also need a legal and regulatory system that supports the day-to-day operations of firms by protecting property rights, promoting access to credit, and ensuring efficient tax, customs, and judicial services.

Investment in infrastructure – whether in power, transport, housing, telecommunications, or water and sanitation –enables business to grow. And when private firms participate in infrasturcture, bringing with them capital and knowhow, they can improve access to basic infrastructure services, a key to reducing poverty. In developing countries private firms participate mainly in telecommunications and energy. From 1996 to 2001 investment in telecommunications projects with private4 participation totaled about $60 billion in Brazil and more than $17 billion in the Republic of Korea. Investment in energy projects with private participation in the 1990s increased dramatically in Brazil (from $0.6 billion in 1990--95 to $42 billion in 1996--2001), Peru (from $1.2 billion to $2.8 billion), and in Turkey ($2.5 billion to $4.8 billion).

Telecommunications has received the largest share of investment in projects with private participation ( 44 percent of the total in 1990----2001 ), with water and sanitation, considered a “basic needs”sector, receiving only a small fraction ( 5 percent ). Private participation in

infrastructure was initially concentrated in a few countries, with the top 10 accounting for 98 percent of investment in 1990, but by 2001 their share had fallen to 67 percent. Private participation in infrastructure has many of the same advantages and risks as public investment financed through foreign borrowing.

Part of what determines the business environment in a country is the regulation of new entry. Countries differ significantly in the obstacles they impose on the entry of new businesses. To meet government requirements for starting a business in Mozambique, for instance, entrepreneurs must Complete 16 procedures, a process that takes an average of 214 business days and costs the equivalent of 74 percent of gross national income (GNI) per capita. In Italy they must complete 13 procedures, wait 62 business days on average, and pay 23 percent of GNI per capita.

The case for creating a good investment climate is simple: an economy needs a predictable environment in which people, ideas, and money can work together productively and efficiently. Countries should focus on improving the investment climate for domestic entrepreneurs, but a better investment climate will also attract foreign investors. And countries that receive more foreign investment an important conduit for new technologies, management experience, and access to markets--enjoy faster growth and greater poverty reduction.

External perceptions of the investment climate are reflected in risk ratings. While risk ratings do not always capture the actual situation or specific investment opportunities in a country, they are a reality that policymakers face. Among such ratings are the Euro money creditworthiness ratings, which rank the risk of investing in an economy from 0 ( high risk ) to 100 ( low risk). Countries with high risk, such as Kenya (36) and Haiti (24), havee very low foreign direct investment (0.4 percent of gross capital formation for Kenya and 0.3 percent for Haiti). By contrast, countries with low perceived risk, such as Chile (65) and the Czech Republic (66), have higher levels of foreign direct investment (about 33 percent for Chile and 29 percent for the Czech Republic; table 5.2). Countries with low risk ratings also have large stock markets relative to gross domestic product (GDP). Market capitalization is about 85 percent of GDP in Chile, 102 percent in Australia, 135 percent in Malaysia, 137 percent in Singapore, and 158 percent in Finland.

Designing Public Sector Policies to Enhance Private Activity

The public sector's main economic functions fit into three broad categories: making policy, delivering services, and providing oversight and accountability. As global competition has increased in the past two decades, the governments of many developing countries have shifted their focus from trying to preserve jobs in a stagnant public sector to creating jobs in a vibrant private sector. Governments are now in the business of designing and implementing good policies and strong institutions that enhance the business and investment climate.

Government functions and policies affect many areas of social and economic life: health and education, natural resources and environmental protection, fiscal and monetary stability, and flows of trade. Data related to these topics are presented in the respective sections. This section provides data on key public sector activities: tax policy, exchange rates, and defense expenditures.

Taxes are the main source of revenue for many governments. They are levied mainly on income, profits, capital gains, goods and services, and exports and im-ports. (Non-tax revenue is also important in some economies) A comparison of taxation levels across countries provides an overview of the fiscal obligations and incentives facing the private sector. Central government tax revenues (excluding state and local taxes) range from about 3 percent of GDP in Kuwait and 7 percent in Bangladesh to 35 percent in Austria and 36 percent in Slovenia.

The level and progressivity of taxes on personal and corporate income influence incentives to work and invest. Marginal tax rates on individual income range from 0 percent (in countries such as Kuwait, Oman, Paraguay, the United Arab emirates, and Uruguay) to 50 percent or more (in such countries as Austria, Belgium, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Senegal). Most marginal tax rates on corporate income are in the 20-30 percent range.

Tapping the Benefits of Infrastructure, Information, and Telecommunications

High-quality infrastructure and other business services help determine the success of manufacturing and agricultural businesses. Investments in water, sanitation, energy, housing, and transport improve health and education and help reduce poverty. And new information and communications technologies offer vast opportunities for economic growth, improved health, better service delivery, learning through distance education, and social and cultural advances.

Until the 1990s public sector monopolies in most developing countries financed and operated the infrastructure, often with poor results. Technical inefficiencies in roads, power, water, and railways caused losses of $ 55 billion a year in the early 1990s ---- about l percent of all developoing countries?GDP. But beginning in the late 1980s countries around the world had begun turning to the private sector, both to take over the operation of existing infrastructure and to finance new infrastructure. In 1990—2001 infrastructure projects with private participation in developing countries attracted more than $ 750 billion in investment.

Efficient transport is critical to the development of competitive economies, but measuring progress in transport is difficult. Data for most transport sectors are often not strictly comparable across countries that do not consistently follow common definitions and specifications. Moreover, the data do not indicate the quality and level of service, which depend on such factors as maintenance budgets, the availability of trained personnel, geographic and climatic conditions, and incentives and competition to provide the best service at the lowest cost.

About 43 percent of the world?s roads are paved, but the share ranges from only about 16 percent in low-income economies to 92 percent in high-income economies. Sub-Saharan Africa scores the lowest among regions, with only about 13 percent of roads paved, while developing countries in Europe and Central Asia, with 91 percent, are almost on a par with high-income economies.

Telecommunications services are improving in quality, accessibility, and affordability around the

world, thanks to competition in the marketplace accompanied by sound regulation. Globally, there are 172 fixed telephone mainlines for every 1000 people, but large differences remain between low-income economies (around 30 per 1000) and high-income economies (around 600 per 1000). And within countries there are often stark differences in access between the largest city and the average for the country. In Sri Lanka, for example, there are about 300 telephone mainlines for\ every 1000 residents in Colombo, while the average for the country is only 44 per 1000. In many countries people are turning to mobile phones. In Latin America, at 161 per 1000 people, mobile phones are almost as numerous as fixed line telephones (165 per 1000 people.

Essential to building a knowledge economy is ensuring access for all to com-puters and the Internet. The digital divide between rich and poor economies ---- the gap in access to information and communications technology ---- remains wide, with high-income economies having 416 personal computers per 1 000 people and low-income economies only 6 per 1 000. Even so, ownership of personal computers is growing twice as fast in developing as in high-income economies. Large gaps also exist among developing regions, with developing countries in Europe and Central Asia having about 52 personal computers per 1000 people, but South Asia only about 5.

Chapter 5

What Is Community?

Communities are natural human associations based on ties of relationship and shared experiences in which we mutually provide meaning in our lives, meet needs, and accomplish interpersonal goals. Our predisposition to community insures that we become the persons we were meant to become, discover meaning, generate ethical values, and develop a culture which would be impossible for single, isolated individuals to accomplish alone.

When we talk about community, we talk about two things simultaneously. Community is located in space and time and it exists beyond space and time. Community is embodied in a place, structure, and presence, but community transcends location; it cannot be confined by structure or mere history.

Embodied Community

Every one of us needs community. Community arises spontaneously because of an innate sociality of the human condition. With relatively rare exceptions community has been the form of human associated life by which people have related throughout history. Your self cannot, in fact, reach its full realization in isolation, but only as you are nurtured, guided, and suffused with the life of the community in which you exist.

Localized community needs to be embodied to have existence. In its purest sense, community is an arena of social interaction, a milieu of social relationship in which we engage one another at a time and in a place where we gather together. For many communities to have permanence, they often become identified with physical space that the community claims as its own. This could be a territory or a neighborhood that we identify with a name and includes homes, schools, and shops. Communities such as a local church, neighborhood, or ethnic or civic association often develop a structure or a form of association, infuse it with values, and derive meaning from it. The location

or the structure becomes the embodiment of and symbolizes community. Thus it is appropriate to talk about community as a neighborhood or association that exists in space and time, that has permanence and structure.

Transcendent Community

Although a community can be found in a locality or be embodied by a structural form, community is never simply a static physical location that we inhabit, as social ecologists assert; nor is it merely a structure or mechanical process, as systems theorists suggest. Community is the act by which we engage one another, experience relationships, and become a people. Wherever humans exist, we spontaneously seek and form community.

Communities are an indelible component of the human condition, not relative to a particular historical era, place, or time. Neither are communities unique to one race, national, or cultural group. Community transcends history and cannot be contained by mere history. Deeply rooted in our nature, community may be said to be a universal human phenomenon, not contingent on circumstances.

Community transcends location. As people in community move from place to place, we carry out community with us. When the nation of Israel was destroyed and most of her people were exiled to Babylon in 597 B.C., they lost their land, but they never lost themselves, their community. They were then, and 2 600 years later remain a people, a community, regardless of where they are located.

Community transcends its structure. The original group that called themselves “people of the Way” was a small association whose members met in the Temple at Jerusalem, in one another?s homes, and who owned everything in common. Christian churches today are far different from those original communities in the way they are structured and governed, and in the manner and language in which worship is conducted. Yet they remain communities united in a common belief and heritage.

Community transcends time. A community exists before we were born and will live on after we die. We develop a shared memory and obtain a sense of ourselves by means of our common history together. The symbols and meaning that community incorporates, while origination in time, become timeless.

There is not just one model of community or one community ideal. Each community is a unique blending of the people of which it is composed. The many good communities that come into being add to shape and texture of human existence. The more communities that develop, therefore, the more opportunities for us to explore alternative ways of being in the world, and different ways of achieving richness of character.

Chapter 6

Developing and Designing Performance Management

The development and design of a performance management system naturally depends heavily on how performance is defined and on the state and nature of the organization?s existing system, structures, etc. In the broadest sense performance management is concerned with organizational

performance but, as was shown earlier, this is a problematic concept. As Dawson points out: When people talk of improving organizational performance they can be referring to any one of a number of aspects, including effectiveness (goal attainment), efficiency (amount of resources used to produce a unit of output), productivity in terms of quantity or quality or timing, indicators of morale, and capacity to adapt and change to cope with the unexpected and unpredictable.

(Dawson 1996:235) That organizational performance can be defined in so many terms means, of course, that the task of forging a link between individual and organizational performance is far from simple. Indeed, defining performance at the individual level is no less complex. As we saw, there are two main conceptions --- outputs/results and behaviors. But it is probable that employee inputs --- their effort, for example --- also fall within a loose everyday understanding of the term performance. Herein lies one of the problems of performance management, that of achieving some understanding of what is meant by performance, whether at the individual or organizational level (or anywhere in between). I will outline a diagnostic, …involving? approach as a means of trying to bring about the sort of understanding that is required.

Though it has several meanings, the most common interpretation of the term performance management is that it is a set of activities directed at the individual so as to channel his or her performance in support of organizational performance. That said, these activities exist within a broader framework of some kind. The integrative, holistic approach to performance management that is advocated in much of the literature sees this framework as involving the communication of the organization?s mission statement, goals, etc. to all employees. The intent here is to bring individual goals into line with those expressed for the organization as a whole or, in other words, to align individual performance with organizational performance. This, of course, is a unitarist view which very often is at odds with organizational reality and which may be one of the reasons why performance management systems do not succeed as intended. It may be preferable to try to accommodate the plurality of interests that we are likely to find, at least to the extent of having different systems to suit the needs and requirements of different groups, whether they be departments, type of job or whatever.

Some accounts of employee performance management assume that the organizational framework already exists. For example, earlier I quoted Ainsworth and Smith (1993):

This assumes that the important corporate issues of …mission? and the setting of corporate goals have been addressed and resolved. It assumes that objectives for the sub-sections of the organization (the departments, divisions or business units) have been set within the key results areas, and that the senior management group has identified just where the competitive advantage and value added dimensions of the business lie. It further assumes that all of this has been communicated to and understood by those involved.

(Ainsworth and Smith 1996:5---6) In many organizations it is likely that all of this does exist and that it operates in the way advocated. But this should not be assumed; for example, the IMS survey of performance management practices (Institute of Personnel Management 1992) revealed that communication was one aspect of their policies which organizations found to be problematical. Furthermore, the survey evidence also revealed that the organizational framework is often deficient in various respects. So, not all organizations have mission statements and even if they do there may be a failure to communicate those statements, and other relevant information, to all employees. Hence,

for many organizations the starting points for performance management will have to be at the corporate/organizational level --- for example, with its systems for planning, manufacturing/service delivery, employee communication, etc.

But as can be seen from earlier chapters, the predominant nature of performance management systems in UK organizations is that they are in essence evolutionary developments of performance appraisal, or as Lundy and Cowling put it, “a logical progression” (1996:307). This may be true of elsewhere also; for example, in the US Bernardin et al. (1998) note the substitution of “performance management” for “performance appraisal”. Being mindful of this I will outline an approach to the development and implementation of performance management which is consistent with the evolutionary stance but which allows for more radical and fundamental change. The basis of the approach comes from Mohrman et al. (1989). Though presented as an approach to the conventionally practiced in the UK and I will therefore describe it in performance-management-related terms. I shall use the Mohrman et al. model as a general framework within which I shall incorporate other models, including those from the broader literature on the management of change. A characteristic feature of many of the recent models of performance management system design is the strong emphasis they place on diagnosis and analysis.

Chapter 7

World Development Indicators

Reliable statistics on income, output, consumption, saving, and investment are critical for assessing the health of a national economy and, in aggregate, the world economy.

The modern system of national accounts has its origins in the work of Richard Stone and a report prepared in the 1940s for the United Nations, Measurement of National Income and the Construction of Social Accounts (United Nations 1947). Standards for preparing national accounts have continued to evolve, and most countries now use the United Nations System of National Accounts, series F, no. 2, version 3 (universally referred to as the 1968 SNA), though version 4 of the SNA was completed in 1993. As more countries switched to the new version, the 2001 edition of the World Development Indicators introduced the 1993 SNA terminology (see Primary data documentation).

National income may be compiled as the sum of income received by factors of production, or the sum of spending from income, or the sum of value added in each stage of production. Each approach uses different data from different sources, but ideally each should arrive at the same total. Because these measures do not allow for the depreciation of physical capital, they are gross measures. When the sum is the total value of production by residents and domestic businesses, it is gross domestic product (GDP). When it also includes net income from abroad, it is gross national income (GNI).

Defining national income is easy, but compiling consistent, timely, and accurate national accounts is difficult and costly. Three broad problems face compilers of national accounts: identifying and correctly accounting for all sources of income (or output) in the economy; adjusting data for price changes to allow comparisons of real values over time; and, when

international comparisons are to be made, selecting the appropriate conversion factor to transform values in national currencies into a common unit of value. Each has conceptual and practical difficulties.

Measuring income requires regular surveys of producers and households, supplemented by records of the tax system, customs service, and monetary and banking authorities. In all economies, but particularly in developing economies with many small, unincorporated businesses, it may be difficult to identify the population to be surveyed and to distinguish business spending (investment or purchases of intermediate inputs) from household spending (consumption). Measuring real output is especially vexing. As an economy grows, relative prices change, as do the underlying qualities of goods. New products appear and others disappear. And the value of the output of the increasingly important service sector is often measured only by the cost of inputs, mainly labor. What are the results of all these factors? Real growth and price change are difficult to measure.

Comparisons across countries are complicated by multiple exchange rates, some of which may be used only for official transactions, while others may not be officially reported. Moreover, relative prices of goods and services not traded on the international market may vary substantially from one economy to another, leading to big differences in the purchasing power of one currency compared with that of another and thus to differences in welfare as measured by GNI per capita. Although the World Development Indicators points out the most obvious and serious deficiencies in international statistics, it can neither list nor correct for the many sources of error and non-comparability. The solution lies with the national statistical offices that collect and report the data and with the international agencies that assist their efforts and try to ensure comparability.

Chapter 8

The Economic Perspective for the People’s Republic of China

With a strong performance in the trade sector after World Trade Organization accession, record inflows of foreign direct investment, and large fixed investment, the country continued its rapid economic expansion in 2002, recording one of its fastest rates in 5 years. Strong economic performance is expected to continue, though growth will slow slightly in 2003---2004. However, many challenges remain, including slow growth in rural incomes, the need to create jobs and an enabling environment for the private sector, growing disparities between the coastal and interior provinces, and financial sector weaknesses.

1.Macroeconomic Assessment

GDP growth in the People?s Republic of China (PRC) accelerated to 8.0% in 2002 from 7.3% in 2001, moving higher than the 7.8% average of the previous 5 years. This higher than expected figure resulted from exports performing better than anticipated, surging foreign direct investment (FDI), and buoyant domestic demand. Expansionary fiscal and monetary policies also played a role.

Industry (including construction) was the key engine of economic growth, with value added accelerating to 9.9% in 2002 from 8.7% in 2001. Electronic equipment, transportation equipment,

and chemical products all did well. A surge in FDI and export growth resulted in the value added of foreign-funded enterprises increasing by 13.3%. Supported mainly by growth in transportation, telecommunications, and real estate, the services sector expanded by 7.3% in 2002 (though because of weaknesses in the statistical system, growth in this sector is probably underestimated). Despite a spring drought, agriculture sector performance improved slightly compared with the previous 2 years. Grain output, which dropped by 2.1% in 2001, rose by 1%.

A surge in fixed asset investment, which grew by 16.1%, stimulated domestic demand. Private investment rose by 15.7% in the year, faster than in 2001. Across sectors, investment in real estate was particularly strong, registering a 21.9% increase in 2002, as housing reforms and more housing mortgage loans led to a buoyant property market. Supported by the Government?s western region development strategy, investment in that region grew by 20.6%, faster than in the central (20.0%) and eastern (16.2%) regions.

Domestic consumption strengthened by 8.8%. The steady growth in domestic spending was mainly driven by urban households, which spent 10% more than in the previous year. Rural resident s? spending registered a 6.8% increase, reflecting the continued widening of urban---rural income disparities. Per capita urban disposable income grew by 13.4% in real terms to exceed CNY 7 700 ($928), while per capita real rural cash income increased by only 4.8% to reach CNY 2 476 ($298). The rapid increase in urban incomes triggered a purchasing boom for private cars, telecommunications equipment, and houses. In 2002, car imports increased by 77% and sales of telecommunications equipment and houses grew by 69% and 39%, respectively.

As economic restructuring continued, employment in the state-owned sector and urban collectives continued decreasing. The number of employees in the state-owned fell by 4.6% million in 2001 and by the end of 2002 had fallen by a further 4.8 million. Excluding smaller private and informal sector activities, employment in the non-state-owned sector increased by 3.0 million in 2002. Based on official statistics, which underestimate the problem, the urban registered unemployment rate rose from 3.6% in 2001 to 4.0% in 2002. If workers at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) who had not been reemployed were included, the adjusted unemployment rate would have been more than 7%. The development of an urban social safety net and reform of social security are needed to ameliorate the social costs of the economic reform program.

2.Policy Developments

Fiscal policy has played a key role in stimulating the PRC?s economic growth over the past 5 years. The Ministry of Finance estimate that four consecutive fiscal stimulus packages contributed 1.5, 2.0, 1.7, and 1.8 percentage points to GDP growth in the years 1998---2001, respectively. The Government issued CNY150 billion ($18.1 billion) in special bonds to finance the public deficit in 2002. These bonds were mainly used to finance public sector projects under construction, development projects in the western region, technological upgrading of key enterprises, projects to divert water from the south to the north, and rural infrastructure.

To promote the development of an integrated national market and fair competition between enterprises in different regions, the Government changed the methodology of income tax sharing between the central and local governments. From 1 January 2002, corporate income tax revenues were no longer divided according to the jurisdiction of the enterprise. Except for several special industries, most of the corporate income tax and all personal income tax revenue were shared between the central and local authorities at a fixed ratio. The central Government used the income tax increase resulting from the reform for transfer payments from the central budget to local

authorities, especially those in the central and western regions. Government procurement procedures were also strengthened.

With WTO accession, the Government accelerated the pace of reforming the domestic economy. A series of adjustments in fiscal and tax policies was made in the first year after WTO accession including: (i) reducing tariffs on more than 5 300 commodities, resulting in the general tariff level dropping from 15.3% to 12.0% (and further to 11.0% in early 2003); (ii) eliminating different treatments between domestic and foreign enterprises, such as unifying accounting standards, by applying the same tax rate reduction on investment in encouraged sectors and in the western region; and (iii) raising the export rebate rates on cotton, rice, wheat, and corn exports from 5% to 13%.

On the monetary front, the Government adopted several measures to stimulate domestic demand and took substantial steps to fulfill its WTO commitments. Concerned that the decline in SOCB lending could aggravate deflationary pressure, PBC adopted the following measures: (i) it cut the 1-year lending rate by 0.5 percentage point to 5.3% in February; (ii) it raised the target growth rate for M2 from 13% to 14% in May; and (iii) it issued a directive in mid-2002 urging SOCBs to increase lending to consumers and smaller and medium enterprises (SMEs).

3.Outlook for 2003---2004

The economy will face downward pressure over the next 2 years. With a less expansionary fiscal policy, low growth in the rural sector, and the impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), economic growth is forecast at 7.3% for 2003.

After record trade levels and government spending in 2002, export and investment growth will slow in 2003. First, exports will not match 2002?s rate of expansion as growth in import demand in its biggest markets, the US and Japan, is expected to be modest and growth of imports will exceed that of exports, resulting in a smaller trade surplus. Second, the Government?s growing budget deficit will limit the continued use of fiscal stimulus packages. Worries about rising debt are expected to constrain government bond sales to finance more infrastructure and construction projects. There is a growing need to reduce debts in other sectors of the economy as the Government contemplates another huge bank bailout and ways to fund its fledgling pension system. As the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus tapers off in 2003, growth of investment in fixed assets will rely more heavily on the private sector and FDI.

Although consumption will be robust, the consumption pattern may change with more money being spent on housing, cars, and tourism. However, services will suffer from the spread of SARS. Due to large excess capacity in many industries and cheap imports related to WTO trade liberalization, deflationary pressure will remain in 2003. CPI inflation is forecast at 0.5%. Substantial FDI inflows will partly offset the decline in the current account surplus resulting from the deteriorating trade balance. The current account surplus will be 1.6% of GDP in 2003.

If the world economy experiences a modest recovery, domestic private sector investment gathers momentum, and rural incomes rise moderately, then the economy will maintain its high growth in 2004, projected at 7.6%. With the deepening of economic reforms and industrial restructuring, excess capacity and supply should be gradually absorbed or transferred to emerging industries or sectors. Inflation will likely be moderate at 1.0%. The current account is forecast at 1.5% of GDP.

In the next 5 years or so, the most important challenge for the PRC?s policy makers is job creation, because, as the country continues its economic restructuring and reform of SOEs, more

workers will be laid off. These workers will join about 8 million new labor market entrants and rural migrants in their search for jobs each year. It will not be possible for the country to reduce poverty and maintain social stability unless economic growth becomes more employment intensive, implying that the economy will need to shift from resource---extensive to labor---intensive growth.

The private sector is playing the key role in job creation, generating almost all new jobs between 1996 and 2002. To create a better enabling environment for the private sector, the Government needs to emphasize improving the legal framework and judicial system; honoring contracts; eliminating fake products and protecting intellectual property rights; converting legitimate fees and charges into taxes and abolishing illegal and arbitrary fees; reducing administrative bureaucracy; removing local protectionism, barriers to interprovincial trade, and other factors preventing fair competition; and setting better accounting and auditing standards and improving disclosure and enforcement.

Income inequality within regions, the gap between rural and urban areas, as well as disparities between the eastern region and western region (where most of the poor live ) have all widened. Addressing the issues of poverty and inequality is essential to maintain broad-based public support for the country?s reform program. More jobs need to be created for the poor and economic growth promoted in rural areas and in the interior provinces. This calls for strengthening policies and institutions, developing infrastructure, addressing land degradation, and supporting human resources development. Other measures required include strengthening social safety nets and the social security system, initially in urban areas and gradually in rural areas; improving poverty reduction programs with better targeting; encourage poor people to participate in decisions that affect them; and undertaking pro-poor fiscal reform, particularly at the provincial and sub-provincial levels.

Although the economic growth rate has been impressive, the efficiency of resource use can still be improved. The financial sector does not allocate capital efficiently. A large volume of NPLs and a poorly performing banking system have hindered the development of an efficient nationwide financial system and imposed large costs on the economy, and represent a potential systemic risk. WTO entry and short-term challenges associated with trade financial liberalization will exacerbate vulnerabilities in the financial system.

To counter these risks, the Government needs to institute regulatory reform and information disclosure mechanisms in the financial sector conforming to international standards. Other measures required in a sequenced approach to liberalizing the financial sector include resolving NPLs; diversifying ownership of financial institutions; giving more autonomy to PBC and financial regulatory agencies; liberalizing interest rates; allowing foreign participation and the development of private banks; opening the capital account in phases after strengthening domestic institutions; and establishing a sound, flexible, and resilient exchange rate regime.

Chapter 9

China Seeks Peaceful Growth

Over the past 25 years, since the implementation of reform and opening-up policy, China has

made a series of new and important achievements. It entered a well-off society at the beginning of this century, and is now striving toward building a society that is holistically well off.

The current stage of China?s well-off society is however incomprehensive, unbalanced and of a low level. There is still a long way to go before China can shake off its state of underdevelopment. China is still a developing country facing a series of big problems. To illustrate this here are two simple mathematical questions. One is multiplication and the other is division and they both focus on the number game.

In the multiplication scenario, no matter how small and negligible an economy or social development problem seems to be, once multiplied by 1.3 billion, it becomes a big, or even a mega problem.

The division scenario is no less thought provoking. No matter how abundant China?s financial and material resources are, once divided by 1.3 billion, the per-capita level will be extremely low.

This 1.3 billion refers to China?s population. Moreover, we have not yet reached our population peak, which will only begin dropping off in 2040 when it reaches 1.5 billion.

Of course, we should not lose sight of the other, more positive side of the coin. China?s experience in reform and opening up in the past 25 years has proved the magnitude of its labor force, creativity, purchasing power, cohesion, momentum of development and its contribution to the world as an engine of growth.

Better Life for All

Therefore, China?s growth and development, including both the negative and positive factors, in the final analysis, are inseparable from the number 1.3 or 1.5 billion. In this context, all the efforts in the economic, political or cultural field, and either concerning domestic, foreign or defense affairs, are for the purpose of securing a comfortable life for its 1.3 billion, or even 1.5 billion people. We will never slacken our efforts to bring about a better, richer, more decent life to our people. Even when China reaches the level of moderately developed countries in the middle of this century, we will still try to make further strides.

This is a great ambition shared by all the Chinese people, from the leadership down to the general public.

This objective alone will keep this generation and next two to three generations extremely busy. To lift the life of one-fifth of the world?s population to a high level is also a great responsibility that China is duty-bound to take up for human progress.

But just how should China achieve such a huge objective?

As you may know, this is a topic of much debate worldwide. My argument is that China?s achievement themselves have answered and is answering this question, and will answer this question in an even more convincing way in the future.

The underlying fact is that in the 25 years since its reform and opening up, China has blazed a new strategic path that not only suits its national conditions, but also conforms to the tide of the times.

This new strategic path is China?s peaceful rise through independently building socialism with Chinese characteristics, while participating in, rather than detaching from, economic globalization. To this end, I would like to emphasize that to take part in economic globalization instead of detaching from it in itself represents a major strategic choice.