The ****trait of an Obese "Olympic Host" : China to streamline government
into 'super ministries' / IHT
-- Micky's HO: Wen-Jiabao's predecessor has tried and failed in "reduce
and restructure" the Chinese government, what does Mr. Wen have that Mr.
Zhu did not? --
International Herald Tribune
China to streamline government into 'super ministries'
By Jim Yardley
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
BEIJING: China announced Tuesday that it would reorganize the central
government by creating five so-called "super ministries," including one
charged with improving environmental protection. But the plan stopped
short of creating a single agency to oversee the contentious issue of
energy policy.
The plan submitted Tuesday during the annual session of the National
People's Congress, the Communist Party-run legislature, is intended to
streamline an overlapping array of government agencies, commissions and
ministries around core issues like environmental protection; social
services; housing and construction; trans****tation; and industry and
information.
"The reshuffling is aimed at resolving long-term problems and
contradictions as China's economy grows," stated an explanation of the
plan issued Tuesday by the State Council, the government's highest
executive body.
Chinese state media quickly framed the plan, which is expected to be
endorsed this week by the legislature, as a major bureaucratic reform
that would improve implementation of national policies. But the
practical impact is far from certain as China's bureaucracy struggles to
manage soaring energy demand, rampant pollution, rising inflation and an
economy that some analysts say is perilously close to overheating.
"What does this do?" asked Arthur Kroeber, managing director of
Dragonomics, an economic research consultancy in Beijing. "What it will
accomplish is some incremental change in a couple of areas. But on the
whole, I don't see that this advances in any substantial way the
coordination between different agencies."
Despite three decades of market reforms, China's economy is still
heavily shaped by the government's central planning agency, the National
Development and Reform Commission. Some analysts had argued that the
government could become more efficient by stripping away some of the
commission's responsibilities, including over energy policy. Speculation
had centered on whether an independent energy ministry would be
established.
But the new plan divides authority over energy. A new "high-level"
energy commission would develop national energy strategies. But an
energy bureau under the central planning agency would control
administration and oversight of the energy sector.
Yang Fuqiang, director of the Beijing office of the nonprofit Energy
Foundation, said the creation of the two energy agencies represents a
political compromise. He predicted that they would eventually be merged
into a full ministry, but not for a few more years.
"This is a first step," Yang said.
Kroeber said one significant change in the restructuring plan is that
the central planning agency would no longer have final approval on major
construction projects. But he said that calling the new entities "super
ministries" overstates their power and that they seemed to represent a
"half step." He noted that the expanded ministry over trans****tation
would oversee civil aviation and urban road trans****tation but would not
include the current railway ministry, which lobbied strenuously to
remain autonomous. "They haven't gotten all the way to a coordinated
trans****tation ministry," Kroeber said.
The new environmental ministry would seem further proof of the emphasis
placed on fighting pollution by President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister
Wen Jiabao. Environmentalists have complained that the State
Environmental Protection Administration was easily steamrolled in
bureaucratic turf battles because it did not rank as a full government
ministry. The new plan elevates the agency to ministry status,
presumably with greater clout inside the bureaucracy.
Yet it is unclear if this new status will also include an expanded
budget for more staff to carry out regulatory policies. Currently, the
agency has only a few hundred employees to coordinate and regulate
environmental protection.
China is still failing to meet its targets for improving energy
efficiency and reducing pollution. On Tuesday, senior officials said
that China must make bigger improvements during the next three years or
the country will fail to meet its five-year goal of reducing energy
usage per unit of gross domestic product by 20 percent by 2010.
Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform
Commission, said the country was steadily lowering its energy usage but
still not meeting the target of annual 4 percent reductions. Last year,
China's energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped by 3.27 percent.
"We still face a challenging situation," Xie said at a news conference
at the Great Hall of the People. "The economy continues to grow, and the
pattern of heavy industrialization has not changed."
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