CHINA CREATING “1+N” CENTRIC MODEL OF STATE GOVERNANCE

YAN YILONG

Deputy Director, Institute for China Studies, Tsinghua University

Through 40 years of reform and open-up, China’s system is no longer a monocentric one of centralized control and at the same time neither is it a polycentric one, but rather it is a “1+N” centric model of governance. It is a model that combines polycentric with monocentric with several centers, all of which however are centering on a mono-center.

In different contexts, the connotations of “1” and “N” vary. Generally speaking, the “1” here is referred to the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which is a leading political party serving not only as pilot of the country but also as organizer and adhesives of the society. The “N” here stands for different departments, local governments, enterprises and citizens,the plural principals co-participating in national governance. In regard to the choosing of public servants, it sets store by competitive selection; in regard to decision making, it goes by preconsultation, full absorbance of various opinions and post-checks and balances;in regard to public participation, it gives emphasis on a reversed public participation by policy-makers actively soliciting public will; in regard to the relationship between the central and local authorities, China stresses on highly centralizing political power and at the same highly devolving administrative power;and in regard to social governance, it underlines an organic combination of the mobilizing capacity of the Party and the self-organizing capacity of the society. It is a new type of national governance model that combines unity and plurality, efficiency and openness and top-down and bottom-up approaches.

COMPETITIVE SELECTION OF PERSONNEL

(When the great way prevails,)“The worthy and able are chosen as office holders”, goes a Chinese classical writing, “and mutual confidence is fostered and good neighborliness cultivated”.The foundation of good governance is to select the most worthy and able to rule the country. As such, the competitive selection system of contemporary China is likewise to choose the worthy and able and raising so doing to an unprecedented high by combining it with organizational form of modern government.

The CPC absorbs advanced elements from various social strata and a part of its membership of 89 million people joins the officialdom of running the country and managing the government.In a sense, it serves as a talent pool for officialdom like the role played by the traditional scholar-official group.

But at the same time, as a modern political party, the organization of the CPC can hardly be compared by the traditional civil officer group. Through comprehensive Party building, it is an organizational way of selecting, nurturing and using talents to build on political loyalty of Party officials, to improve on their personal character and to train their capacity of performing duties.

For entry into public service in China,it is necessary to go through open examination and competitive selection,somewhat like the traditional imperial examination system in selecting political talents. However, it is way ahead of the traditional system in terms of openness and equitability in selection and of compatibility to vacancies.

For promotion of officials, it mainly relies on job performance, step by step progressive training, and competition and selection on all levels, which on the one hand ensures that the chosen officials are rich in experience and of tested capacity to perform duties and, on the other hand, guarantees the openness of public offices.

Deputies were singing national anthem at the closing meeting of the fi rst session of the 13th National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 20, 2018.

Since the ancient times, China has valued the wisdom that “prime ministers must have served as local officials,and great generals must have come from the ranks”. Comparing to Presidents Obama and Trump, neither of whom is experienced in running the local governments, President Xi Jinping started with running a village (for 6 years), going on to run a county (for 3 years), on to run a city (for 11 years in 3 cities) and to run a province (for 11 years in 3 provinces) before running the country. Even at the national level, it took him 5 years to be well versed in comprehensive work for the whole country before assuming the supreme national leading position.

China’s system of competitive selection for political talents combines the strength of the system of choosing the worthy and able in its tradition with that of election system in the West so as to ensure the unity between openness of power and capacity of performing duty. Comparing to the electoral politics of the West, the capacity of performing duty of the chosen leaders is based on rich experience, long-term training and being tested by practice over the years,unlike the case of US President Trump,who had had no experience of holding public office but has taken the top position of the country just by winning the election. As a Western saying goes, “to run for an office is like a poem but to hold it is like a prose”. It means that you can win an election by inciting public opinion but you cannot run a country well by doing so. Comparing to the traditional system of choosing the worthy and able, it chooses the worthy and able for leaders from the grassroots to the supreme national levels, the openness of power being more thorough.

The main problem with the competitive selection system is that it is done in mainly by a top-down approach with low participation of the rank and file.Therefore, it is necessary to explore for a new model of official selection featuring assessment by the rank and file, recommendation by the organization and decision by the Party committees, the aim being to do a better job at combining top-down selection with bottom-up assessment in an organic way.

PRE-CONSULTATION WITH FULL ABSORBANCE OF OPINIONS AND POSTCHECKS AND BALANCES

More importantly, consultative democracy is a normal of contemporary China’s political life. For major policy making of the country, it is necessary to repeatedly solicit opinions of all parties concerned, repeatedly conduct discussion and make decision in a collective way, the process of China’s decisionmaking featuring “pre-consultation with full absorbance of opinions and post-checks and balances”.

The National People’s Congress(NPC) is extensively involved in the policy-making process. Taking the making of China’s 13thFive-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development for instance, in over a year before the voting in the NPC, the NPC had participated in its making beforehand by conducting special investigations, giving proposals and recommendations and making pre-deliberation. At the same time, in various stages of drafting the document, the opinions of the NPC had been repeatedly solicited and earnestly absorbed in revising the paper.The fact that the NPC adopted the Plan by overwhelming majority of the vote actually reflected high policy consensus. Just as a leader of a local people’s congress remarked when interviewed by this Author, the Government had repeatedly solicited opinions of all parties concerned and earnestly absorbed the opinions in consensus building.

The National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is a special consultative organization, an important embodiment of a new-type party system in China featuring political consultation between the CPC and the other democratic parties. The CPPCC National Committee has extensively participated in consultation during the policy-making process.In the process of the making of the Five-Year Plan, the CPPCC National Committee contributed opinions and recommendations by making special investigations and proposals, conducting special consultation and seminars,delivering consultative policy papers and reporting on social conditions and public opinions. Within a year prior to the adoption of the 13thFive-Year Plan,the CPPCC National Committee had made 363 proposals relating to the Plan.

The strength of consultation, absorbance and checks and balances is to avert the situation of “deliberation without decision”, a prevalent and permanent issue with Western democratic process.Here, participants in policy making play the role of opinion importer in contrast to “veto players” at every corner and in every link of the policy-making process as in the West. It results in that policymaking in China can on the one hand embraces the participation by pluralistic principals and on the other hand concentrates wisdom of all concerned,build consensus, embodying efficiency and considerateness in the process.

The challenge to this model rests with that the range of principals to the consultation and the degree of the role played by various opinions depend on willingness and style of work of the organizers of consultation. This leads to the fact that some of the consultations become mere formalities and with others there is centralization without democracy. In the future institutional building, it is necessary to give rigidity to the power of consultation with clearcut stipulations on necessary consultation process and authentication process for policy-making so as to ensure that policy-making is more procedural, scientific and democratic based.

REVERSED-DIRECTION PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

On various policy levels and in various policy areas, the Chinese Government has displayed rather high responsiveness to the interest of the public.From the perspective of pluralism,China’s forward-direction public participation is indeed rather low. However,in policy-making process, the policymakers actively go deep among the people, extensively seek their opinions and concentrate their wisdom. Some scholars describe such mechanisms as reversed-direction public participation.A study on the making of the Five-Year Plan for China’s Economic and Social Development reveals that mechanisms of reversed-direction participation include proactive investigations and seminars organized by policy makers,openly soliciting opinions through formal channels and the public expressing their views through informal channels.

Compared with pluralistic public participation, reversed-direction participation sets store by representation of public opinions rather than that of varying interest, emphasizing on reaching consensus between dispersed views rather than compromise of dispersed interest, which helps absorb views of groups whose participating capacity are weak so as to achieve a more wholesome representation.

The problem with reversed-direction participation is that the public have less than sufficient sense of participation.Meanwhile, the fact that the level of openness in policy-making process is relatively low also constrains public participation. In the future, it is advisable to encourage public policy debates centering on given policy subjects. Except that it is necessary to be confidential,discussion on all links of policy making and proceedings of meetings should be open so as to facilitate public participation and supervision. At the same time,besides emphasizing on concentration of dispersed views of the public, emphasis should also be given to identification and concentration of dispersed inclinations of the public.

COMBINATION OF POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE DEVOLUTION

China is a big country with a wast territory and a gigantic population, local differences being huge. It has been a tough nut to crack since the ancient times how to handle the relationship between central and local authorities. In the Zhou dynasty, feudalism held sway,“establishing fiefdoms of relatives to fence the King of Zhou”. In the Qin dynasty, government became centralized,“the country being ruled in provinces and counties”, a grand public system created for self-interest resulting in the fact that “the Qin political system is followed by all succeeding dynasties”,which at the same time could not but give considerations to local autonomy.As Gu Yanwu, a well-known thinker in late-Ming and early-Qing dynasties,pointed out in his essay On Province-County System, “the weakness of the feudal system is autocratic rule from below whereas that of the province-county system is autocratic rule from on high”,which is unalterable truth.

Contemporary China is a unitary country under the leadership of the CPC, its central government having unquestionable political authority. However, at the same time, China is also a highly devolved country in administration. On the one hand, it is necessary, in political terms, to uphold and improve the authority of the CPC Central Committee and the system and structure of its unified and centralized leadership so as to coordinate all efforts of the country, enable the central and local authorities going well together and strictly enforce orders and prohibitions. The central authorities can effectively direct the initiatives of the local authorities to its policy objectives by political guidance and mechanized conduction of administrative pressure. A study reveals that since the 9thFive-Year Plan, the function of objectives of local five-year plans converging with the central ones has kept increasing proportionately, by the 12thFive-Year Plan the converging function reaching 74.9%.

On the other hand, China administrative power is highly devolved. Despite China being a unitary country, local authorities has always taken a large proportion in public expenditure of the country, which has kept rising since the adoption of reform and open-up policy.By the 6thFive-Year Plan years, the figure stood at 50.2%, by the years of the 12thFive-Year Plan it rose to 85.2%, and by 2016 it perched on 85.4%, a figure being quite high among major countries around the globe. For instance,the United States is a federal country,the proportion of its local government spending in 2016 sat at 52.5% of its total public spending.

The essence of political centralization and administrative devolution is to draw political strength from the provincecountry system and draw administrative strength from the previous one. Fundamentally, the organic combination of both depends on the fact that China’s system is not divided between politics and administration but rather politics and administration are one and indivisible. Local officials are both professional civil servants and Party officials, political demand on them being the primary one, which is conducive to a win-win situation between the central and local authorities. This enables the country to maintain both a strong national power and meanwhile flexibility in local policies, which brings into play local creativity and initiatives.

ORGANIC COMBINATION OF CPC’S MOBILIZING CAPACITY AND SOCIETY’S SELF ORGANIZATION

The system of social governance is a colossal root system of the governance of a country. Social governance in China is not of a binary model that divides the society and the state but rather one in which both have a division of work and cooperate with one another in interconnection, where Party organizations on basic levels, self-government organizations of the people, mass organizations and non-profitable organizations serve as bridges and ties between the state and society and between the government and market.

Against a modern society that features ever increasing dispersion and pluralization, the CPC has, in accordance with precise organizational principles, set up various political groupings that have a clear division of work and are in various forms and carried out firm, extensive and flexible leadership through all of them. It is because the CPC’s organizational embedment into organizations of various categories that an “organic unity” of governance of the country has truly come about. Under the leadership of the CPC, China has become a “super network”, the largest one in scale of the world. The peripheral nerves of the CPC network extend to organizations of various categories in China, all social and economic organizations having all kinds of connections with the CPC organizations. By the end of 2015, the basic CPC organizations totaled 4.518 million in number, not only achieving a full coverage of all public institutions but also a coverage over state-owned enterprises, private enterprises and registered legal entities of social organizations across the country of 91.3%, 67.9% and 58.9% respectively.

Mass organizations are important bridges and ties linking the state and the society. Not only do they serve as ties linking the state and designated social groups that they represent, they also are ties between the states and the social organizations of the social groups.The role of such ties functions in twoway communication: on the one hand,mass organizations provide a set of active and effective conveying and mobilizing mechanisms for implementing the political line, guideline and policies of the Party and, on the other, they play an important role in representing the interest of various social groups, being a channel to express varying interests and make suggestions on behalf of various social groups and people of their reach,which is ultimately shown for in the country’s policy making.

In China, there are highly active social organizations, the legal entities of social organizations under official registration all over the country numbering 490,000, which is only a tip of the iceberg of the situation of social groupings in the country. There are many more unregistered social groupings such as fan communities, student bodies, religious groupings, friendship associations and cyber groupings that form a behemoth defying statistics.

In sum, the leadership of the CPC as a way of running a country is a model of good government that is unprecedented in human history, a fundamental guarantee for China to be successful in all its efforts. On various levels of governance of the country, it is precisely because of the full participation of plural principals and the CPC’s firm leadership that runs through such participation that produces a system in which liberty will not lead to confusion and liveliness remains in good order.Such a “1+N” centric model for national governance fits the concrete conditions of China and also has universal significance. For other countries and the developing countries in particular, it offers the Chinese wisdom and a Chinese proposal on governance of a country.