Ambiguous hybridity? Main features of China's service-oriented government reform

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-09-2019-0241
• Date: 06 March 2020
• Published date: 06 March 2020
• Pages: 419-433
• Author: Xiaolong Tian,Tom Christensen
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management

Ambiguous hybridity? Main

features of China’s

service-oriented

government reform

Xiaolong Tian

School of Public Administration, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics,

Jiangsu Service-Oriented Government Research Base, Nanjing, China, and

Tom Christensen

Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

Abstract

Purpose –Compared with the worldwide reform trend of transcending new public management (NPM) during

the past two decades, China’s service-oriented government (SOG) reforms are a relatively different reform

approach. After building an SOG was politically identified in 2004, China launched three rounds of SOG

reforms in 2008, 2013 and 2018. The purpose of this article is to examine what is meant by China’s SOG

approach and analyze the reasons behind its emergence. In particular, it explores howthis approach might be

interpreted in NPM, and particularly post-NPM terms.

Design/methodology/approach –The main theoretical basis of the paper is three theoretical perspectives

from organizational theory –the instrumental, cultural and myth perspectives, but more specifically, the

concepts complexity and hybridity. The empirical examples are selected from the SOG reforms of 2008, 2013

and 2018. The data used are a combination of public documents and scholarly secondary literature.

Findings –This paper discusses the SOG approach in China as a response to the negative effects of

NPM-related reforms and informed by the western post-NPM reforms. It contends that China’s SOG is a

complex and hybrid approach in which NPM and post-NPM elements coexist and their balance is different from

the west.

Originality/value –Few authors have considered China’s SOG approach in NPM and post-NPM terms. This

paper contributesnot onlyto a wider understandingof the ongoing SOG reform process in China, but also to the

understanding of the relevance of public administration theories in a comparative perspective.

Keywords China, Service-oriented government, New public management, Post-NPM, Complexity and

hybridity

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Following the prevalence of new public management (NPM) during the past two decades of

the twentieth century, transcending NPM has become a hot topic in recent decades (Pollitt

and Bouckaert, 2017, p. 11). In many western countries, this new reform wave, known as

post-NPM, has moved away from market values, competition and structural devolution and

toward increased centralization, horizontal coordination and value-based governance

(Amsler, 2016;Christensen and Lægreid, 2007). In China, by contrast, the trend of

transcending NPM is embodied in the service-oriented government (SOG) approach (Tian

and Christensen, 2019).

The need to build what came to be labeled as “service-oriented government”by academics

in 2000 (Zhang, 2000) was politically identified back in 2004 in a speech by Wen Jiabao (2004),

the Chinese premier at that time. It was first put into practice by some local governments,

such as Chongqing (Xiang and Wu, 2013), then adopted and popularized by the central

government. As China’s government reforms over the past 40 years do not represent a clear

shift from NPM to post-NPM (Tian and Christensen, 2019), then the next central question is

Ambiguous

hybridity

419

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Received 27 September 2019

Revised 21 November 2019

Accepted 19 December 2019

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 33 No. 4, 2020

pp. 419-433

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-09-2019-0241