According to the plan, the Ministry of Railways, which has long been at the center of controversy for being both a railway service provider and a railway industry watchdog, will be broken up into administrative and commercial arms.

[…] Other ministries and commissions to see a reshuffle are the Health Ministry and the National Population and Family Planning Commission, which will be merged into a new National Health and Family Planning Commission.

The status of the existing State Food and Drug Administration will be elevated to a general administration in order to improve food and drug safety.

The country’s top oceanic administration will be restructured to bring its maritime law enforcement forces, currently scattered throughout different ministries and departments, under the unified management of a single administration.

The National Energy Administration will be restructured to streamline the administrative and regulatory systems of the energy sector.

Two media regulators, the General Administration of Press and Publication and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, will be merged into a single entity to oversee the country’s press, publication, radio, film and television sectors.

At the Associated Press, Louise Watt outlined the reasoning behind the changes:

This time, the streamlining plan includes guidelines to restrict and better define the central government’s responsibilities, limiting its issuing of permits for projects, the setting of standards and other policies that have slowed decision-making.

“Departments of the State Council are now focusing too much on micro issues. We should attend to our duties and must not meddle in what is not in our business,” Ma Kai, secretary-general of the State Council, or Cabinet, told the legislators. He said that overlapping government functions has often led to buck-passing.

[…] The public has been complaining about government inefficiency and for that reason “we should dare to push ahead with cracking the tough nut of structural reform,” the state-run Jinghua Daily quoted Wang Feng, an official in the Communist Party office involved in drafting the reform program.

But Wang Xiangwei cautioned at the South China Morning Post last week that the rearrangements could bring their own problems:

Some analysts, including Wang Yukai , a professor with the Chinese Academy of Governance under the State Council, told state media that five super ministries created under reform measures in 2008 produced mixed results. Indeed, how to force the bigger ministries to deregulate and decentralise may prove to be an even more arduous task for Li in years to come.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is the earliest example of a super ministry. It was formed in 2003 and evolved from the State Planning Commission, a key ministry in the days of the planned economy.

Its purpose is to draft national economic and social development plans and undertake various economic reforms. But in reality, it has become a super powerful ministry with broad regulatory powers covering all the major industries.

Some cynics argue that it has been the biggest stumbling block to structural reforms.

The Economist (via CDT) also argued recently that “super-sized” ministries might fail to deliver promised benefits.

Bloomberg News examined the restructuring of responsibility for China’s maritime security, which comes after an alleged radar-lock incident raised questions about Beijing and Tokyo’s grip on events around the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.

The State Oceanic Administration will oversee the coast guard, fisheries law-enforcement and the smuggling police, which now fall under separate ministries, a report to the National People’s Congress, the country’s legislature, said yesterday. The administration also has a law enforcement arm.

The decision signals that China wants to better organize its maritime assets as it wrangles with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam in territorial disputes. The U.S. has expressed concern that an accident or miscommunication could lead that sparring to escalate further.

“The recent tension has convinced the central authorities to better coordinate those agencies,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, head of the department of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. “There’s been growing concern among observes including foreign governments about whether those agencies were coordinated or not. We have evidence that they are not.”

At The Wall Street Journal, Colum Murphy described the break-up of the colossal railway ministry, which currently employs over two million people, runs its own police force and courts, and oversees spending greater than China’s official military budget.

Currently, the ministry both regulates and operates China’s rail system, which has made for a murky structure and impeded both competition and financing.

[…] Under the new blueprint, the Ministry of Transport will absorb administrative duties including overseeing technology and safety standards and service and railway-project quality. A new entity, China Railway Corp., will focus on operational and commercial areas such as management of freight and passenger business as well as railway construction. Given the ministry’s problems, such a move was widely expected.

[…] “The large railway system is critical to China’s economy—and will become even more so with the economy’s shift from coastal areas inland,” said Gerald Ollivier, senior transport specialist with the World Bank, adding that the current multiplicity of roles at the ministry creates “some conflicting objectives.”

Assessments of the restructuring’s likely implications for family planning were somewhat divided. One source quoted by Michael Martina and Sui-Lee Wee at Reuters stressed continuity:

A recently retired official from the Family Planning Commission who maintains close ties with the agency, said the merger does not mean the commission’s power will be reduced.

“For such a long time, hundreds of millions of people had to have contraception and birth control, this kind of work is necessary. But it’s possible that there will be fewer things done by force,” the retired official said.

But some other observers argued that the changes herald the end of China’s ‘One Child Policy’, whose harsh enforcement and demographic effects have grown increasingly contentious. From Laurie Burkitt at The Wall Street Journal:

While the family planning agency will still exist, merging with the Ministry of Health, leaders have preserved it merely as a face-saving measure, said Wang Feng, a population expert and director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing. “The way to interpret this is that the laws are in effect, but the judges and the policemen have all been fired,” Mr. Wang said.

Cheng Li, a political expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said, “This is a signal to an end of a policy that in reality isn’t in line with China’s other reforms.”

[… But] “The family planning and one-child policy has been running for so many years, and it is in the constitution as state policy,” said Li Jianxin, a population expert from Peking University. “So I guess it might not be this easy for the new leaders to just simply put an end to it.”

Though their anticipated absorption by the Ministry of Culture did not materialize, two major media regulators are to merge. But the China Copyright and Media blog cautioned that halving the number of organs was unlikely to mean less intervention:

[…] As had been anticipated, the General Administration of Press and Publications and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television will merge into a new body, the State Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television (guojia xinwen chuban guangbo dianying dianshi zongju 国家新闻出版广播电影电视总局). The National Copyright Administration, a subordinate department of GAPP, will also be brought into the SAPPRFT, an unfortunate moniker if ever there was one. […]

It should not be expected, however, that this merger will lead to any form of liberalization or deregulation. It is likely that cultural and media policy will remain in line with the Central Committee Decision on Cultural Reform of late 2011, which aimed to combine commercial success with enhanced political control. Also, problems of administrative overlap and dual licensing remain, particularly in the field of Internet management, as the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology maintain their respective Internet portfolios.

Or, more succinctly:

China’s new ministry: State Administration of Press Publication Radio Film and Television.Netizen: too long, but we know you’ll cut it!

— Kai-Fu Lee (@kaifulee) March 10, 2013

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Post tags: coast guard, corruption, diaoyu islands, drug safety, family planning, food safety, GAPP, Japan, kai-fu lee, Ma Kai, maritime security, media regulation, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Railways, National Development and Reform Commission, National People's Congress, NDRC, one-child policy, philippines, railway safety, railways, SARFT, State Council, State Family Planning Commission, State Food and Drug Administration, super-ministries
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The ministerial-level body, due to be approved within days at the annual session of the National People’s Congress, will follow the example of the US Food and Drug Administration.

It will integrate regulation and law enforcement in one agency.

[…] Despite numerous nationwide crackdowns, consumer confidence in the mainland’s food and drug industry has been shattered. The current system is tangled in red tape, with up to 13 government agencies controlling food and drug regulation and supervision.

The industrial and commerce authority, for example, is responsible for packaging, while the Ministry of Health handles food safety standards.

The Ministry of Agriculture steps in if animals are involved.

Academics and food safety watchdogs have long complained that the numerous agencies create blind spots and overlaps of power that contribute to the chaos.

Super-sized ministries may not fulfill their promised efficiency gains, however, as The Economist (via CDT) recently explained.

The structure of Chinese food production is also highly fragmented. Here, too, consolidation seems likely, as huge numbers of small-scale suppliers give way to a much smaller number of industrial-scale farms. While big agribusiness can bring its own problems, this trend is expected to greatly simplify food production chains and ease monitoring and enforcement of food safety.

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Post tags: drug safety, food safety, GAPP, ministries reorganization, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Health, National People's Congress, public health, SARFT, super-ministries, two sessions
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About 2,200 members of the 12th CPPCC National Committee will discuss major issues including the election of new leaders of the top advisory body and proposals for the coming National People’s Congress (NPC) on Tuesday. They will also review government work reports and hear recommendations for improvement.

“This year’s two sessions have a distinct feature, which is to witness the transition of the top government leaders,” Yun Jie, director of the administration research department at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday, adding that a smooth leadership transition is crucial to China’s future over at least the next five years.

Chi Fulin, director of domestic reform think tank the China (Hainan) Institute for Reform and Development, expects the meetings to shed light on China’s future reforms because NPC deputies and CPPCC members will make proposals to the government on issues concerning people’s livelihoods and state affairs.

Lü Xinhua, a CPPCC spokesman, said 840 proposals had been submitted by members as of Saturday noon. The Global Times found many of the proposals tackle issues including fighting corruption, institutional restructuring and environmental protection, particularly curbing air and water pollution.

While last year’s congress was held amid the breaking scandal involving former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai, this year’s congress aims to refocus public attention elsewhere. From the New York Times:

Most analysts agree that the proceedings this year will ignore the plight of Mr. Bo, who is being detained awaiting prosecution on charges of corruption, abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

This year, the party’s new top leaders, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, have paved the way for the 13-day session with vows to end flagrant privileges and self-enrichment by officials and their families. They have also vowed to create a more efficient government, and reduce the acrid smog that has enveloped Beijing and other northern Chinese cities for weeks this winter.

“They’ve already taken many steps that have raised hopes among ordinary people — now we’re looking for signs that the hopes can be satisfied,” said Deng Yuwen, an editor for The Study Times, a weekly newspaper published by the Central Party School in Beijing. “The congress won’t have any breakthroughs, but it can indicate where and how fast the leaders want to take things.”

Yet the congress itself is widely viewed as a rubber stamp, with any debate or negotiations taking place behind the scenes. For the many journalists who attend the proceedings, it can be difficult to gain access to key players or to inside information about how proposals are introduced and debated. The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time reports:

While delegates to the two meetings will get to discuss key plans for streamlining the government and even make recommendations, it’s hard to conceive of this pageant as much more than a talk shop when there is only one full session a year.

The quest for authoritative and objective reporting might be easier with a little less secrecy surrounding even the simplest information. A list of all delegates to the advisory body was released without explanation of what any of the more than 2,000 representatives did to get into this august body. Even the time of the CPPCC’s opening session was kept under wraps until the last moment – and they were similarly coy with the closing date for the parliament session, which formally opens Tuesday.

That presents a bit of a challenge for serious news coverage, leaving state media to occupy the role of stenographer. CPPCC chairman Jia Qinglin noted that over the last five years the advisory body had organized more than 500 in-depth studies, zeroing in on the economy, people’s livelihood and regional development, state media reported. Xinhua revealed that a total of 28,930 proposals had been submitted by CPPCC members over the past five years, and 26,583 of these had been addressed. There were no details on which had actually made it into policy or law.

For domestic media, reporting on the congress is tightly proscribed. CDT recently translated a list of ten topics that are off-limits for reporting during the session.

One piece of data – the annual military budget – was not revealed at the press conference on the eve of the session’s opening as expected [See update below]. As AP reports:

The legislature’s spokeswoman defended booming military spending Monday, saying the vast investment has contributed to global peace and stability, though she did not announce the coming year’s percentage increase, as usually has been done on the eve of the legislature’s opening.

With China now the world’s No. 2 military spender after the U.S., the amount of this year’s increase will be a barometer of the complicated relationship between Xi and the politically influential military. A big boost would show Xi wants robust backing for the People’s Liberation Army at a time when China has tense territorial disputes with neighbors and wants to reduce U.S. influence in the region. A smaller increase would show that Xi feels he already has strong military support without the need to pander to its recent demands for ever-larger outlays.

Growth in the military budget should match or exceed last year’s rate, if only to keep up with rising inflation, said Ni Lexiong, a military expert at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. Tensions with Japan and others, he said, should ensure a bigger voice for the military.

Other changes that are expected to be announced during the congress include an administrative reorganization of government ministries. Notably, the scandal-plagued Ministry of Railways is expected to be demoted and broken into commercial and operational arms. From Reuters:

“Part of the Ministry of Railways will be merged with a super-Ministry of Transport,” said a second source who has leadership ties, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions for speaking to foreign reporters. The source was referring to the operations of the railways.

A state-owned enterprise will absorb the ministry’s commercial arm, which has responsibility for passenger ticketing and freight operations, the sources added.

The Railways Ministry has faced numerous problems over the past few years, including heavy debts from funding new high-speed lines, waste and fraud. The government has pledged to open the rail industry to private investment on an unprecedented scale.

Individual delegates to the CPPCC and other activists have issued public calls for specific reforms at the NPC. As the New York Times reports, some delegates are calling for an end to re-education through labor, or laojiao, camps, following vague promises from the government on the issue:

“The reeducation-through-labor system to a certain extent makes citizens live in fear,” said Dai Zhongchuan, a delegate and law professor from Huaqiao University in Fujian Province, in a report by china.com.cn, the news portal of the State Council Information Office and the National Internet Information Office.

“Not to go through the courts to decide on a crime is to deprive and limit personal freedoms. Not to take steps to restrict and monitor this can very easily lead to the abuse of power,” said Mr. Dai.

Human Rights Watch issued a letter to Xi Jinping calling for the abolition of laojiao and a number of other reforms.

But as the New York Times article quoted above points out, deeper political reforms are unlikely to come to fruition at the current congress:

The apparent scaling back of the plans for administrative changes reflects how difficult it will be for the leadership to deliver on promises to free up the economy from state-owned enterprises and fight corruption, while still preserving single-party rule, said Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore. “In all these issues, there’s the same basic problem of deep distrust between the people and the government,” Mr. Zheng said. “Because there is so much distrust, the government is reluctant to make deep reforms. What they call reforms turns out be reassigning powers within government, not giving up powers to society. That’s not real reform — and then people feel increasingly frustrated.”

UPDATE: Early Tuesday morning Beijing time, Xinhua released the military budget:

China plans to raise its defense budget by 10.7 percent to 720.2 billion yuan (114.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 2013.

— Xinhua News Agency (@XHNews) March 5, 2013

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, Li Keqiang, NPC 2013, political reform, re-education through labor, super-ministries, Xi Jinping
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Caijing learned in late February that the draft plan for a new round of “super ministries” reform will be discussed during the upcoming second plenary meeting of the 18th CPC Central Committee, putting “super ministries” on China’s reform agenda once again after five years of exploration and debate.

Super ministries reform features consolidating government agencies with similar functions to reduce administrative overlapping and promote efficiency.

[...]Under the plan, the Railways Ministry will be merged with the Ministry of Transport, in a move which has won popular support. In addition, food and drug safety authorities will be integrated into a regulator dedicated to market supervision; and the powers of the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the State Oceanic Administration will be expanded. However, consolidation of government agencies in the energy, cultural, and financial sectors, as well as the formation of a national organization which coordinates reforms in different sectors, though widely anticipated, have not been included in the plan.

The draft plan, though basically completed, may be subject to changes before being put on the table of the central leadership, said an expert who participated in drawing up the plan. The version that comes out after the second plenary meeting of the 18th CPC Central Committee is expected to be final, said the expert.

Recently, a far-reaching web of corruption was discovered in the Ministry of Railways.

In the beginnings of China’s “reform and opening up” era, attempts to streamline bureaucracy by merging public ministries were taken in effort to increase government efficiency. AP covers the recent closed-door meeting where new rounds of bureaucratic mergers were discussed, provides an overview of the first round three decades ago, and touches on the controversial nature of this practice:

In 1982, the number of Cabinet-level ministries and commissions was slashed from 100 to 61. In the 1990s, museum pieces such as the Ministry of Machine Building that were no longer needed to set prices and tell companies what to produce were eliminated. In 1998, then-Premier Zhu Rongji shrank the number of ministries further from 40 to 29.

At the same time, Beijing created Western-style regulators for banks and securities. A Ministry of Commerce was formed in 2003 to bring together trade and planning agencies, simplifying some trade regulation to make it easier for private sector traders to function.

Such change can provoke furious opposition. In the last round of proposed reforms in 2008, the only thing leaders finally agreed on was to make the environmental regulator a full-fledged ministry in response to an avalanche of pollution scandals.

Creating fewer, bigger ministries would fit with party pledges to make the economy more productive and keep incomes growing. Xi has called for a “renewal of the Chinese nation,” raising hopes a new leader whose attitude toward reform is still unclear might throw his political weight behind remaking the government.[...]

Also see “Government Reform: Super-Size Me,” via CDT.

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Post tags: ministries reorganization, Ministry of Railways, super-ministries
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[...]The government believes that fewer and bigger ministries will boost bureaucratic efficiency. It could also, officials say, help the country change in more fundamental ways.

[...]In recent weeks speculation has been growing that a new round of ministry mergers will soon unfold. The 370-odd members of the Communist Party’s central committee are expected to meet later this month to finalise arrangements for the annual session of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, which begins on March 5th. Further steps to create what officials call a “big-ministry system” are likely to be discussed.[...] Bigger ministries, it is argued, should mean smaller government.

[...]Some worry that creating bigger ministries with more responsibilities could backfire. Instead of making government more efficient, it could create even more powerful bureaucratic interest groups that could thwart efforts to make government nimbler and more responsive to public needs. In recent months discussion has burgeoned online in China about the possibility of creating a new commission to oversee economic and political reforms and ensure that ministries co-operate in carrying them out. The lack of co-operation has been evident recently in behind-the-scenes feuding over a blueprint for reducing the wealth gap. It was eventually published on February 5th, with a telling lack of detail.

Officials say that the “big-ministry system” is not just about redefining bureaucratic boundaries, but is an important part of more thoroughgoing political reform. Alongside small government, they sometimes stress a need for “big society”, with much greater non-governmental involvement in the provision of basic services.[...]

Wen Jiabao’s 2008 announcement of the plan to fuse government agencies into “super-ministries” also met with skepticism.

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The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), one of the five “super ministries” approved by the National People’s Congress (NPC), the Chinese parliament in March this year was inaugurated on Sunday.

A total of 24 departments have been approved for establishment under the new ministry.

The new ministry, transformed from the Ministry of Information Industry, will integrate the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC)’s functions on industry and trade management, the functions of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense except that on nuclear power management, and the functions of the Ministry of Information Industry and the State Council Informatization Office, according to the NPC’s decision.

Some background on China’s ministerial reorganization from The Xinhua News Agency:

Chinese lawmakers will on Tuesday afternoon deliberate a State Council proposal for institutional restructuring of the government, which involves the installation of “super ministries” on energy, transportation, industries and environment protection.

[...]

The target for this round of government reshuffle is to explore a “super ministry” system to streamline government department functions, and to form some “bigger departments” to strengthen macro-economic regulation, maintain national security of energy supply, integrate information development and industrialization.

For the implications of the new ministry system, see CDT’s coverage here, here, and here.

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Post tags: IT industry, MIIT, ministries reorganization, super-ministries
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