A Review of Institutional Reform over the Past 30 Years from the Perspective of Change Management

Abstract

The Leading Group for Deepening Reform Comprehensively has been set up on the decision of the CPC Central Committee to be in charge of the overall planning of reform, taking a balanced and coordinated approach, advancing reform as a whole and supervising its implementation. This means that change management has become an important item on the agenda. Systematically reviewing and examining the course of the seven rounds of institutional reform introduced by the State Council since 1978 from the perspective of change management, we find that the reforms have advanced gradually and steadily, with functional transformation as the core feature and key to each round of reform. The transformation of government functions exhibits a marked two-phase character. The first phase focuses on change in government functions relating to economic management, while the second focuses on enhancing and improving macro-control systems to strengthen social management and public service functions. However, in terms of program design, the goals and measures of the past 10 years’ functional transformation have clearly not been specific enough to establish a clear relationship between the three rounds of institutional reform programs and the concrete measures and their effects. Therefore, the question of whether institutional reform itself needs reform has become a new proposition for practice, one that needs to be reviewed in terms of strategic orientation, mode of implementation, public responsibilities and overall design.