Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T14:33:56.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Counting Cadres: A Comparative View of the Size of China's Public Employment*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2012

Yuen Yuen Ang
Yuen Yuen Ang*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Is China's public bureaucracy overstaffed? To answer this basic question objectively, one needs to define public employment in the contemporary Chinese context; survey data sources available to measure public employment; and finally, compare China's public employment size with that of other countries. Using a variety of new sources, this article performs all three tasks. It also goes further to clarify the variance between bianzhi (formally established posts) and actual staffing size, as well as other permutations of the bianzhi system, especially chaobian (exceeding the bianzhi). A key finding is that China's net public employment per capita is not as large as often perceived; quite the contrary, it is one-third below the international mean. However, it is clear that the actual number of employees in the party-state bureaucracy has grown – and is still growing – steadily since reforms, despite repeated downsizing campaigns. Such expansion has been heavily concentrated at the sub-provincial levels and among shiye danwei (extra-bureaucracies).

Keywords

size of governmentbureaucracypublic employmentoverstaffingbianzhistate capacityChinese state statistics
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 211 , September 2012 , pp. 676 - 696
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The author is grateful for comments on earlier drafts from Jean Oi, Andrew Walder and Alberto Diaz-Cayeros. Research for the article was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/ACLS Early Career Fellowships and the 1990 Institute-OYCF Research Grant, as well as the Graduate Research Opportunity Grant, O'Bie Shultz Dissertation Research Travel Grant, and East Asian Studies Summer Grant from Stanford University.

References

Ang, Yuen Yuen. 2009. “State, Market, and Bureau-contracting in Reform China.” PhD diss., Stanford University.Google Scholar
Ang, Yuen Yuen. 2011. “Unpacking Autocracy; Cooptation and Clientelism in China's Single-Party Regime.” Working paper, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Ang, Yuen Yuen. 2012. “Bureaucratic incentives, local development, and petty rents in China.” Working paper, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Bailey, Paul John. 2001. China in the Twentieth Century. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Barnett, A. Doak, and Vogel, Ezra F.. 1967. Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Baum, Richard, and Shevchenko, Alexei. 1999. “The ‘state of the state’.” In Goldman, Merle and MacFarquhar, Roderick (eds.), The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 333–62.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Thomas P., and Lü, Xiaobo. 2003. Taxation without Representation in Rural China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blecher, Marc J., and Shue, Vivienne. 1996. Tethered Deer: Government and Economy in a Chinese County. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Brødsgaard, Kjeld Erik. 2002. “Institutional reform and the bianzhi system in China.” The China Quarterly 170, 361–386.Google Scholar
Brødsgaard, Kjeld Erik. 2009. Hainan: State, Society, and Business in a Chinese Province. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burns, John P. 2003. “‘Downsizing’ the Chinese state: government retrenchment in the 1990s.” The China Quarterly 175, 775–802.Google Scholar
Gore, Lance. 1998. Market Communism: The Institutional Foundation of China's Post-Mao Hyper-Growth. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grzymala-Busse, Anna. 2007. Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heller, Peter S., and Tait, Alan A.. 1984. Government Employment and Pay: Some International Comparisons (revised). Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund.Google Scholar
Huang, Yanzhong. 2004. “The state of China's state apparatus.” Asian Perspective 28 (3), 31–60.Google Scholar
Lam, Tao-Chiu and Perry, James L.. 2001. “Service organizations in China: reform and its limits.” In Lee, Peter and Lo, Carlos (eds.), Remaking China's Public Management. London: Quorum Books, 19–40.Google Scholar
Lee, Hong Yung. 1991. From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Light, Paul. 1999. The True Size of Government. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Zhifeng, Liu. 2003. Di qi ci geming: 1998–2003 Zhongguo zhengfu jigou gaige wenti baogao (The Seventh Revolution: China's Administrative Reforms from 1998 to 2003) . Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe.Google Scholar
Lü, Xiaobo. 2000. Cadres and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the Chinese Communist Party. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mertha, Andrew. 2005. “China's ‘soft’ centralization: shifting tiao/kuai authority relations.” The China Quarterly 184, 791–810.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Dwyer, Conor. 2006. Runaway State-Building: Patronage Politics and Democratic Development. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Oi, Jean, and Zhao, Shukai. 2007. “Fiscal crisis in China's townships: causes and consequences.” In Perry, Elizabeth J. and Goldman, Merle (eds.), Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 75–96.Google Scholar
Pei, Minxin. 2006. China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rosen, Harvey S. 2005. Public Finance. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Schiavo-Campo, Salvatore, De Tommaso, Giulio and Mukherjee, Amitava. 1997. Government Employment and Pay: A Global and Regional Perspective. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Shih, Victor, and Zhang, Qi. 2006. “Who receives subsidies? A look at the county-level in two time periods.” In Shue, Vivienne and Wong, Christine (eds.), Paying for Progress in China. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jingnian, Wang. 1998. Zhongguo da jing jian: Di si ci jigou gaige xianzhuang ji sikao (The Great Downsizing: Thoughts on The Fourth Round of Downsizing) . Jinan: Jinan chubanshe.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1968. Economy and Society. Edited by Roth, Guenter and Wittich, Claus. New York: Bedminster [1904–1911].Google Scholar
White, Tyrene. 2000. China Briefing 2000: The Continuing Transformation: Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Bank, World. 1997. World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Bank, World. 2002. China: National Development and Sub-National Finance: A Review of Provincial Expenditures. Washington DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Bank, World. 2007. China: Public Services for Building the New Socialist Countryside. World Bank Report No. 40221-CN, Washington DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Yang, Dali L. 2004. Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Zhong, Yang. 2003. Local Government and Politics in China: Challenges from Below. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Studies on Contemporary China.Google Scholar