The courage to reform; Unlike Japan, China is not going to remain paralyzed for a decade and then decide that the solution to their problems lies in cooking the books:
China unveils plan to axe ministries, bureaucrats
biz.yahoo.com
BEIJING, March 6 (Reuters) - China on Friday announced a bold plan to slash the number of its ministry-level bodies and axe half of all civil service officials this year in a bid to stave off an Asian-style financial crisis...
..''The malady that sticks out is the lack of separation between government and enterprises,'' Luo said...
..Finance Minister Liu Zhongli earlier underscored Beijing's commitment to put its huge bureaucracy on a diet, proposing to parliament a 1998 budget with a deficit 10 billion yuan ($1.2 billion), or 17 percent smaller than last year...
..''We must downsize state bodies, shrink payrolls, reduce the number of personnel supported by state coffers and economise on expenditures,'' Liu told the legislature...
..The streamlining scheme cuts the number of top bodies under the cabinet to 29 from 40.
The ministries to be dissolved are those for coal, power, metallurgical industry, machine building industry, electronics industry, chemical industry, internal trade, posts and telecommunications, labour, radio film and television, geology and mineral resources and forestry.
The state commissions for state physical culture and sports, for restructuring the economy and for science, technology and industry for national defence will also go...
..Luo indicated he expected a fight against the plan, which forces officials to share some of the jobless workers' pain.
''It is impossible to reform without facing resistance and risk, but the force of reform is on the march and there is no way out without reform,'' he told parliament.<< |
