A new round of institutional reform has begun. The politburo of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Central Committee recently discussed a draft plan on the reform of party and state institutions. The meeting decided that the draft plan will be submitted to the second plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee for review. This is another major move five years after the last round of institutional reforms. It will also be the ninth round since China’s reform and opening-up in 1978. The politburo stressed that this reform should be “problem-oriented.” This gets to the heart of the matter. Although the plan has not yet been announced, we look to this new round of reforms to modernize the national governance system and to respond effectively to the challenges China currently faces. In particular, we must give high priority to the lessons we have learned from the three-year fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
State institutions, the superstructure of society, must adapt to the changing economic base. Sometimes, they should even become forerunners of the change. China has undergone several rounds of institutional reforms over the past 45 years, which reveal the hardships and achievements that China has experienced and gained since reform and opening-up began. Although the pace and the intensity of reform have varied at times, the core idea has always been clear and consistent: to continuously modernize the national governance system. State institutions were overstaffed and inefficient before the reform and opening-up era. Take the industrial machinery manufacturing industry as an example. At the time, there were eight government ministries that oversaw the industry. This, though, was highly compatible with the planned economy. Thus, at the beginning of the institutional reform process, the main mission was to cut back on overstaffing and make the transition to a market economy. It is very impressive that the central government launched a round of drastic institutional reforms at the turn of the century, right after the goal of establishing a socialist market economy had been determined by the 14th CPC National Congress, which ran from 1992 to 1997. This round of reforms created the basic framework of the government.
