It's a matter of privilege

But the public sees this subsidy as another salary rise for civil servants, because employees in other industries don't have such vehicle subsidies. Ordinary people have to pay for the purchase and maintenance of their car themselves. Generally speaking, any commuter has to pay for his or her own transport expenses. If there's a business need for transportation, government vehicles should be arranged according to work requirements rather than rank. Any transportation subsidy distributed according to administrative rank is regarded as a privileged subsidy. For the public, it's unreasonable to raise civil servants' salaries in this way.

Therefore, it is still a compromised solution between the government and the public. The government wants to control the increase in expenditure on government vehicles while the public wants to eliminate the privilege they believe government employees enjoy. It's impossible for the government to completely eliminate government vehicles, because they are necessary for work. But experience has shown that only providing government vehicles for work instead of providing subsidies to officials will fail to curb the out-of-control situation regarding the quantity and use of government vehicles.

Therefore, the internal problem remains unsolved in government vehicle reform: The public wants the privilege of government vehicles according to administrative rank completely eliminated and the use of government vehicles determined by work requirements, but the authorities are unable to both abolish privilege and control the amount and use of government vehicles.

The public is intolerant of government's compromised choice, while the solution that the public supports is unacceptable to the government. Thus the authorities can only compromise and lower the transport subsidies.

Therefore, the current reform plan is a compromise between the ideal and reality. To fundamentally solve the problem, the authorities should arrange government vehicles based on work demands rather than on rank. And to control the use of government vehicles, we should focus more on the decision-making, implementation and supervision system and mechanism of public fiscal expenditure, in other words, curb the power. If we can't curb the power and achieve modernization of the national governance system, we cannot get rid of the current system of providing subsidies according to rank.

The author is a professor of public administration at Renmin University of China.