More approval reforms

The government has taken another substantial step forward in reducing its administrative presence, by abolishing the need for approval in some areas where citizens, legal persons or other organizations can handle the task, or where market competition mechanisms provide effective self-regulation.

In a statement on Wednesday, the State Council announced it has decided to abolish 171 administrative items that were subject to approval by the central government and hand down the power of approval for another 117 to lower-level government departments. Seventeen more will be merged into other items and nine others submitted to fewer government departments for approval.

It also said no prior approval procedures will be set in areas where post-event supervisions and indirect management prove workable.

Such reductions and adjustments, based on a consensus achieved at an executive State Council meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao on Aug 22, mainly cover investment and social projects and are targeted at the real economy, small enterprises and private investment.

To achieve the thinner, cleaner, more efficient and services-centered government the central government is committed to, the administrative approval system, a product of the planned economy, needs changing and this is the sixth round of reductions since the country began reforming its administrative approval system in 2001.

Data indicate that the central government has rescinded or adjusted a total of 2,497 administrative approval items, or 69.3 percent of the total, over the past decade, and provincial-level governments have abolished or adjusted 36,986 more. These figures attest to the impressive progress the government has already made in reducing its administrative presence and giving market players a bigger role in their own activities.

To continue to give the market a bigger role and establish a services-centered government, the remaining administrative approval items should be constantly re-assessed and the government should resolutely lift its hands whenever and wherever possible. For those items where approval cannot be abolished at the current stage, effective ways, such as electronic means, should be worked out to simplify procedures and make things easier.

However, alongside the reduction in the number of administrative approval items should be the creation of a more effective post-event supervisory regime to avoid the "vacuum of supervision" caused by such reductions.

(China Daily 10/12/2012 page8)