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

The China Quarterly, September 2012, pp. 676-696

22 Pages Posted: 27 Mar 2012 Last revised: 5 Oct 2014

Date Written: December 23, 2011

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 vis-à-vis 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, China’s public employment size per capita 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: public employment, bureaucracy, local governance, over-staffing, China

Suggested Citation

Ang, Yuen Yuen, Counting Cadres: A Comparative View of the Size of China’s Public Employment (December 23, 2011). The China Quarterly, September 2012, pp. 676-696, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2028077

Yuen Yuen Ang (Contact Author)

Johns Hopkins University ( email )

Baltimore, MD 20036-1984
United States

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