|
Beijing: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday unveiled a bureaucratic revamp he hopes will foster greener, more efficient government, but experts said it was unlikely to end turf wars over industry, energy and pollution.
The reforms herd together dozens of agencies, creating "super-ministries" for industry, transport, housing and construction and the environment, and bring food and drug safety back under the Health Ministry after a series of damaging scares.
The plan is a high point of this year's National People's Congress, the Communist Party-run parliament that meets in full once a year to rubber-stamp policy. National leaders say it will cut red tape and clear tangled lines of responsibility.
"Problems of overlap between departments, disconnect between power and responsibility and low efficiency are still quite stark," State Councillor Hua Jianmin, who is also secretary general of the cabinet, told the nearly 3,000 deputies.
But even some of the usually meek deputies politely wondered whether Wen's medicine was strong enough.
"I think there still hasn't been enough study," deputy Ji Baocheng, president of the People's University of China, told a cluster of reporters after Hua's speech.
"Organisational roles have been further integrated but it seems there's still some distance from the ideal goal of one department handling one thing."
The plan presented to parliament upgrades the environment watchdog to ministry status, giving more prominence to the battle against pollution that has stoked rising public discontent.
"Our country faces severe environmental pressures and the task of reducing pollution emissions is extremely arduous," said Hua.
But it was not clear what significant extra powers, if any, the new ministry would have. The plan also shied away from an energy ministry that at one point was on the drawing board for the world's number two oil consumer.
Instead it split planning and management, with an Energy Commission to develop national strategy, and a new Energy Bureau to administer. "If there is no energy ministry, it doesn't seem like they are taking energy security or energy supply and demand as seriously as they should," said Adrian Loh, energy analyst with Merrill Lynch in Singapore, in an emailed response to questions.
The National Development and Reform Commission, a sprawling industrial policy bureaucracy, would continue dominating big decisions about oil, gas and power, Loh said.
|
