China, the West and the Myth of New Public Management: Neoliberalism and its Discontents

This book compares the innovations introduced in public management in China and in the West between 1978 and 2008. In the West these innovations are generally put under the armed arm of neoliberalism, i.e. New Public Management (NPM), that pretend to (1) improve the performance of the economy by changing and reducing the role of the state, and (2) by adopting the principle of economic efficiency as the guiding rule for improving the functioning of the state. Starting from the premise that the private sector is more efficient that the state, NPM proposes to expand the role of the market by asking the state to privatize or contract out to the private sector some of its activities and to deregulate the market. The citizens will then benefit from cheaper and better quality public services. Although starting from a very different situation and in a considerably different political, social, and legal system, China has implemented basically the same measures with the purpose of abandoning planned economy and adopting market mechanisms for the purpose of improving economic efficiency, this being the condition for restoring China as a world power.