| Over the years, the Chinese governing values and administration have been changing consistently, and China’s Governance Experience is known for garnering significance during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, shows that China can develop itself significantly and can be a role model to others. Although all these guidelines were not necessarily borne out of China, it can best be understood that China is striving to develop its own rapidly, and the country is willing to help other developing countries in bringing change and development. China’s Governance Experience has come to be popularly known for its pragmatism and flexibility and improving their traditional stand towards more modern ideals such as moving from a more conservative political and economic stand to liberal policies that will help in their political and economic governance. China through its governance experience recognizes the political and cultural differences, and different regional and national practices, within their integrative framework, making many countries look towards the system as transferable and imitable. The recognition of similarities and differences regarding political governance, economy, and social settings within the country thus make the China’s Governance Experience to become assertive and strong in nature. Developing countries across the world starting from Burma, Syria, Venezuela, Vietnam, and many African countries, admires and perceive China’s Governance Experience as something to emulate regarding liberal economic policies, and maintaining political stability. Many analysts studying the developing countries perceive China’s Governance Experience as possessing the capacity in initiating economic development and financial stability and having the ability to serve as a model for political stability in many developing countries. Based on these elements, China’s Administration Experience is a paradigm changer as compared to the Washington Consensus, offering developing countries an example that will guarantee financial integrity, political stability and economic development. This paper focus as to whether the China’s Governance Experience, can serve as an example to many developing countries in Asia and Africa, with particular reference to Mauritius. The paper also raises the question of whether the China’s Governance Experience has the ability in bringing rapid and efficient economic and political transformation, within the fold of public administration. The paper brings out that over the years, the Chinese leadership has worked through existing political and economic institutions, to re-orient the China’s Governance Experience to serve the modernization goals. By taking an exploratory approach, the research brings out that China’s Governance Experience has been able to create their’policy space’that allows the country to develop in their unique way. The aim of this paper is to analyze the China’s Governance Experience and its potential implementation within the governance system of Mauritius giving a scope to bring immense political stability and economic development in the country; i) To bring out how the China’s Governance Experience functions through leaders and bureaucratic set-up, and how it is slowly influencing other countries, ii) To understand the impediments within the current governance structure of Mauritius and its perception of China’s Governance Experience, iii) To explore the feasibility of implementation of China’s Governance Experience within Mauritius’Governance system and scope of development within the politico-economy milieu of the nation. This experience is serving China to stand out in its position, and also to become an emerging rival of the Western economy regarding providing a basis for other developing countries to follow their country. The neo-liberal policies of the West have not been adopted by all countries, and many countries in Asia and Africa believed that state intervention and state capitalism in the economy followed by China through its experience works efficiently and that it is beneficial to their development. Given China’s economic development and political stability, the application of the China’s Governance Experience can bring immense political stability and economic development in those Asia and African countries applied, which include Mauritius. Mauritius can develop and improve their political-economic conditions and shaped any of the challenges and impediments faced by the country through its experience. China’s Governance Experience has shown tremendous development in economy and stability only makes Western leaders assess and question whether it is not only their economists but also their political systems that contain possible unfixable flaws.In many countries, there are many multi-party systems or dual party systems, and the perception is that only such party allows a country to enjoy democracy and stable government. However, China without political parties and with the Chinese Communist Party has been functioning effectively for the past many years, and has been maintaining strong Central Government and has become one of the leading countries with the strongest economy. In countries like the United States, while Barack Obama became President through from his oratory skills and fundraising, Xi Jinping became the Communist Party leader in 2012 by working his way up through party and government hierarchies. Also before his esteemed post, he also had served in the party’s central bureaucracy and four provinces, each one bigger than many countries across the world.Meritocracy is considered as being more in tune with traditional Chinese political culture, and research by people such as Bell (2015) in The China Model:Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, shows that such achievement comes from the country upholding their examination system as the most meritocratic and highly objective in nature.The Beijing Consensus or otherwise known as China Model is a political or economic model of China that has made the country to experience marked development and contributes towards China’s gross national product in the past two decades. As seen above in chapter 1, Joshua Cooper Ramo, coined the term the Beijing Consensus to show China’s economic development that gives alternative strategy to look up to (especially for the developing countries) as compared to the Washington Consensus, which pursues neo-liberalistic policies and keeps market interest at its best.He termed Ramo’s Beijing Consensus as being based on the Silicon Valley model of development, while China’s development emanates from China’s labour force being exploited by foreign countries. Since Washington Consensus is gradually losing in the global market through its policies, and since China’s Governance Experience that has made the country to develop at a rapid rate and invest substantially in developing countries, the latter is seen as an alternative of the former. Changes in the world system are therefore bringing political change in China, and have provided more liberating impetus to the Chinese people, and more understanding of the Consensus approach that link the people in China with the Party as well as with foreign countries. The coming of the Parry’s governance in the 1950s shows the application of socialism in the governance of China and is applied with "Chinese characteristics", which is the intention of serving the people and being people oriented, and putting Country First and chasing Chinese Dreams.Over the years, the emergence of China’s Governance Experience has been slowly changing the policies of the governance in the country regarding politics and economy, thereby deviating slightly from earlier socialist policies and becoming more liberalized in nature. Contemporary leaders like Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping are steering the Beijing Consensus to emphasize liberal policies of bringing political stability, and economic development that serves people and emphasizes that governance should be people-oriented, people-centered, and all activities should be built with the purpose of bringing development for the people. Mao Zedong did point out from the beginning that all activities are based towards bringing an overall development for the economic, political, and cultural construction of the country, but this has been developed further regarding liberal policies among contemporary leaders through China’s Governance Experience.There is no doubt the Chinese governance is committed to socialism and remains ideologically loyal to Mao, but China’s Governance Experience is slowly turning the governing policies towards socialist modernization and liberalization. Thus, Beijing Consensus has come to be viewed as being a role model that many developing countries can imitate. For instance, China is not only projected to become twice the size of the United States regarding economy by 2030 but also become the country that influences many developing and developed countries across the world concerning their governance. Such influences have the strong possibility of transferring China’s Governance Experience easily to many countries simply owing to China’s economic prowess, conditioned by communist-led people-centric governance and political stability.The paper also looks into how the China’s Governance Experience is bringing many changes in Chinese political governance and economic system, and how the system makes leaders and bureaucrats to be ethically accountable for their action, work, and activities. Since the time of Mao Zedong, China is successfully moving towards more liberalized policies bringing economic development and political stability, thereby garnering support and admiration from many developing countries. There are also other reasons for Mauritius success in demonstration democracy in developing world including a commonly spoken language, while officially supporting all languages; the absence of national army showing country’s peace; the country and the people’s consensus over mixed economy; widespread agreement that the multi-party democracy should persist; political leaders being subjected to intense public scrutiny; control of corruption and nepotism; and the rights given to radical political views and activities through constitutional channels. Like many African countries, challenges to Mauritius governance comes in the form of difficulties to the governance at the societal level, bureaucracy, agenda settings administration, environment, political policies, and so on. Governance and bureaucracy along with public in executing government and administrative activities, therefore remain an impediment and challenge to Mauritius good democratic governance. All relationships pursued by the Chinese with Mauritius like many other African countries include a comprehensive and systematic governing process, related to the management of all state affairs aspects that comes in the form of agriculture, economy, education, infrastructure, industrialization, politics, poverty reduction, and rural development.Finally, the Chinese combine their reform with internal reforms within the country while opening up to the outside world, and this has made countries like Mauritius to look up to China, since China’s tactics balances reform, development and stability. Mauritius looks towards China’s Governance Experience as a way of bringing national development, which is conditioned by China’s rapid growth and stability. Mauritius observes China’s Governance Experience as a system that has successfully avoided the Western neo-liberal policies but has managed to prosper otherwise in governmental administration and economy. The country sees China’s Governance Experience as a strong centralized government with firm state-centered development and export-led industrialization that makes China compete with the Western nations. China’s Governance Experience of constructing civil service and public service system will only make developing countries like Mauritius have a stronger system of administration and political governance. This country having fewer issues of corruption and such stable country needs a further strong strategy like China’s Governance Experience regarding developing their country further on stability. E-governance is also given importance by the country in order to help citizens interactions by empowering citizenship awareness; setting up a helping desk in government portal and administrative services; implementing citizen’s needs through e-services; designing services that are usable on technologies; implementing short messages disaster alerting systems; operating a One-Stop Shop for Government Services that uses the network of Mauritius Post; and by setting up government call center that provides information about government services and administration to the people.All matters related to public financing that comes in the form of taxation, public sector budgeting, public expenditure policies, state asset management and corporate governance, labor protection, competition law and policy, governance of banks, intellectual property rights, and foreign investment policies are taken care by ’Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA). MRA in Mauritius is set up to manage an effective and efficient revenue-raising system in the country, and China’s Governance Experience can further improve this by making Mauritius’ financial system take global importance like China. Since China maintains a close relationship with the country, and since China has also been investing in the country, modelling investment system in finance sector of Mauritius based on China’s Governance Experience can help the country in strengthening their finance. Since 2008, Mauritius has been involved in setting up the Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) that helps in developing some agendas in Mauritius such as developing education and communication for sustainable lifestyles; introducing and improving sustainable public service practices, and also increasing the market economy, and China’s Governance Experience can be taken up further for future stability.This paper deals with the Republic of Mauritius, and how the country can look towards China’s Governance Experience to improve political governance and economic development. Mauritius has always maintained a relationship with China, and China’s Governance Experience can be used to improve Mauritius public sector, public finance, and sustainable sectors. Against such complex social set-up, China’s Governance Experience is required, to help in the Central Government with a strong hand to exercise its powers of control on all administrative and economic matters, while the local government can also give their best performance in maintaining a relationship with the centre to work for the society.The methodology after specifying the philosophical paradigm followed by the study, lays down the specificities applied for the research purpose, strategies and approach, to collect and interpret data, which enabled the researcher to present its observation on the issue in hand implementation of China’s Governance Experience on Mauritius. Aiming to understand the degree of impediments faced by the governance strategies of Mauritius and to explore the practicality of implementing China’s Governance Experience, the study area consists of the government machinery of the nation, comprising of its ministries. In the present research study, the paper adopted an interpretive research philosophy because the study has purported to collect the information regarding implementation of China’s Governance Experience in Mauritius through understanding human behavior and their different role as social actors. The current study has adopted exploratory purpose through which varied literature and reports on China’s Governance Experience and current functioning of Mauritius has been explored, taking the governance setup of other developing countries of Africa and the Middle East into purview. Out of all these ministries, eight ministries were approached for collecting primary data on their perspective on the current functioning of the governance machinery, impediments existing in carrying out appropriate strategies, and their perspective on implementing the China’s Governance Experience in the country and its future scope. In the present study, two types of data are used for collecting information on the impediments faced by the governance strategies of Mauritius and to explore the practicality of implementing China’s Governance Experience and Best Practices. In the present paper, the researcher has adopted the qualitative approach to gather primary data from the Ministry of Defence, Home Affairs and National Development Unit Minister of Rodrigues (Prime Minister Office), Ministry of Energy & Public Utilities, Ministry of Financial Services, Good Governance and Institutional Reforms, Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security, Ministry of Public Infrastructure and Land Transport, Ministry of Local Government, Ministry of Labor, Industrial Relations, Employment and Training, Ministry of Technology, Communication & Innovation, based on the judgment of the researcher. Semi-structured and open-ended questionnaires were developed because the researcher requires depth information on how China’s Governance Experience if implemented in Mauritius’ governance system, would contribute to economic prosperity and political stability in the country.The questionnaire contains three segments present situation of governance in respective ministries and existing impediments, perception on China’s Governance Experience and its effectiveness in tackling the existing impediments and scope of development in lagging areas through China’s Governance Experience. Upon exploring the varied perspective of all the participants, the views were segregated into three prominent themes present situation of governance in respective ministries and existing impediments, perception on China’s Governance Experience and its effectiveness in tackling the existing impediments and scope of development in lagging areas through China’s Governance Experience. China acts as a role model for Mauritius, along with many other African countries, even if the China’s Governance Experience and policies are hard to maintain.Mauritius has understanding, trust, and cooperation in all the relevant 25 Ministries in the country, out of which eight has been selected namely:Prime Minister Office; Ministry of Energy & Public Utilities; Ministry of Financial Services, Good Governance and Institutional Reforms; Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security; Ministry of Public Infrastructure and Land Transport; Ministry of Local Government; Ministry of Labor, Industrial Relations, Employment and Training; and Ministry of Technology, Communication & Innovation. The participants with their position and Ministries, who help in analysing the governance and functioning of Mauritius Government and its relationship with China and the influence of China’s Governance Experience has been given in the following table:The Bureaucrats interviewed are present members of the Eight Offices discussed Prime Minister Office; Ministry of Energy & Public Utilities; Ministry of Financial Services, Good Governance and Institutional Reforms; Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security; Ministry of Public Infrastructure and Land Transport; Ministry of Local Government; Ministry of Labor, Industrial Relations, Employment and Training; and Ministry of Technology, Communication & Innovation.Mr. A regards the development of the country with extreme importance, which can only be initiated through the collaboration and cooperation with other countries, helping in return the Mauritian Government in their governance and any impediments faced. Upon highlighting the impediments existing within the domain of public administration in Mauritius, the participants agreed unanimously that the key principles guiding the "function of good governance are still a distant dream", despite being the first ranked country in the sub-Saharan Africa, regarding governance. Relating to the influence of the China’s Governance Experience and Best Practices in the nation’s legislation and governance or the financial services provided through public utilities, the respondents unanimously agreed that though, there is no formal system devised based on China’s Governance Experience to measure the financial or general performance of the governance, yet, "parameters for economic performance and human development has been updated regularly, measuring the performance". Another significant area dealt with, was the perception of the local government, towards the China’s Governance Experience, since they are associated with the grass root level of public administration. Although the participants had a somewhat moderate perception of China’s Governance Experience and were mostly concerned about their nation, therefore when asked about the scope of development of Mauritius following China’s Governance Experience, they were of the opinion that the multiparty democratic nation will face a "challenging yet promising development". Therefore, there will be challenges in "bringing a change in strategies" through China’s Governance Experience "developed by the single party and socialist government and its implementation too", however, the scope is evident. However the country’s initiative through programs like National Employment Policy (NEP) and Program Based Budgeting, which looks after bringing in medium and long term employment objectives along with better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decision-making process and good governance, transparency, and accountability, purports to make the governance more developed and systematic in nature.This claim is evident through the study of Zhang & Zhang (2001) which depicts China’s share of challenges through crisis of belief and legitimacy between the public and the government owing to large-scale corruption in bureaucracy and unequal social distribution; crisis of the state-owned enterprises due to low productivity and bankruptcy; financial crisis spreading over local, provincial and central government; and crisis with the administrative state due to bureaucratic domination, lack of accountability, low efficiency and maladministration. However, regarding the scope of development of the island nation under the circumstance of implementation of the China’s Governance Experience, the participants noted down various substantial challenges, which until met, will make the development of the country a distant dream.Furthermore, the governance strategies making up China’s Governance Experience looked after reforming the government operation by transferring the ’traditional omnipotent government’to’function-limited government’. The rise and successful functioning of the authoritarian capitalist rule of China within the domain of public administration have influenced many developing nations including Mauritius, owing to its growing impediments in the public sector, posing a knack for governance through applicability of the ill-liberal capitalism over a relative balance between authoritarianism and liberal democracy.Each of China’s challenges born out of the change in the process of governance and the method of tackling the same, exhibiting a knack towards robust economic development through political stability and change in its attitude as per the dynamicity of the internal scenario involving public and its administration has strongly influenced the perception of the interview participants towards affirmative. Such is the scenario that, China and its governance policies are held as an example to follow, as was evident from the initial observation, to deal with the growing impediments, thereby making Mauritius a developed country in the whole Africa, through enhanced public administration. Many policies associated with socialism and the China’s Governance Experience has been offered criticism from the West, and thus the China’s Governance Experience that offers strong economic and political stability are met with criticisms, and influence in developing countries such as Mauritius are also met with similar criticisms along with strong positive perception. Finally, the main purpose of this paper is bringing out how the China’s Governance Experience functions through leaders and bureaucratic set-up, and how China’s Governance Experience is slowly influencing other developing countries. It also looks into understanding the impediments within the current governance structure of Mauritius and its perception of China’s Governance Experience, and exploring the feasibility of its implementation within the Mauritian Governance system and also the scope of development within the politico-economy milieu of the country. To conduct research based on this purpose, the research followed the qualitative approach of data collection and exploration to gain in-depth insights. Again, the qualitative data has been dealt through inductive approach since the study purported to analyze the general perspective of the study participants on China’s Governance Experience and its potentiality in implementation in Mauritius, thereby establishing the study’s specific observation at the end.For the purpose of carrying out the study in a systematic way, it has been divided into seven main chapters, each addressing a particular aspect of the research.Chapter 1 provides the introduction by giving an overview of the’Beijing Consensus’, otherwise regarded as the China’s Governance Experience that serves China to stand out in its position, and also to become an emerging rival of the Western economy in terms of providing a basis for other developing countries to follow their country. All countries have not adopted the neo-liberal policies of the West, and many countries in Asia and Africa believed that state intervention and state capitalism in the economy followed by China’s Governance Experience works effectively and that it is beneficial to their development.Chapter 2 highlights how not only how the China’s Governance Experience has seen impressive resilience and growth over the years, but also the way it is influencing many neighbouring countries. China’s Governance Experience that has shown immense development in economy and stability only makes Western leaders to assess and question whether it is not only their economists, but also their political systems that actually contain possible unfixable flaws. The Marxism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Legalism guided system of governance of China, supplemented by strict and regulated bureaucracy enhances the effectiveness and cements the importance of how Chinese leaders like Xi Jinping need to take rapid decisions and deal with lesser obstacles as compared to other countries.It also elaborates on how the China’s Governance Experience is bringing many changes in Chinese political governance and economic system, and how it makes leaders and bureaucrats to be ethically accountable for their action, work, and activities. While being accountable to their work, the leaders and bureaucrats are also scrutinised for their work by the public, which allows government-civil society links to exist in the country, making the country to become stable and effective overall. It also assesses how the China’s Governance Experience is slowly making the country to change their socialist policies based on authoritarianism to more liberalized principles and policies. The impressive growth of the biggest developing country in the world is now looked upon as being something to imitate.Chapter 3 deals with the Republic of Mauritius, and how the country can look towards China’s Governance Experience to improve political governance and economic development. Mauritius has always maintained relationship with China, and China’s Governance Experience can be used to improve Mauritius public sector, public finance, and sustainable sectors. China’s Governance Experience shows strong way in constructing civil service and public service systems, which is something that the Mauritius society looks upon. Having stated that China’s Governance Experience can be imitated, there is no doubt that Mauritius has been doing well in Africa as well.Chapter 4 explains the data analysis procedures and the ethical issues surrounding the collection of data that had to be taken into considerations by the author. The validity and reliability of the data collected for the qualitative research are also evaluated.Chapter 5 sets out the perception of improved management by China’s Governance Experience and the Mauritian Governance, by the providing a descriptive analysis and data interpretation of the survey carried out. It also discusses the effectiveness of China’s Governance Experience towards tackling impediments.Chapter 6 converges towards the conclusions of the study and recommendations that can be derived from the research for the sustainable development governance in Mauritius, based on China’s Governance Experience and Best Practices.These China’s dynamic approach in channelizing its public administration has influenced the developing world like Mauritius. Given the substantial China-Mauritius relationship, the island nation is, therefore, motivated to build its internal functioning strategies following China’s Governance Experience, and such application in Mauritius in the future can bring strong economic and political stability in the future. Based on findings, the research can suggest that the application of China’s Governance Experience can work towards Mauritius’good governance as the key element in discourses of African countries, although the country faces its challenges. There have been flaws in the Mauritius governance and challenges comes in all forms affecting the country at all societal level, bureaucracy, agenda settings administration, environment, political policies, and if China’s Governance Experience is applied, some of them can be eliminated. Many issues like employment issues, challenges within public or society and bureaucratic components, failing in taking decisions on many policies, rules, and regulations, public and political administration, and suffering from corruption and the loss of effectiveness of institutions can be implemented by imitating this model in Mauritius. By applying China’s Governance Experience, Mauritius will be able to have stable coordination between central and local government and become one of the leading countries with stable political governance and developed economy. |
