Research On The System Of The Nbs Survey Office Of China

An important prerequisite for the state to promote development and effective governance is the capacity to obtain basic information about the economic and social operating conditions.Information capacity is a basic dimension of state capacity.It is important to construct effective systems and mechanisms to obtain information and strengthen information capacity for national governance.Contemporary China has super large scale and is a unitary state.It has long been trapped in structural dilemmas of information obtaining.These structural dilemmas are manifested as follows: on the one hand,the state is faced with the problem of lagging,ambiguous or even missing information,stemming from technical constraints.On the other hand,based on the dual needs of unified leadership and hierarchical governance,the state has established a local statistical system for reporting information from the bottom up.However,the information reporting process has problems of information distortion caused by local interception,screening,and falsification.It cannot fully support the state’s need for true,accurate,complete and timely information.Thus,breaking through multiple structural dilemmas of information obtaining in scale governance is an important part of information capacity building in contemporary China.The NBS Survey Office is an institutional design constructed by the state in the process of exploring and breaking through the structural dilemmas in obtaining information.It is a dispatched agency of the National Bureau of Statistics under vertical management.Distinguished from local and departmental statistical systems,the NBS Survey Office dispatched to province level,municipal level and county level are independent from local governments.The NBS Survey Office obtains information directly from grassroots society and reports information to the NBS directly through independent channels.Free from the dual constraints of a multi-tiered system and spatial distance,the NBS Survey Office conducted independent and direct investigations into economic and social conditions.It is an important institutionalized information obtaining channel in contemporary China.Academic research on the NBS Survey Office is generally limited to the scope of statistical institutions.There are few specialized and systematic studies on the NBS Survey Office from the institutional level.Also,there are also few studies discussing the logic of national governance embedded in institutional design at the level of the national top-level design,ignoring the close connection between the system of NBS Survey Office and state information capacity.Moreover,there is a lack of in-depth research on the the role of this system in breaking through structural dilemmas of information obtaining.The establishment,long-term continuation,reform and adjustment of the system of the NBS Survey Office reflect the systematic actions carried out by the state to break through structural dilemmas of information obtaining.This demonstrates that there is broad theoretical space and practical need for specialized and systematic research on this system from the perspective of state information capacity.The concern of this article is that since the country already has a local statistics and departmental statistics system,why has it established an independent survey office directly led by the central government? Why does structural dilemmas of information obtaining arise in contemporary China’s scale governance? How can the system of the NBS Survey Office break through the structural dilemma of information acquisition in scale governance and obtain true,accurate,complete,and timely information for the country?Based on the theoretical perspective of state information capacity,this paper sets up a two-dimensional analysis framework of state information capacity,applies the literature analysis method,historical analysis method and case study method to present and analyze the reform process,structure and characteristics,operating process,operating mechanisms and basic functions of the system of the NBS Survey Office,and explore the internal mechanisms of the system of the NBS Survey Office to break through structural dilemmas of information obtaining in scale governance.The paper points out that under the super-large scale and unitary state structure,our state is faced with the structural dilemma of information obtaining in scale governance.The system of the NBS Survey Office is a long-term institutional arrangement for the state to deal with the structural dilemma of information obtaining.The key to the long-term continuation and effective operation of this system is that it has formed various mechanisms to break through various structural dilemmas,and enhanced state information capacity.From the perspective of historical changes,the establishment and reform of the system of the NBS Survey Office reflects the states continuous exploration of breaking through structural dilemmas of information obtaining through institutionalized strategy.Since the establishment of the Agricultural Yield Survey Office in 1962,the system of the NBS Survey Office has undergone many reforms.Its organizational system has expanded from the provincial level to the municipal and county level,its leadership system has changed from dual leadership to central vertical management,and its functional scope has expanded from agricultural yield survey to a statistical investigation and statistical supervision covering agriculture,income and expenditure,employment,prices and other fields.So far,the system of the NBS Survey Office has formed an independent organizational system,leadership system,functional system and a unified standard system.Relying on a national and independent institutional structure,the system of the NBS Survey Office obtains a large amount of first-hand statistical information for the state through independent and direct surveys.Based on the research of its historical change,structure,characteristics and operation process,this paper further explores the operating mechanisms and basic functions of the system of the NBS Survey Office.This paper analyzes the manifestation and causes of structural dilemmas of information obtaining in scale governance in China,and points out that the reason why the system of the NBS Survey Office can operate effectively is that it has formed several operating mechanisms to break through structural dilemmas of information obtaining in scale governance and enhanced the state information capacity.Specifically,from the perspective of the technical capacity,the system of the NBS Survey Office copes with the problem of efficiency in obtaining information under complex governance content,multi-level governance structure,and differentiated local capacity through project-based governance mechanism,flat management mechanism,overall governance mechanism and digital governance mechanism.Thus,it broadens the content and scope of information that the country can obtain,improves the timeliness of information obtaining,and guarantees the unity of information obtaining process.From the perspective of the relational capacity,the system of the NBS Survey Office regulates the relationship between the central and local,the departmental and regional,and the state and society through independent survey mechanism,cooperation mechanism,and embedded governance mechanism,integrating different subjects and resources into a unified information obtaining structure,and effectively copes with the dilemma of relationship imbalance in the process of information obtaining due to local interference,the separate jurisdictions within central ministries and local governments,and the changing society.As a result,it has promoted the formation of the overall structure of the information capacity of the state consisting of the information capacity of the central government,the local government and the social level.A comprehensive analysis of these two dimensions shows that the system of the NBS Survey Office breaks through structural dilemmas of information obtaining in scale governance and opens up an institutional channel for information transmission between the state and the grassroots society.This allows the state to directly obtain first-hand information from grassroots society,strengthening the information basis for modernization and effective governance.In the context of modernization in a super-large-scale country,the state needs to improve its information capacity continuously.This places higher requirements for improving this system,and more attention should be paid to balancing the instrumental and value attributes of this system.On the one hand,we should further optimize the resource allocation and institutional layout of the system of the NBS Survey Office,make use of modern information and communication technology to promote the digital reform,comprehensively promote the construction of statistical rule of law.On the other hand,it is necessary to understand the internal logic of the system of the NBS Survey Office beyond the attributes of tools,clarify the core value of survey for the people of this system.It is also necessary to give full play to the direct survey advantages of this system that go deep into grassroots society,strengthen the function in obtaining the data of people’s livelihood and the information of people’s opinions,and to build a solid information channel connecting the state and society,providing stable and efficient source of information for the state to understand people’s livelihood,to solve people’s problems,and to serve the people.