Deviation Between Goals And Actual Performance Of Fiscal System Reform Of "Provincial Governing Counties"

The fiscal system reform of "Provincial Governing Counties" had been a hot topic in the theoretical and practical circles in previous years and its hotness hasn't faded away completely till date. Since it was rose to national policy in 2005, it has been written in important documents of the party and the government for long time and still drawn a certain number of attentions as an important option for policies of central government to enhance reforms. In the recent ten years, the fiscal system reform of "Provincial Governing Counties" has exactly gone through the complete cycle of the proposal of theories, the implementation of policies, the inspection by practice and the adjustment of policies. Actually, the reform goals proposed by the central government haven't been achieved well and most of pilot reforms have been trapped in deadlock. However, all cycles have seldom analyzed this important reform on whole and haven't reached sufficient consensus for long. The author tried to deeply explore this reform which is not successful to some extent, sort out the reform's logic and evolution, and track the root to cause the nonsuccess in order to seek inspiration and reference for further deepening reforms.The author sorted out the theory researches already generated firstly and thought that the development of practice boosted relevant theory researches to present apparent stage characteristics which can be divided into initial stage, deepening stage and reflection stage with the general boundary 2006 and 2012.Based on the summary of overall condition of fiscal system reform of "Provincial Governing Counties" all over the country, conducted comparative analysis on the reform situation of the three representative provinces- Hainan, Zhejiang and Jiangsu and pointed out corresponding characteristics and limits. Then analyzed the fiscal system reform of Shandong "Provincial Governing Counties" in detail and dissected conflicts and difficulties faced by the reform deeply. Sorted out the dialectic relation and realistic logic between the fiscal system reform of "Provincial Governing Counties" and its main goals specially, proposed that invisible cost issues of the reform must be paid great attention on and the effect and value of the reform must be judged correctly on the basis of analysis of the influence of the province, prefecture and county three-level reform.The author thought, the system "Provincial Governing Counties" was still applicable to the situation of economic and social development on the whole for which the criticism should be introspected. "Provincial Governing Counties" and "Prefecture Governing Counties" could have complementary relationship according to locality and time. The author concluded, the fiscal system reform of "Provincial Governing Counties" would be trapped into deadlock due to five major causes:the reform goals was unclear, the top-level design was ambiguous, the reform motive power was insufficient, the reform time was hasty and the anticipated cost was too low. The author thought, this reform which was not successful to some extent was a scarce good negative example. Taking deep historical lessons from this reform had great reference significance for us to deepen the reforms in an all-round way today.