A senior government personnel affairs specialist was interviewed by People's Daily on May 30 and responded to media reports of a huge burden on public finance through 1 in 26 people being in publicly funded posts.

Wang Tongxun, president of the China Academy of Personnel Affairs Research, said that actually only 1 in 198 people are civil servants, and those who aren't but are paid by the government do work that far exceeds this in value.

In 2003, there were 6.5 million civil servants out of a total population of 1.3 billion. This figure uses a definition of "civil servant" as those who hold a public office, are listed in the country's administrative establishment and whose salary and welfare are shouldered by national finances.

Wang said that in some discussions, the term "official" has been used to include all those whose posts are paid for wholly or partly with government funds, but that this includes teachers, medical staff and researchers among others who would not normally be considered "civil servants."

This wider definition results in the reported ratio of 1 to 26, but Wang said this figure is misleading.

He said China has comparatively few teachers and medical staff -- 1 in 78 and 1 in 384 respectively in rural areas -- and the work they and others employed in education, science and technology, culture and health do has great value.

According to Wang, although there is much international support for "small government," it is more important to guarantee efficiency and quality in public services than to use the size of the sector as a single measure of success.

Whether the size of government bodies is geared to the needs of the country's economy and social development, and whether it can provide adequate public services are the two most important criteria, he said.

Wang added that modern government does not mean simply ruling, but being entrusted by people to work for their welfare, and that developing countries cannot depend purely on free market mechanisms to catch up effectively with other economies.

He stressed that, after WWII, the public sectors of many developed nations expanded rapidly, reaching a peak in the 1980s. Since then numbers have fallen, but the number of civil servants in the US was still 3.1 million in 2003, 1 in 94 of its population.

Since China adopted a policy of reform and opening up in 1978, many organizations have been streamlined, most notably in 1998.

That year, the number of State Council organizations fell from 70 to 61, while its associated departments fell from 40 to 29, involving a 47.5 percent cut in staff. The total number of governmental organizations went down from an average of 55 to 40 at the provincial level, from 45 to 35 at municipal level, and from 28 to 18 at county level.

Altogether, the organizational reforms of 1998 resulted in a reduction of 1.15 million staff members.

(People's Daily, translated by Wang Qian for China.org.cn June 6, 2005)