Construct Chinese Public Service System from the Perspective of Public Policy

Liu Wenxiang

I will spend five minutes answering three questions. Question one, what is the goal of the policy? The 6th Plenary Session of the 17thCentral Committee 2011 focused on cultural reform development and passed the second major decisions on the reform of the cultural system, promoting socialist cultural development and prosperity. The conference made a comprehensive plan for the future construction of public cultural system and put forward that the cultural field would be overall prosperous by 2020. Public cultural service system covering the whole society would be basically established and strive for achieving the basic public cultural service goal. This is the first question which concerns with the goal of the public cultural service. Second question is about the main content of the policy. What is public culture? Public culture, in simple terms, is to meet the basic needs of the people and establish a system of public culture services covering all groups in society. The main contents of public culture is to ensure people watching TV, listening to the radio, reading books and newspapers, appreciating public culture, and participating in public culture activities, as well as other basic cultural rights. The characteristics of public culture are public welfare, the fundamental equalization and convenience. Public service system includes public cultural goods, services, institutions and system. Public cultural service system mainly includes five sub-systems, consisting of coverage network system, product and service supply system, technology support system, organizational support system, and assessment system. The third question concerns with the implications of future policy. There are three implications. One is that we have experienced the period of taking economy as our central task, and more attention in China now will be paid to social and cultural construction. In the past 30 years, our main focus is on economic construction. However, from then on, our attention will be paid to social and cultural construction. This is the first implication. The second implication is cultural service. It is part of our public service which requires our government to be service-oriented. The third implication is that the approach to realize the goal of public cultural service is government-led.