Citizen Expectations and Improvement of Government Functions: A Study of Importance and Performance of Budgetary Demands in China (公民期待和政府功能的改进：一项对中国预算需求和绩效的研究)

How should the government allocate fiscal resources among different sectors in order to satisfy the needs and expectations of its citizens? This question is worth considering because public finance in China has increased at a rate much higher than that of GDP in recent years. Based on a classification of public expenditures, we classify public services and goods provided by the Chinese government into five functions: the administrative, law and order, developmental, welfare, and humanitarian functions. We employ key findings from a survey provided by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) questioning the importance and performance of different programs in a questionnaire sent to young educated citizens – the leaders and administration of tomorrow. The findings of the survey indicate the highest priority of the five state functions was as follows: welfare, humanitarian, developmental, law and order, and administrative. A comparison between this priority ranking and the actual spending levels indicates that the two sets of preferences roughly correspond, with one exception: the developmental function ranks as the top priority in actual spending but third priority in public expectations. If the expectations found in this survey reflect the broader public views, the survey suggests that, to be more responsive, the Chinese government needs to reallocate its fiscal resources towards welfare and humanitarian functions. 政府应该如何在不同的部门中配置其财政资源以满足公民的需求和期待近年来中国财政规模以远远高于国内生产总值的速度增长使得这个问题尤为值得研究。本文将中国政府提供的公共物品和服务区分为五类行政管理、法与秩序、经济发展、社会福利以及人文发展功能并借用国际社会调查项目 (ISSP) 的“政府角色”问卷的研究设计制作了一个有关中国政府不同支出项目的重要性和绩效的问卷。这个问卷在一所中国的精英大学的学生他们可能成为未来中国各行各业的领导人物中实施。问卷调查的结果表明大学生对五项功能的优先排序为社会福利、人文发展、经济发展、法与秩序和行政管理。我们将这一优先排序同中国政府的实际支出的优先性排序进行了比较发现两者大体一致但有一个例外在实际支出的优先性排序中经济发展位居第一而在公众的期待中排位第三。如果此次调查所揭示的期待确实反映了更为广泛的公众的观点的话则可以断言中国政府为了使自己的财政支出行为更加符合民意有必要把财政资源投向的重点转到社会福利和人文发展领域。