Page 45 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

LI Guoxin & ZHANG Yong / On accelerating the renaissance of public libraries in Central China 045

to break through the Central lowland and revitalize Central China.

2 The breakthrough of revitalizing public library development in Central
China

2.1 The macro adjustments of national policy

In recent years, public libraries in Western China have developed rapidly with many development
indicators catching up with or surpassing the Central region, which reflects the librarians’ spirits
of perseverance and hard work. In the meanwhile, the rapid development is also closely related
to financial support from the central government and assistance from other provinces. Overall,
the Central region lacks both the self-development abilities as the Eastern region and external
assistance as the Western region. Therefore, the backward development in Central China is
inevitable. Recently, the State Council promulgated the Guiding Opinions of the State Council
on Promoting to Divide and Reform the Central and Local Financial and Administrative Powers
and Spending Responsibility (2016). This guidance clarifies that public cultural services belong
to joint financial and administrative powers by the national and local governments. And the
national and local spending responsibility for public cultural services is implemented according
to a certain proportion or through central government’s subsidies to the local. According to this
principle, appropriate adjustments should be made by the central government in the aspects of
capital, resources and supporting policies to break through Central lowland. By increasing the
proportion or subsidies to the Central and potent external assistance, it is expected to accelerate the
development of public libraries in Central China to the national level as soon as possible．

2.2 To strengthen the main responsibilities of local governments

Local governments shoulder the main responsibilities to deliver library services to the public.
However, there has been a phenomenon of “national advance but local retreat” in some places
recently. For example, the central government subsidizes the free opening of local public cultural
service institutions, while some local governments withdraw fundamental investment to those
institutions. In such a case, the free opening subsidies become the overall funding for public
cultural institutions to provide services. Moreover, some local governments have not put free
opening funding in place, which makes the principle of sharing responsibilities between the
central and local governments for guaranteeing public cultural services funding fall through. This
phenomenon is particularly common in Central and Western China. Admittedly, local governments’
failure to shoulder main responsibilities of public cultural services is another important cause for
Central lowland.
At present, the most realistic, effective and rigid way to strengthen the main responsibility of