Page 137 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

136 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

father-and-son formed within the framework of planned economy present drastic disparity from
rules of ownership and contract necessary for market economy have distorted the operation mode
of public cultural institutions. Since it is placed at an overarching position during the process of
transformation, institutional cost generated by transformation (often called reform cost in policy
statement) has therefore become the most important analysis tool in policy research.
Institutional cost is compulsory cost, including not only mandatory institutional norms but also
mainstream concepts, administrative habits, inherent institutional ideologies, as well as system
frameworks combined with permissive and prohibitive rules (such as barriers of the cultural sector).
They are combined to constitute the main body of institutional cost for the cultural sector. In the
era of planned economy, undifferentiated and formatted management was exercised throughout the
country and there was no significant difference of institutional cost among the eastern, central and
western areas. Since the adoption of the reform and opening up policy, unbalanced socio-economic
development has led to differentiation of institutional cost in cultural sectors of these areas. The
innovative management mode of the eastern area, inspired by innovation in ideas, has taken the
lead and reduced institutional cost. That is why the performance of county level libraries in the
eastern area is better than those of the central, western and northeast areas.
“System idle” existing in county level libraries is a concrete demonstration of the increased
institutional cost of the cultural sector during the period of cultural construction. The in-depth
reason is that transformation of the structure of social basis has led to failure of the incentive
mechanism of the cultural sector. The contemporary system of the cultural sector originated
from the wartime cultural mobilization system during the revolutionary era (Fu, 2016). As the
wartime system in itself bears an external high-pressure (incentive) mechanism, the wartime
system of the cultural sector was an effective management and implementation system. But once
in the time of peace and construction when external high pressure (incentive) disappeared, some
cultural institutions have gradually become low-efficiency institutions simply for the purpose
〇a ①
of providing employment , since the top-to-bottom mode of public resources input has not been
changed, evaluating the performance of cultural products is naturally difficult so that it is unable to
compensate the external pressure (incentive) that has disappeared with a scientific evaluation and
incentive mechanism.

① Such transformation first emerged from grassroots institutions and gradually spread upward level by level from township cultural
stations to county level institutions. Surveys of township level comprehensive cultural stations show that in 2012, there were 3.9
employees for each station on average, far exceeding the standard of 1 to 2 employees required in the National Guidelines for Basic
Public Cultural Service. In addition, these employees were arranged primarily in order to solve the problem of unemployment; they
are not qualified for professional criteria required for cultural stations (see the research team of the National Institute of Cultural
Development of Wuhan University: Research of Evaluation of Input and Output Performance of Township Level Cultural Stations.
An internal report, 2013).