Page 140 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

FU Caiwu & YUE Nan / Restrictions on incremental financial investment in the construction of 139
modern public cultural service system: Based on investigations of county public libraries

era of peace and construction. Therefore, the organizational form of “tree structure” or “tree-fruit
structure” should be transformed into the organizational form of “fruit structure” or “fruit-tree
structure”. Only in the latter organizational form can we establish not-for-profit cultural institutions
as relatively independent legal entities, gradually develop a public cultural management system
that is inclusive of social forces, and improve utilization efficiency of public resources.

4.2.2 Implementing the system of the government purchasing public cultural service from non-
government sectors and using innovation in fiscal subsidy system to break internal circulation of
public resources and improve allocation efficiency of public resources
Observations show that in-system circulation and deposit of public resources is an important reason
for poor performance of public investment. The policy approach to break internal circulation
of public resources should be to speed up government purchase of public cultural service from
non-government sectors and facilitate accessibility to the public cultural service system and
socialization of public product supply. This is a breakthrough point for the institutional reform to
improve library service efficiency. In May 2015, the General Office of the State Council forwarded
the Opinions on Carrying Out Government Purchase of Public Cultural Service from Non-
Government Sectors jointly issued by four ministries and commissions including the Ministry of
Culture. 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions throughout the country have issued
guidance documents on purchasing public cultural services applicable to their respective areas.
Incomplete statistics indicate that since 2015, funds arranged for purchase of public cultural service
at the provincial level have added up to 6.5 billion RMB yuan. Among others, service purchase
investment by Jiangsu Province increased from 20 million RMB yuan in 2015 to 50 million RMB
yuan in 2016 and 2017 respectively. The figure for Xiamen City for the three consecutive years
combined since 2015 exceeded 140 million RMB yuan and the figure for Shandong Province
1.135 billion RMB yuan. Significant progress in government purchase of public cultural service
has been made. But there are still several problems, such as less diversified services purchased,
imbalanced development in connecting with the market, and limited financial input. “Restrained
by conventional supply mechanism and investment mode, funds used to purchase public cultural
service in many areas are still very limited. Most of the funds have been coordinated under the
existing budgets and new funds can be hardly arranged, which has led to a limited amount of funds
used to purchase public cultural service.” 〇a ①
Government purchase of public cultural service from non-government sectors are involved
with institutional innovation in decentralized decision-making in public supply and multiple-
channel production distribution. Support for non-government sectors through public purchase
can help activate in-system stock resources through incremental investment of non-government

① The above data comes from financial statistics of the Ministry of Culture. See Ma Qinlin (director-general of the Department
of Finance of the Ministry of Culture): A Speech at the Seminar on Government Purchase of Public Cultural Service from Non-
Government Sectors. 7 December 2017, Xiamen.