Page 147 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

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

China’s cognition of cultural rights initially emphasizes the protection of civic cultural interests,
therefore mainly adopts the concept of “cultural rights and interests”, which is different from the
theory of western cultural rights that derived from human rights theory and cultural citizenship.
In September 2001, the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on
Strengthening and Improving the Construction of the Party’s Work adopted by the Sixth Plenary
Session of the 15th CPC Central Committee has proposed to maintain the economic, political,
cultural rights and interests of the people. The idea of the exclusive concept of “cultural rights
and interests” is considered to be “another word creation in the contemporary Chinese context”
(L.S.Wang, 2009). Compared with “cultural rights”, the word is more prominent in the protection
of the interests of citizens.
Whether the “cultural rights” of the West or the “cultural rights and interests” of China, both
laid the theoretical foundation for the design of free admission policy. There are three main modes
of free admission design for the protection of civic cultural rights in foreign countries. Firstly, the
architect model represented by France, which is based on the “government-led” implementation
of free admission. The government is the main body providing basic cultural products and
services. Secondly, the convenience provider model represented by the United States, which is
based on “civil-led” promotion of free admission. The NGOs and non-profit organizations are the
mainstays, implementing the free services that share equal benefits. Thirdly, the sponsorship model
represented by the United Kingdom, which is based on “two-track parallel between government
and society” implementation of free admission. The government departments are responsible for
macro-control and limited funding, while the non-profit organizations operate independently and
raise funds themselves, maintaining an “arm’s length” between the two (L.S.Wang, Guo, & Xiao,
2009). On the basis of learning from foreign experience and inheriting the traditional cultural
system model of our country, China has designed the free admission policy based on various public
cultural venues at various levels such as museums, art galleries, libraries, cultural centers (stations),
etc.,which emphasizes protecting citizens’ basic cultural rights and interests.

1.2 Policy process theory

The theory of policy process stems from Robert Morton’s elucidation of “middle-level theory”
(Morton, 1996) in the mid-century 20th century, which was developed after Peter De Leon
introduced it into the policy process model. In the early stage of development, Harold Lasswell’s
“stage inspiration theory” was representative. He divided the policy process into seven stages:
“intelligence, promotion, prescription, invocation, application, termination, appraisal” (Lasswell,
1956). Based on Lasswell’s theory, Gary Brewer proposed the six-stage theory of “initiation,
estimation, selection, implementation, evaluation, termination” of the policy process, besides
heregarded the policy process as an uninterrupted cycle (Wei, 2002). In the late 1980s, the
academic community gradually realized that the policy process theory is not equivalent to “stage