Page 156 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

CHEN Geng & BAI Haohui / Inspection and reflection on the free open policy of public cultural venues in China: Centered on the public libraries 155

cultural ministries, local bureaus (offices) to the basic-level cultural units “transfers” at different
levels of government, which forms a powers’ isomorphic structure in the cultural field (Fu & W.Y.
Song, 2015). This makes the division of powers among the central, provincial, municipal, county,
townships mainly follow administrative standards, rather than the legal rationality foundation.
The division of powers among governments at all levels is unreasonable, and there is a certain
degree of “ambiguity between the higher-level government and the lower-level government” (L.
Song, 2005). In the case of unclear powers, the corresponding expenditure responsibilities are also
difficult to express clearly. Some powers should have been undertaken by the central government,
however, the local government undertakes the expenditure responsibilities, which has caused the
“absence of expenditure”. Moreover, the phenomenon that “expenditure policies are made by the
central, while expenditure responsibilities are taken by the local” exists in some regions. These two
problems make the expenditure responsibilities of central and local become localized and basic-
level in fact (X.P. Zhang & Liao, 2009).
However, under the current tax-sharing system, the downward shift of expenditure
responsibility is not supported by matching financial resources. Since the tax-sharing reform in
1994 only involved tax reform, and did not synchronize the division of powers and expenditure
responsibilities among governments, which led to the displacement of the corresponding
government financial right and financial resource in the case that the original powers and
expenditure responsibilities are basically unchanged. The basic trend is that the local financial
revenues have decreased drastically, while the central government revenues have increased
significantly. Although the innovation and improvement of the special transfer payment system
makes up the lack of financial resources of local governments partly, there is still a serious
imbalance between the central and local cultural expenditures, which is manifested in that local
governments have undertaken heavier expenditure responsibilities with less financial rights
and financial resources. According to The National General Public Budget Final Expenditure
Statement (2011-2016) from the website of the Budget Department of the Ministry of Finance,
the central government and local government have a financial revenue ratio of about 1:1 in recent
years, but the proportion of central government’s cultural, sports and media expenditures fell from
22% in 2011 to 14% in 2016, while the proportion of local expenditures rose from 78% to 86%.
Under this circumstance, all the special cultural projects including the free admission special funds,
which need the local funding apportioning and matching, will lead to a certain degree of objective
phenomenon of “only sharing the central financial subsidy funds, but not taking the local financial
support funds”.
It should also be pointed out that the cost-benefit of the free admission policy is also an
important reason for the local government’s low enthusiasm of undertaking the sharing funds.
Cost-benefit analysis is the basic yardstick for the local government to implement public policy.
When the local government implements the central policy, if the policy design can greatly
benefit the locality, the local government will prefer to implement it. On the contrary, if the