Page 94 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

The corporate governance pilots of public libraries in

China〇a
①

1*
FENG Jia 〇b〇 & WANG Shanshan 2
1 Institute of Literature, Shanghai Academy of Social Science, Shanghai 200235, China
2 School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China

Abstract
The corporate governance of public libraries is the key work for a long time in China. As the national
pilots, these pilots have provided reference experience and policy foundation, and set good models for
boosting exploration of the new corporate governance structure in all kinds of public libraries across
the country. However, the proposed corporate governance structure still suffers from issues, such as
unbalanced regional development, limited breakthrough innovations, insufficient government support
for social forces, and insufficient support for the decision-making power of the boards. Therefore,
further development of the corporate governance structure of public libraries in China should focus on
the following aims: clarifying the responsibilities for each stakeholder; making a series of matching
rules and regulations; establishing and implementing rules for the “Librarianship Foundation” to
guarantee the smooth flow of funds; reforming and innovating the personnel system to reflect the
contemporaneity and the regional characteristics. With those elements in place, the professional modern
public library governance structure that is oriented towards public welfare and based on scientific
decisions and a sound incentive-based supervisory system would be built up gradually. Finally, the
governance and service efficiency of Chinese libraries would be improved overall.

Keywords
Public libraries, Corporate governance, Trustees system

The concept of the corporate governance of the institutions had been put forward firstly in the
Notice of Suggestions on Deepening the Administrative System Reform issued by the Second
Plenary of the 17th Central Committee of the CPC (2016). After that, with the release of a series of
the central level policies and regulations, corporate governance has been promoted into practice.
Some library pilots have applied in Shanxi, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Chongqing, which
means that the public libraries have started the practice of corporate governance in China. The
Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC (2013) explicitly pointed that the
corporate governance of the public cultural institutions had become one of the key reform tasks
in the cultural field. Recently, the release of several policies and regulations, such as the Public
Cultural Service Guarantee Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Implementation Plan of

① This article is an outcome of the youth project “Research on the Construction and Perfection of the Board System of Public
Libraries” (No.15CTQ001) supported by National Social Science Foundation of China.
* Correspondence should be addressed to FENG Jia, Email: 15221113734@163.com, ORCID:0000-0002-8121-9447