Alfred M. Wu, Governing Civil Service Pay in China

Excerpt

In this book, Alfred Wu systematically investigates the evolution of the civil-service pay regime, linkage between pay issues and corruption, the use of performance-based pay, and civil-service pay levels in nine chapters. Chapter 1 defines “civil-service pay,” which refers to the monetary salary and perquisites offered by the state to reward civil servants, and relates civil-service pay issues to legitimacy and governance theories. Chapters 2 and 3 depict the evolution of the civil-service pay regime over the last six decades. Originally, civil-service pay was dominated by egalitarian ideology beginning in 1956. Then, during economic reform in post-Mao era, decentralized pay systems were introduced to motivate government officials and to mitigate inequality. Despite these changes, the author is not optimistic about the impact of civil-service pay reforms on governance. …