E-government Support for Administrative Reform in China

This paper summarizes the history of Chinese administrative modernization and reform and discusses the ways in which China's e-government development agenda supports reform in the areas of transforming functions, streamlining processes, and enhancing transparency and citizen engagement. It offers a conceptual model of how e-government supports reform through policies, technologies, management improvements, and data designed to overcome the barriers of technical capability, staff resistance, and lack of cross-boundary collaboration. The analysis also shows how this interaction has generated new issues regarding official corruption and public engagement. We conclude with a future research agenda.