Public Administration in China and Australia: Different Worlds but Similar Challenges

Comparing systems of government in such different countries as China and Australia is immensely difficult. Both countries have their own distinct traditions of governance and understandings about how to organise and operate government and the services they provide. Australia with a long democratic history has developed traditions of 'responsible government' within a federal context and with competition provided by two predominant adversarial political parties. China since its revolution in 1949 has developed relatively authoritarian traditions with single-party rule and gradational hierarchic controls within a decentralised polity. Despite these differences, increasing numbers of people in each country want to understand the other country's key features of public administration, and often they start such a journey by asking questions based on their knowledge of their own governmental system to investigate the features and principles of the other. This is the approach we have taken in this paper. After reviewing the different political contexts, we explore the institutions of governance as well as the political and financial relations between levels of governments (central, provincial, local). Finally, we come back to the implications for public management and future governance arrangements.