A prestigious Chinese university has recently released a report, assessing the public service capacity of 19 municipal governments across China.

 

　　The government of southern China's Guangzhou city ranks top of the list.

 

　　The result has aroused controversy, as some experts have cast doubts on its authority, suggesting the survey is unilateral and not comprehensive enough.

 

　　CRI's Wei Tong has more.

 

　　The report, issued by China's Sun Yat-sen University was conducted on the basis of three indices, which include the governments' desire and capacity in dealing with public demands, the quality of the public service and their efficiency in responding to public opinion.

 

　　The top three cities whose governments have performed the best are Guangzhou in southern China, Nanjing and Ningbo in eastern China. However, Beijing and Shanghai are lag far behind.

 

　　The survey also used the popularity of the government's microblog, an online social network,as an indicator in its performance evaluation.

 

　　The report shows that the microblog for the Guangzhou government has received comments from over two million bloggers, far outnumbering that of other surveyed cities. This is one of the primary factors enabling Guangzhou to lead the ranking.

 

　　However, according to Zhou Shaojie, a senior researcher from Tsinghua University, judging a government's service ability by the number of microbloggers it has is subjective. It cannot be relied upon to provide conclusive information.

 

　　"Opinions appearing on microblog cannot be guaranteed as impartial and unbiased, since many cynical microbloggers use the online platform to unleash their emotions, especially lopsided resentment or hatred on society. What's more, the private microblogs of some movie stars have much more followers than the government ones. So directly associating the number of followers with the government's performance is not justifiable."

 

　　Zhou Shaojie suggests the survey be conducted by door-to-door with written questionnaires to make sure the collected opinions are comprehensive.

 

　　The report will later be delivered to all the 19 surveyed municipal governments.

 

　　Yao Yongling, associate professor at the Renmin University of China, however, notes the report can only serve as a reminder to governments since it cannot be enforced by law.

 

　　"In some western countries, the mayor of a city is hired by the city council. Their relationship is like the manager of a company. City residents voice their demands to the city council, which will then set targets for the mayor to fulfill.

 

　　Assessment of what the government has accomplished is carried out through legal process, rather than via an academic report. The report cannot be compulsorily implemented, so it may not be effective in spurring governments to better serve the public."

 

　　But professor He Yanling from Sun Yat-sen University, who led the survey of the report, argues that competition has been brought in by making comparisons among the city governments, providing an impetus for them to improve.

 

　　"I believe that in the name of competition, the municipal governments will be motivated to enhance its public service by improving living conditions for the residents. We need to build a city into an eco-friendly homeland instead of just an economic engine. We can only achieve this by raising the governments' capacity to serve."

 

　　He Yanling adds the governments should not care too much about rankings, but rather focus on trying to serve the public well, as the people's servants.

 

　　For CRI, I am Wei Tong.