Date of Award
Spring 2009
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Public Administration (MPA)
Department
Political Science
Abstract
Government procurement has been getting more attention by many countries and China is not an exception. In fact, government procurement has been gaining much development since it was adopted in 1996 in China. But there are still many problems existing in government procurement in China. As the most developed country in the world, the United States has adopted government procurement for several centuries. There is a perfect government system in the United States. Compared to the United States, government procurement in China is still rather backward, there is a great gap between government procurement in the United States and China. In fact, China can learn many successful procedures from the United States. The purpose of this paper is to find out some advanced procedures and methods of government procurement in the United States that can be used as a source of reference in Chinese government procurement through a comparative analysis of both countries.
The paper begins with an introduction of the current situation and reform of government procurement in China and the United States before the comparative analysis. In comparative analysis, the similarities and differences of five aspects between government procurement in the United States and China are discussed.
The five aspects are the basic principles, the management system, the mode and model, the management system of inviting tender and the system of supervision. Based on the result of our comparative analysis, we identified five problems existing in government procurement in China. The five problems are the management system that still needs to be improved, the legal process of government procurement is not perfect, the supervision system is not complete, the operational procedure of government procurement is not standardized and there is a lack of professionals in government procurement. Finally, based on our understanding of the Chinese political culture, we recommend that some successful procedures and methods of government procurement in the United States can be used to solve these five problems.