This book offers a rich collection of new perspectives and insightful discussions and may serve as a useful reference source for readers who are interested in public-sector reform in China. The book argues that whilst Chinese policy makers and planners have learned from international examples, they have successfully modified them to suit Chinese conditions. What lies behind this argument is China's high degree of path dependency: public-sector reform in China is complicated by the size of the cadre workforce and the embeddedness of the cadre system in China's overall political system. Given their diversity and distance from the centre of power, local public-sector institutions, as defined by the editor, have exhibited differing degrees of receptivity to Western-influenced reform measures. It goes without saying that Chinese political exigencies and the vast geo-economic differences among regions in China have contributed to those differing reactions and strategies for coping with the reform demands. The book suggests that the influence of global governance ideas and practices is constrained by the authoritarian nature of China's party-state polity.

In chapter two, John Burns presents a convincing analysis of the impact of Western ideas of good governance on public-sector reform. Burns shows that those who are keen on furthering their careers are likely to advocate and implement Westernized reform measures (such as a performance-oriented appraisal system). It is worth noting, however, that they do not fully embrace the reform and certainly have no intention of adopting the broader political environment of Western civil service systems by designing, for example, a bifurcated career system in Chinese civil service.

In chapter three, Zhengxu Wang and Dragan Pavlicevic argue that the conception and practice of meritocracy retain distinct Chinese characteristics and have gradually transformed the ways that cadre personnel and civil servants are hired, appraised, and promoted. On that basis, they predict that the “ideopolitical dimensions” in China's meritocracy will be gradually phased out as the civil service system moves towards a competence-based, one-dimensional meritocracy. They take the Civil Service Law of 2006 and the cadre responsibility system as evidence of a shift in orientation towards competence-based meritocracy. Mainstream literature, however, tends to present a different viewpoint, seeing the promulgation of the Civil Service Law of 2006 as formalizing a historical reality: the Communist Party's continued tight control over leadership change and management at various levels. The Civil Service Law continues to limit the full-scale implementation of civil service examination by requiring open examinations only upon entering the system, not when moving to a new position within the system. Additionally, there are provisions that allow transfers from the Party to government offices and organizations, mass organizations, state-owned enterprises and service institutes, and vice versa. My reading of extant literature on the cadre responsibility system leads to the conclusion that its design emphasizes a different set of values. However, tensions between competing sets of values (in this case, between politics-based and competence-based criteria for advancement) can be eased to the degree that all sets of values are more or less acknowledged and acted upon, without some being enshrined and others discarded.

In chapter five, Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard and Chen Gang finely elaborate on the personnel management system in both civil service and public service institutions. The chapter would benefit, however, from some background information. The civil service framework in today's China sets itself apart from the old unified personnel management system in at least two significant ways. First, it attempts to delineate distinctions in types of public service through a framework of personnel management based on the principle of management by categories. A market-oriented human resources management framework is used to manage those working in state-owned enterprises (except those at the top, who are still under the nomenklatura authority). For those working in public-service institutions, there is a transitional arrangement in place to move from a status-based to a post-based management system (again, there is an exception for those managing important public-service institutions, who are likely to come under the nomenklatura authority). It is, however, important to note that Article 57 of the 1993 Provisional Regulations for State Civil Servants and Article 63 of the 2006 Civil Service Law allow uninhibited flow of cadres between the civil service and public-service positions or positions in state-owned enterprises.

The second significant change is that even with the lessening in the distinction between the cadre workforce and the civil service that occurred after the enactment of the 2006 law, a distinction was legally established between cadre leaders (leading cadres) and rank-and-file (ordinary) cadres. The 2006 law developed a common regulatory framework for managing both the cadre leaders and the rank-and-file cadres of Party and state departments and offices. Other intra- or inner-Party rules and regulations (such as the [2002 and the revised 2014] Regulations on the Work of Selecting and Appointing Leading Party and State Cadres) will tailor the management of specific aspects of cadre leaders.

Globalization and Public Sector Reform in China makes a potentially significant contribution to the study of China's integration into the global economy. In chapters seven to nine, the distinguished scholars Huang Yanjie and Zheng Yongnian, Jean Oi and Zhang Xiaowen, and Andrew Walder share their views on how the Chinese Communist Party reorganized the state sector of the economy, and they provide an empirical basis for ascertaining how Chinese corporate groups are faring in international and domestic markets. The push for more market-oriented changes aside, China's corporate groups are still required to pursue and fulfill both commercial and non-commercial interests and obligations. Because China's markets are highly politicized, China's integration into the global economy can be understood as a reflection of local economic nationalism, with public administration and state economic management at the forefront and free-market development as only a secondary interest. As Andrew Walder notes, although some corporate groups are listed on domestic and international stock exchanges, they are as tightly integrated into national political structures as older socialist enterprises (chapter nine).

Space does not permit me to go into details on the interesting points (such as how information and communication technologies have increased the capacity of the government to monitor the performance of the cadre workforce) raised in other chapters, but overall, the book shows serious scholarship, and China watchers will find it an important reference.