Mao Zedong (center) and Liu Shaoqi (right) in Beijing on Tuesday. The first session of the 12th National People's Congress is set to open on March 5, which will elect the country's new administration. Photo: AFP" src="http://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2011/1f6fe186-10e1-436e-9756-8330de4b5743.jpeg" />

Institutional restructuring of the State Council is expected to top the agenda of the Second Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) that kicked off Tuesday. Analysts suggested that boosting political and economic reforms are essential to transforming the government.

The meeting, scheduled to close on Thursday, will also discuss the list of candidates for the country's next administration.

"The plenum will carry on the guidelines made in the 18th Party congress and be prepared for the upcoming National People's Congress and the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference in March," Yun Jie, director of the administration research department at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times, adding that after the leadership transition, reforms will be focusing particularly on the areas that concern the public most.

In a Political Bureau meeting on Saturday, members agreed that the efforts will be made to create a "simpler and decentralized administration" as well as push forward institutional reform, which they said should be carried out in an "active yet prudent, step-by-step manner, with priority given to transformation of functions."

Yun said "bigger" ministries with more comprehensive functions will be established to improve administration, but large-scale cuts and mergers are quite unlikely because the new leaders would prefer a steady transition that is not as fast as the public may expect.

Efforts to streamline these super ministries have already become a hot topic among media outlets and the public. Speculation over the nature of these reforms has been rife.

The Ministry of Culture might absorb the regulators for film, publishing and TV while the family planning agency might be folded into the Ministry of Health, the AP reported.

In March 2008, the State Council restructured five ministries including the Ministry of Transport (MOT), which was dubbed as the first round of large-scale ministry reforms.

In November 2012, the 18th Party congress again vowed in its report to steadily advance reforms to establish "larger government departments" as an important step to push forward general administrative system reform.

The public has long expected the Ministry of Railways (MOR) to be removed or scaled back given the many scandals over its safety record and huge debt.

An insider with the MOR told the 21st Century Business Herald that the decision to merge the MOR into the MOT has been made and MOR employees are concerned about their futures.

In response to the Global Times' queries regarding the speculation on Tuesday, the press office of the MOR said they have not received any information regarding mergers, while the press office of the MOT said the decision would be made by the central government. 

"It's not so hard to merge the two ministries because there are only three to four departments in the railway ministry that shoulder administrative responsibilities," Zhao Jian, a professor at the Beijing Jiaotong University, told the Global Times, noting that the first step to restructuring ministries would be separating government functions from enterprise management.

 "The biggest impediment for the merger will be the huge debts. But the government has to pay for it sooner or later, so it's important to finish the transition as soon as possible," said Zhao. He stressed that "economic reforms have to keep pace with the political and administrative reforms to streamline the ministry."

Wang Yukai, a professor on administrative system reform with the Chinese Academy of Governance, said the core aim of the institutional restructuring is to reduce the interference of the government in the market and "deprive" some groups of their vested interests.

"It's wrong to believe that the bigger the ministry is, the better it will be," Wang was quoted as saying by news portal chinanews.com.

The World Bank and a State Council think tank warned last year that growth will deteriorate if Beijing fails to act quickly to curb the dominance of State-owned industries or fails to nurture private companies that generate jobs and wealth.

Xinhua contributed to this story

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