On the evening of September 14, Professor Zhou Xueguang delivered a speech of “China’s Monolithic System and Effective Administration” in Rm. 223, Zijingang Int’l Conference Center of ZJU. Professor Chen Guoquan, School of Public Administration chaired the lecture. It is the 53^rd of the lectures of “Zhejiang University Oriental Forum”.

Professor Zhou first introduced some noticeable problems existing in our political operations, and raised some thought-provoking ideas. He thought the noticeable feature of our monolithic system was “the orders issued from the central government” and “rigidly uniform” policy. However, vast differences of economy, culture and organization exist in different areas and fields and different areas have different problem-saving capacities, which determined that the prerequisite for realizing effective administration was to place the resources and power more on the grassroots which directly face and solve problems. The condenser the monolithic system is, the stronger the policy is, the weaker regional administration and effective state administration become. On the contrary, the strengthening of effective administration depends on the expansion of regional government administration, which can often be shown, or be explained as autonomous regional administration and “owning their own guns”, posing great dangers to the monolithic system. Therefore, there exist unavoidable tensions and conflicts between monolithic system and effective administration.

Profound and lively lecture by Professor Zhou won warm applause from students and teachers. Then the defining of concepts, discussions of logic, speculations and explorations of Chinese future development are communicated between students and Professor Zhou. Students showed their international scope and theoretic depth and detailed and excellent answers by Professor Zhou showed his wisdom and elegance. Students learned a lot from this two-hour-long lecture and discussions.