Guangdong party secretary Wang Yang, a strong contender for promotion to the Communist Party's supreme Politburo Standing Committee at the leadership transition expected in the autumn, has stepped up his push for a smarter, leaner form of government in what is being seen as an attempt to bolster his support among the liberal camp.
'[We] must speed up the construction of a small government and a great society,' Wang told a provincial social development meeting, the Nanfang Daily reported.
A Guangdong party source said Wang had been promoting the concept of 'small government and great society' for the past two years and was now looking to expand the experiment - already in place in Shenzhen - throughout the province. Wang made a similar call when he inspected Foshan's Shunde district on July 14.
Professor Hu Xingdou, a commentator and political economist at the Beijing University of Technology, said the concept was deeply rooted in Western-style market economics and political liberalisation.
'The concept calls for both a market economy and socio-political reform,' Hu said.
He said it was a gradualist approach that took reform from economics to social management, eventually enabling the introduction of political reform.
Wang has been engaged in an open ideological debate with maverick Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai , his political rival. The debate has pitted Wang's more liberal 'Guangdong model' against Bo's more conservative, state-centric 'Chongqing model'.