Since the late 1990s, Western countries have started a post-New public management (post-NPM) movement that transcends NPM. Using mythical, structural and value perspectives and taking as examples China’s 2008, 2013 and 2018 central government reforms, which are launched under the name of service-oriented government (SOG), this article attempts to explore the similarities and differences between the post-NPM and China’s SOG reforms, so as to promote the construction of an autonomous knowledge system of government reform with Chinese characteristics. The analysis shows that as a reform myth, SOG is a new concept beyond NPM, corresponding to the coming post-industrial society and cooperative governance. At the structural level, SOG reforms actively promote the super-ministry system, which is a post-NPM structural element, but also adhere to the reform content with Chinese characteristics, such as the Party’s leadership and leading groups. Seen from the value perspective, SOG reforms take serving the people as its value orientation, well beyond serving customs in NPM. Also, SOG reforms lead to the cooperative ethics for all human beings, which is also different from the creation of public value in post-NPM. Generally speaking, under the Party’s leadership, SOG reforms follow a Chinese way beyond NPM, and people's needs and demands are the internal driving force for SOG reforms.
