Abstract: In recent years， the proliferation of central governmental projects has been taking place within the government bureaucracy. In order for us to understand this phenomenon， we need to examine both the Chinese bureaucracy and the project operation system. This article proposes three key features of the project operation system. They are features of temporarily， goaloriented， and flexible plus innovative. A comparison of these features with the three basic elements of bureaucracy shows that underneath the superficial fusion of the two system there are unavoidable tensions. Given the fact that the Chinese bureaucracy lacks of structural constraints and public participation in its decision making process， projects seldom meet the target of appropriate supplydemand equation. Tensions are particularly manifested in two areas: (1) projects are interdepartmental and temporary in nature while bureaucracy is always rigid and insulate； (2) projects are goalorientated and flexible while bureaucracy is ruleoriented and hierarchical. At most time， central governmental projects have to operate under the government bureaucracy， thus we call the system “Bureaucratized” Project System. Bureaucracy is strengthened rather than weakened by the current project system. In our case study， we find that the bureaucracy resists the project integration reform because its power is being threatened even it is apparently beneficial for project operations. We are not optimistic about the future of the project integration reform as the task is now laid upon the overloaded and wronglymotivated local governments while the state bureaucracy remains all powerful.

Key words: reform
, project system , TiaoKuai , bureaucracy , integration of projects