Abstract: The intergovernmental political relations and the fiscal relations have significant impacts on the civil servants scale of China’s local governments. Compared to the political influence of the central government which is the total political influence related to the members of the Central Committee, the local governments can play a positive role in the civil servants scale indicated by the “ratio between officials and people”. Compared with the fiscal decentralization of the central government, the measuring indicators of local governments, including revenue decentralization, expenditure decentralization and fiscal dependence, also play a positive role in the expansion of civil servants scale. Therefore, the feasible strategies to be used to control and optimize the civil servants scale of local governments include optimizing and balancing all kinds of power, responsibility and interest, strengthening and improving Party’s leadership, improving the construction of local autonomy system, and promoting the work of government information disclosure.

Key words: fiscal decentralization; civil servants scale; political influence; fiscal dependence