The hybridity of the different components, plans, or strategies in public management reforms is pervasive across countries. Scholars often link the dynamics of this hybridity to national characteristics, and explain the hybridity by each state’s specific institutional configurations. I conceptualize this hybridity with the help of three major empirical management patterns: old public administration (OPA), New Public Management (NPM), and post-NPM. Path dependence is the core idea analyzing the occurrence, persistence, and change of OPA, NPM, and post-NPM. By comparing China’s public reform with the OECD ones, I examine the similarities and differences of these hybrid practices in OPA, NPM, and post-NPM patterns. These differences of reforms and the dynamic of this hybridity are further analyzed with the help of path dependence idea. This idea underlines the historical-institutionalist impacts of older management patterns on new management elements. Specifically, the hybridity in China’s public reforms is more evident than the OECD ones due to a faster pace of socio-economic changes and a shorter time of reform actions.