Improving performance evaluation is an important breakthrough and fundamental guarantee to increase the quality and efficiency of public cultural services. The performance evaluation of a country’s public cultural service not only plays an important role in establishing the government’s perfect competition mechanism but also demonstrates the realisation of governmental responsibilities to equalise cultural rights and to meet the diverse cultural needs of its citizens. This paper explores the public service performance management systems adopted by the governments of Britain, the United States, Japan, Australia and Sweden, and analyses their legal system construction, evaluation paradigms and evaluation methods, among others. This study deduced that the core elements of performance management systems include legislation, core concept, executive organisation, evaluation emphasis, evaluation focus and theoretical basis. The general development laws of performance evaluation cover legislation, theoretical guidance and continuous improvement in reforms. Evaluation orientation, evaluation emphasis and implementation mode vary from country to country. By combining the analysis with a study of the national conditions of China, this paper is able to make recommendations, such as strengthening the legalisation construction of performance evaluation, changing the role of government into ‘integration of subject and object’, converting the subject of evaluation to ‘public orientation’ and scouting for theoretical support for system construction.