Eradicating pointless formalities discussed by experts

Pointless formalities and bureaucratism are stumbling blocks to China's high-quality development, and such behavior must be curbed to reduce the burdens on governments at the grassroots level, experts said.

Grassroots authorities should be liberated from endless meetings and paperwork to practice innovation and actually address pressing public concerns, they said while commenting on some examples of unnecessary formalities and bureaucratism released by the Central Commission of Discipline Inspection and the National Commission of Supervision, China's top anti-graft bodies.

Since 2012, a number of prominent problems have been addressed and some forms of misconduct have also been rectified. But some problems, especially those that increase the burden on grassroots officials, persist and have a high incidence rate, and they are still the subject of many complaints by both cadres and the masses, the CCDI and NCS said.

The commissions urged departments at all levels to carefully look for behavior that increases the burden on grassroots authorities and take targeted correctional measures. Supervision organs were asked to promptly issue guidance cases to promote investigations and refine the disciplinary system to meet the new needs.

Grassroots government departments and public institutions are bogged down by repetitive and meaningless paperwork, meetings, forms, inspections and evaluations from superior departments, said Ji Yaping, head of the School of Administrative Law at the Northwest University of Political Science and Law.

As a result, many top grassroots cadres spend a lot of time and energy passively completing the tasks and have little time to consider how to truly resolve local problems, he said.

"Reducing the grassroots burden means that while completing the necessary assessments from higher level departments, the grassroots governments still have time to think about how to solve local practical problems and promote long-term, high-quality development," he said.

In one case, in May last year, the Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources of Chengdu, Sichuan province, required its subordinates to rectify illegal land-use problems. Chengdu's Shuangliu district asked its subordinate townships to complete the task in two days without giving specific standards. As a result, some places were not able to complete the task effectively and instead cut corners.

The burden on grassroots officials is caused by pointless formalities and bureaucratism, and such formalities are the wrong way to evaluate performance, he said.

The inspections and assessments are often set by superior departments intending to enhance their influence among subordinates.Some superior leaders often think that their tasks are more important, so they constantly assign tasks to subordinate departments without adequate reason, Ji said.

"Blame-shifting is another reason for formalism," he said. "Some superior leaders fear being held accountable for problems in their work, so they hold meetings and issue documents to demonstrate that they have implemented policies from their superior departments. As a result, their subordinates are trapped by endless meetings and paperwork."

In March 2019, the general office of the CPC Central Committee issued a circular requiring the Party committees of all regions and departments to earnestly fulfill their main responsibilities. It also instructed leading officials to bear the overall responsibility of solving problems related to pointless formalism that are plaguing grassroots authorities, and effectively reduce their burden.

Later, the CPC Central Committee's central mechanism to fight pointless formalities and relieve the burdens on people working at the grassroots level was established.

In June last year, the central mechanism held a meeting and issued a document, stressing that more efforts need to be made to combat the issue and ensure more real outcomes. It also asked for the intensifying of efforts to address undesirable work styles among officials, such as slackness and bureaucratism.

It also highlighted the need to continue to conduct proper performance evaluations and ensure that Party officials and members consider the protection of people's welfare to be their greatest priority.

Zhuang Deshui, deputy head of the Research Center of Public Policy at Peking University, said that the meeting held by the central government this June further deepens the efforts made in 2019 to combat pointless formalities and bureaucratism.

Grassroots officials often have no time to think about the problem of grassroots reform and innovation, due to spending a lot of time and energy in coping with requirements from higher-level departments, Zhuang said.

"The public often thinks that problems of formalism are at the grassroots level, yet, the root cause actually lies in superior government departments. There also exists the situation that one issue is under multiple departments' governance, meaning the lower department deals with the policies and requirements from different superior departments on a daily basis," he said.

Officials from higher-level departments need to really appreciate the difficulties of their subordinates, rather than simply transferring responsibilities and work to them, Zhuang said.

In some places, all leading officials in township-level government were punished for failing to complete tasks assigned to them by superior departments, he said.

The June meeting also required the leading officials of departments and governments at all levels to participate in the burden reduction work and the handling of major matters in person.

The leading officials of each department are also the victims of pointless formalities, and the central government's orders could ease the burdens on both themselves and their subordinates, said Ji, from the Northwest University of Political Science and Law.