China moves to free low-level officials from endless meetings, reports and paperwork

During the third plenum last month, China also announced plans to improve mechanisms to cut unnecessary formalities and bureaucracy.

The published resolution highlights the need to streamline meetings, documents and initiatives while limiting inspections and evaluations at the community level. It indicates that efforts will be made to improve the quality of research and make these activities less frequent.

We will establish task lists for cities and cantons [urban subdistricts] and to refine long-term mechanisms to reduce their burdens, he added.

The newly adopted document includes reforms aimed at streamlining documentation, limiting meetings, revising evaluation protocols and easing burdens on local organizations.

The new guidelines for creating local policy documents aim to minimise the workload. In addition, the document advises against using unnecessarily complex evaluation systems or imposing detailed criteria on officials, so that they can focus on implementing policy measures.

In April, the central task force to combat formalism and China's top anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), reported cases of lower-level cadres being overloaded with bureaucratic tasks.

According to a report jointly released by the CCDI and a central anti-formalism working group, the education bureau carried out an unauthorized initiative in Changchun, Jilin province.

In 2023, the bureau changed the frequency of assessments from every two years to once a year and expanded the initial 98 assessment criteria to 179 grading standards, requiring some schools to prepare about 1,000 assessment documents.

The Nanguan District Education Bureau even borrowed veteran teachers from primary and secondary schools to work in the bureau.

The same joint report said state-owned Chinese pipeline giant PipeChina was criticized for poorly coordinating meetings between departments.

In 2022, its headquarters ordered attendance at more than 800 meetings. On average, employees had to attend more than three meetings per working day.

Concerns about the excessive number of meetings were raised with relevant departments last September, but the number increased further over the following six months.

This high volume of meetings consumed a significant amount of working time, which prompted strong reactions from employees regarding the inefficiency and disruption caused by such practices, the CCDI notice states.

In addition, stricter rules have been put in place to prevent higher-level offices from borrowing too many staff from local units, including a wide range of public sector workers such as teachers.

He Xuefeng, a professor at Wuhan University specializing in rural governance, said higher-level departments often transfer responsibilities to grassroots organizations while imposing strict requirements, leading to chaos and confusion.

Due to the overly strict requirements and excessive tasks imposed by higher authorities, as well as insufficient governance resources at the local level and many requirements that do not match local realities, grassroots organizations can only resort to formalism to cope with the bureaucratic demands of higher departments, he wrote in an article published by local media Guancha.cn on Monday.

He said that in one example from Henan province, village officials reported that collecting rural health insurance contributions was more difficult than collecting agricultural taxes.

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According to He, the burden on farmers has increased significantly and many of them are not willing to pay. Last year, they had to pay 380 yuan ($53) per person per year, compared to just 10 yuan ($1.40) previously.

To meet collection targets, higher-level health insurance departments rank grassroots organizations based on their performance in collecting health insurance premiums, often leading to punitive measures for those that fail to meet them, he wrote.

This system shifts the responsibility for collecting fees onto village officials instead of allowing voluntary participation by residents, creating significant frustration and confusion, he wrote.

In light of this challenge, the new regulations require clear descriptions of tasks for cantons and streets to ensure that the assessment of basic work is based on defined responsibilities, thus preventing the transfer of responsibilities from higher authorities.