BEIJING: 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. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
