Zheng Yongnian: How can China rectify the bureaucratic inaction?

Zheng Yongnian column

One of the most serious phenomena from the central government to the local government today is that the bureaucracy is inaction.It can also be said that this has become the most severe political challenge in this new era.

After the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, a large -scale and sustainable anti -corruption movement was launched, and the phenomenon of corruption and chaos of party and government officials was remedied to achieve great achievements in just a few years.Not only that, anti -corruption has already become the most important agenda for the CCP's party building.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, a series of institutional anti -corruption and prevention of corruption have been established. The most important thing is the official establishment of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, becoming an independent agency parallel to the executive agency.However, after rectifying corruption and chaos, it is now going to another extreme, that is, inaction.

The consequences of inaction are very serious.Some scholars have calculated that since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the high level has introduced more than 1,500 reforms, but how many realities have been implemented?The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China established a blueprint for development from now to 2050. Three steps will be achieved in three steps, that is, a comprehensive well -off society will be achieved by 2020. By 2035, it will be fully modernized., Beautiful socialist modern power.

The Chinese Communist Party is a missionary party. The historical mission from now to the future has been established, but who can achieve these mission?This is not only about the basic issues of the ruling party itself, but also the need to achieve sustainable development in all aspects.Only sustainable development can meet the needs of the people's continuous changes.

In fact, it is not new.This issue has been discussed for a while, and people have even raised that chaos is corruption and inaction is also corruption.To a certain extent, inaction may be greater corruption.

Over the years, in the Western academic community, people have often compared China and India, and have raised a very interesting question: corruption also exists in two countries, but why does China develop and India does not develop?They found that in China, officials are both corruption and (Corruption with Delivery); in India, officials are both corruption nor (Corruption with Delivery).

This observation may not be correct, let alone the rationality of Chinese officials' corruption, but it can indeed explain a problem: if officials occupy an important position and do not act, the overall interests of the country and society are damaged.Therefore, it is no reason to say that inaction is greater corruption.

So how to rectify the inaction of bureaucratic agencies and bureaucrats?Here we must first understand how the unintentional phenomenon is arisen. If you approach the bureaucratic structure of China, it is not difficult to answer this question.Generally speaking, in today's bureaucracy, the following three groups can be found.

The first group can be called a word of mouth, and is keen to speak big politics and big words.Simply put, this group is basically playing.This group is a minority.The second group is inaction. They can go to work on time, get off work on time, and read, read, read, and write documents at work, but do not act, why do they want to do it and do nothing, they just occupy the position.

In many bureaucratic agencies, this group is mostly.The third group is also a minority. They want to do it and have a difference.

Three groups of three groups and three results

Three groups, three behaviors, three results.People can imagine that under normal circumstances, the third group of groups should be rewarded, the second group must be punished, and the first group is contempt for people.However, the actual situation is often not the case.

The first group of people is often promoted, because they have no actual behavior, not only do not make mistakes, but also because they are very high -profile, they often attract the attention of superiors.The people of this group have been promoted, and there is also a political correctness that is wrongly understood.For superiors, political correctness is mainly to implement the policy of top -level design and do things well;

But for the people of this group, politics is more of the only way, no matter what method is used, it can be happy to make superior leaders happy.

The second group does not act, which means mediocre, but it will not make big mistakes.In this group, some people have been promoted, and some are steps in place.Most of these groups, especially those who are about to retire, are waiting for soft landing, that is, before retirement, insist on not making mistakes and retire safely.

And the third group, that is, as a person, under some conditions, some have been promoted, but many people have problems and even enter prison.

The choice of these three group bureaucrats is actually extremely rational.There are still a few who play fiction. After all, the times are different, and people have their own judgment.The choice of mediocrity, although it is a helpless move, is also the most rational choice, because no one wants to make mistakes or go to prison as the end of life.

Why does this phenomenon cause this phenomenon?The situation here is complicated.Generally speaking, in terms of human nature, no matter what kind of system, these three groups will always appear.The problem in China today is that inaction bureaucrats occupy the majority of bureaucratic agencies.Although people can also assume that human factors work, if they want to contribute to bureaucracy, they must be analyzed from the perspective of the system.No doubt, no matter which country, the design of the system is to overcome the weakness of human nature.

As far as the system is concerned, people can gradually be formed from the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China to the official structure of the internal triple division of labor in the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.From the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China's most historic system reconstruction is the formation of the three rights systems of decision -making, execution, and supervision rights.

Although theoretically, these three powers have been existed since the founding of the country and have been evolving since the reform and opening up, the three -right system in the legal sense formed the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.After the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the supervisory power first tried it in Beijing, Zhejiang, and Shanxi. By the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, it became a very powerful power parallel to the State Council (executive rights).

Although all three powers come from party power, the exercise of party power is divided into three stages to achieve the effectiveness and rationality of power exercise.However, because of this three -power system, the boundaries and relationships, operation rules, and internal mechanisms of power in the three powers still need to be explored and improved in practice.From the status quo, there are still many places that can be improved.

As far as decision -making power is concerned, it concentrates its needs and inevitability, because the excessive decentralization before the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has led to a series of severe problems, including the formation of political oligarchs, large -scale corruption, and excessive dispersion of decision -making.However, there are also problems with concentration of decision -making, mainly because some policies are not scientific and lack of feasibility.In the past, China's policies were always formulated by the central government, and lower -level governments were transformed into local policies according to local conditions to implement local policies.

Today, the executive of the policy, that is, the lower government, does not know how to implement the policies formulated by the central government. They are on the front line and know what kind of policy is feasible and what kind of feasibility.However, some places evenly understand the concepts of unsurprising central government, and do not dare to change the policy adaptation of local conditions.It is not possible to discuss the central government that it was consistent in politics and the Party Central Committee, but this principle was abused and used by localities and declined step by step to evolve into any opinions on the policies made by the superior government.Even good and constructive opinions.

Furthermore, policy lacks feasibility, and also involves the problem of changes in decision -making models.In the past, policies were tried first, and rising into national policies after successful localities, which were implemented at the national level.Even so, policies must be modified in many places to meet local conditions.

However, many of the current policies are top -level design, and top -level design is often understood as the formalization of superiors and subordinates.The formulation of the superiors has further evolved into the formulation of leaders, and the leadership formulation has evolved into some officials below the leader.This not only causes insufficient or even lack of higher -level policy exchanges, but also a closed decision -making, lack of practicality.

No matter what kind of policy, if the local differences are ignored, it will be difficult to executeIn a country with such a large local difference, this decision model is problematic.

As far as the right to supervise, although this is a major innovation of the contemporary Chinese political system, this power is often excessive or even abused at the local level.Although China has the right to supervise thousands of years ago, it is still new rights for the contemporary era. The large system has been established. Many systems that must be cooperated are not in place, and the experience of power to be in power is not experienced.For example, for the inspectors, the disciplinary committees and supervisors are not enough to integrate. They will be the Discipline Inspection Commission for a while.

In addition, there is the permissions of supervision, which is not yet clear about what can be monitored and what cannot be monitored.There are many lessons in history, such as the Han Dynasty regulations only have six fields to monitor, and the rest cannot be.If the only responsibility of the supervisory agency is to find an error in execution or decision -making power, it must be found.Historian Qian Mu said that this phenomenon was the opposition and opposed.

To a large extent, this happened today in China.The media reported excessive supervision from time to time.One cannot ignore that if there are more and more people in the statement, fewer and fewer people who work will inevitably.Especially today, the statement is almost easy to oppose, zero costs. Regardless of whether they understand the real situation, even if they are based on rumors, they can sue. Even if they find that the statement is not real afterwards, they will not be punished.This seems to stimulate and inspire some people's enthusiasm.

Difficulty in doing things

In this case, it is not difficult to understand the reason why execution is difficult to act.Many cadres still want to do it, but once there is something, it is difficult. Not only to face the inconsistency between many policies and policies from the superiors, the localization of policies, etc., but more importantly, once you want to do something to do somethingThings will touch the interests of others, and these others will become a statement.Therefore, for officials who want to act, inaction is the most rational choice.

It is not the original intention of most officials, and its result is also the damage to the overall interests of the ruling party, society and the country.How to solve this problem?This is a very systematic problem, there is no universal medicine, but the following aspects can be considered:

1. Change the decision -making model and make it scientifically.In the past, excessive decentralization models have major defects, but now the excessive centralized mode also has its own defects, which must be integrated with two decision models.

2. Supervision rights.It is necessary to establish the boundaries of the right to supervise, and we must not monitor everything to ensure the space for execution and avoid the right of supervision to find errors in order to find mistakes.

3. To clarify the responsibilities of the reporter (complaint), the false accusation must bear political and legal responsibilities to avoid reporting on proliferation or abuse.It is necessary to control the behavior that is easy to report (such as the anonymous report of the network).

Fourth, formulate a reform of reform, and give officials to trial and error space.No one can guarantee that the implementation policy can be 100 % successful. If it is not for their own interests, there are some errors in reform, and they cannot bear such a big responsibility.In particular, the details of the liability for life must not be pursued after retirement, and no one wants to go to jail.In these respects, the senior management already has consciousness, so some policies have been introduced.

However, these policies are still too broad, not very clear, difficult to implement, and lack of legal guarantee.If these policies are refined and systematic and expressed through laws and regulations, you can provide a solid legal foundation for reform.

5. Improve administrative regulations and clarify collective responsibilities and personal responsibilities.A policy of collective decisions and passing through collective decisions. As long as the executive officials are implemented in an open and transparent way and according to collective decisions, even if there is a problem, it cannot be regarded as a personal responsibility, but a collective responsibility.

6. On the basis of the office of the party and government linkage, the party and government integrated reform are implemented at the grassroots level to truly realize the goal of the small government and reduce the number and personnel of the party and government bureaucratic institutions.Salary.Bulletin is also a person, and you cannot just ask and measure them with moral standards.

Without a certain level of salary, they have no motivation to make a difference, on the other hand, they will be obtained through various abnormal channels or hidden rules (including corruption).

The author is the director of the East Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore

The article only represents personal point of view