China's surplus bureaucrats
"Institutional reform of the government bureaucracy." was Premier Zhu Rongji's first pledge to the 9* National People's Congress. Our China correspondent Zhang Kai explains what this really means. Luo Gan, Chief Secretary of the State Council, told NPC delegates that the problem with the current government institution is the non-separation of political and economic administration. With the government's direct intervention in the production activities of the enterprises, it is difficult for market mechanisms to play their role. With redundant departments and multiple decision-making centres, efficiency is low.
Secondly, government departments basically manage economic and social affairs by administrative mechanisms, and there are many issues that should not or cannot be managed by the government. Hence, there should be division of responsibility and appropriate roles need to be clearly defined.
Thirdly, redundancy is acute, giving rise to bureaucratism, corruption and graft. This means a serious burden for state finance. Both at the central and provincial levels, a huge budget is spent on wages.
To provide statistical data to substantiate the need for reform, issue##4/98 of the State Council's magazine Lookout published a signed article in No.4 this year, stating that the ranks of the bureaucracy fed by the state are bulky and out of control. By the end of 1996, 36.73 million lived off the state, an increase of 82.2% compared to 1978. In this same period, China's population increased by 27.1%. If each bureaucrat received wages of 10,000 yuan a year (excluding housing, medical benefits, pension etc.), it would cost the state 360 billion yuan a year. This amounted to almost half the state's total financial budget.
There was a fairly ambitious institutional reform in 1993. But five years later, the bureaucracy has grown by over 5 million staff. The Finance Department has increased its revenues by 100 billion yuan per year since 1993, but all the increase has been exhausted by the cadre salaries on the "royal" payroll. (Hong Kong's Ming Pao, 8 March 1998)
This does not include the cost to the Chinese economy of the corruption, graft and extravagance of these bureaucrats.
The reform now promised by the State Council claims to be "a revolution". But its targets and methods show that it is only a lukewarm whitewashing. The number of departments will be cut from 40 to 29, and the total number of units in the State Council will be reduced from 85 to 83. The planned elimination of half the cadres (about 30,000 within the State Council, and 4 million at different regional and local levels within three years) will be carried out by re-allocating cadre to institutions in industry, commerce, finance, market management, taxation, culture, education, or health, while protecting their grade and salary
This in effect means that the state bureaucracy will be trimmed down while other institutions will swell. The latter will come under further leadership or intervention of Party/state cadres, and there will be even more collusion between the state and the commercial sectors. With China's traditions of favoritism and factional struggles, this streamlining will also offer good pretexts for the top leadership to get rid of rivals or dissidents.
This reform cannot contribute seriously to radical democratic reform of the political institution. The reform scheme mentions only the separation of political institution from enterprises, with no mention at all of the separation of the Party and the state functions. From the state to the enterprises, actual leadership is still held in the hands of the ruling Party
The power and privileges enjoyed by the Party/state bureaucracy since its inception in the early fifties have been expanding. The entire bureaucracy is unscathed by the many campaigns on streamlining throughout these decades. Deng Xiaoping's 1982 words "Streamlining is a revolution" have frequently been quoted to stress the state's determination for reform. Yet, all the reforms conducted by the bureaucracy on itself have been partial, mild, and ineffective.
For a revolution on the bureaucracy to be truly conducted, the masses need to be mobilised and the state apparatus broken down in order for the resistance of the interest-vested bureaucrats to be crushed. If the people remain powerless in decision-making on political and economic matters, there cannot be any true revolution.
Luo Gan, Chief Secretary of the State Council, blames the planned economy for the failure of previous attempts at reform of the bureaucracy.
In other words, the promised streamlining of the bureaucracy will go hand in hand with a further strengthening of the capitalist market economy. One aim of the current reform is to return more sovereignty to the enterprises, to set them free from bureaucratic intervention. Power is to be delegated of course to the leadership and not the workers.
China *
Meanwhile, massive layoff of workers continues to be on the agenda. It is reported that the current number of workers
"temporarily laid off" had increased from
8-9 million at the end of 1997 to 13 million in February 1998
According to Lin Yongsan, deputy minister of the Labour Department, there are 130 million surplus workers in the countryside and 20m. redundant workers from state enterprises.
Every year, 7-8m.
young people join the labour force, and
5.7m. urban workers become unemployed.
In other words, about
170m. people are looking, unsuccessfully, for work.
(Ming Pao, 8 March
1998)
According to Hu
Angan of the Chinese
Academy of Social
Sciences, the real urban unemployment rate is about 7.5%, amounting to perhaps
35m. people. (Apple
28 February
Daily,
1998) Furthermore, in the next three years, half a million soldiers will be discharged.
One the way government intends to shift the burden is to force women to home.
return
According to the
3rd China
March
Daily, the All-China
Federation of Women, usually a passive follower of government policy, recently protested about the replacement of 3-month paid maternity leave by a no-pay system allowing absence of one to five years.
This would cost women workers a loss of seniority and even their jobs. *
October Review, PO Box
10144, Hong Kong, Chind
E-Mail cor@c