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JanRecently, the division of work of Wang Jianfeng, Executive Vice Mayor of Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, has aroused widespread concern. In the Notice of the Municipal Government on the Division of Work of Comrade Wang Jianfeng published on the official website of the municipal government, Wang Jianfeng serves as the leader of 47 leading groups covering economy, society, law, environment and reform and other sectors of Xuzhou City. It is not unusual for one incumbent to take multiple posts, but it is really shocking that one person can hold so many leadership positions.
However, if you are familiar with the operation logic of public administration and leadership division in China, it is a phenomenon commonly seen.
First of all, the governments at all levels of China are "Big Governments" that take on almost all public affairs, leading to hundreds of departments at one level of government. Despite China's transition from a planned economy to a market economy, government functions cannot be significantly downsized in the short term. Deputy heads are often assigned to take charge of coordination among different government departments, forming the “in-charge” leadership system in China, where deputies are in charge of multiple departments and functions. It is quite different from the “advisor” leadership system in western countries.
In terms of organizational structure, the number of staff members managed by the superior at the next higher level is referred to as the span of management. Given the number of departments, the larger the span of management, the fewer the organizational hierarchy, and vice versa. Therefore, it is necessary to reach a balance between the number of leaders in charge and the span of management, so as to achieve the goal of both reducing the number of leadership positions and avoiding excessively large span of management.
Under the leadership structure of “one chief and four deputies”, it is inevitable that the deputy leaders in charge will have multiple or even dozens of functions. For example, according to the survey on 250 prefecture-level cities in 24 provinces across the country made by Beijing News in 2013, there were 2~10 vice mayors for each prefecture-level city, with an average number of 6~8.
In the paper recently completed by the author, In-Charge Logic of Government Deputies: Span of Management, Discipline Matching and Inter-Departmental Relations, the division of labor among vice governors of 28 provinces in China is quantitatively analyzed. It indicates that vice governors are in charge of an average of 7.62 departments, with a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 21. If we look at the specific functions, vice governors are in charge of an average of 4.31 functions, with a maximum of 10. The number of government departments at the prefecture level is generally larger than that at the provincial level, so there are more departments and functions under the charge of deputy mayors.
Secondly, as government affairs are becoming increasingly complicated and requiring cross-regional cooperation, there will be more and more issues requiring the coordination among multiple government departments. Due to the large number of government departments, the inter-department coordination is extremely complicated, which has led to various advisory and coordinating organs, such as the inter-ministerial joint meetings and leading groups. These temporary advisory and coordinating organs are inter-department and require higher-level government officials to mediate and coordinate so as to meet the needs of inter-department policy coordination. If the departments under the charge of the deputy mayor involve the above advisory and coordinating organs, the deputy mayor may be assigned as the group leader or convener.
Although the deputy mayor could be in charge of multiple advisory and coordinating organs, it may not substantially distract or even affect their work arrangements. The reason is that the functions of the advisory and coordinating organs focus on dealing with issues involving inter-department coordination. Such issues are not part of the routine work of government and thus are often temporary.
In addition, the advisory and coordinating organ usually establishes an office in a core department, which is responsible for the day-to-day operation and convening of meetings. There are not many matters that actually need to be involved or decided by the leaders in charge. More importantly, the deputy leaders in charge usually have experiences in multiple departments and are the “all-rounders” for various tasks, and are generally competent for different leadership tasks in various fields.
In the process of comprehensively deepening reforms, as the reform enters a “deep-water zone”, numerous inter-department reform issues will be involved, which will significantly increase the number of advisory and coordinating organs. Given that the number of leadership positions remains unchanged, there will be more advisory and coordinating organs under the charge of deputies. Therefore, the fact that the executive vice mayor is in charge of a large number of advisory and coordinating organs in Xuzhou is not an isolated case, but a typical and universal phenomenon in China. It is both an objective fact commonly seen and a realistic problem that needs attention and solution.
Based on the international experience, it is not uncommon for government officials to hold multiple positions. The main reason is that it may not be appropriate to assign multiple temporary, inter-disciplinary and inter-department jobs to different persons, and it will be more efficient for only one person to take charge. Meanwhile, if one government official is in charge of multiple organs, it could promote information sharing and business collaboration among different organs.
Certainly, we hope that government functions could be further transformed and optimized to really achieve “downsizing” of government functions and enable government officials to focus on highly important issues. If government officials have to undertake more than one position and shoulder too many responsibilities, they will inevitably “scratch the surface” due to limited energy. For this reason, government officials have to attend to numerous affairs every day, take into account various affairs at the same time and fuss up and down.
The huge number of advisory and coordinating organs has something to do with the lack of autonomy of government departments. If everything needs to be resolved through advisory and coordinating organs and mediation at higher levels, and there is no effective horizontal linkage among departments, it will be difficult to continuously improve the administrative efficiency of the government.
It is expected that the reform of the party and state institutions since 2018 can be further deepened to realize substantial downsizing of government departments and transformation of government functions. Only in this way can government officials pull themselves out of miscellaneous advisory and coordinating work and focus on long-term, overall and forward-looking issues.
Ma Liang, Research Fellow of the National Academy of Development and Strategy of Renmin University of China
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