China's governments at all levels are making efforts to streamline
and cut short frequent and long-winded meetings to free officials
for substantial work.
A
circular issued by the State Council earlier this year instructed
governments at all levels to try all means to eliminate unnecessary
meetings or cut short meetings. It instructed that meetings should
not only have specific discussion themes but also contribute to
finding tangible approaches to objectives and solutions to
problems.
The implementation of the requirement has been warmly welcomed by
the public.
In
Liuzhou City, in southwest China's
Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, all of the 34 meetings held
by the municipal government last year were limited to less than 90
minutes, which saved 186.5 hours of work time and over one million
yuan (US$12 million) of expenditure.
Meanwhile, a number of measures have been implemented to help
increase efficiency, including tele-conferences and exchanges of
opinions via the local media.
An
official from the Liuzhou City Government said that in condensed
meetings, government officials felt an urgency to concentrate in
the limited time, which even improved the quality of the
meetings.
He
said that with the measures taken, officials were more frequently
found in their offices or engaged in field studies to obtain
"first-hand" information.
There are all kinds of annual, monthly or weekly meetings held by
governments at all levels, which, though necessary occasions for
group discussions, have proliferated to the extent of squandering
time, human resources and money.
An
informal calculation estimated that China's annual expenditure on
meetings may exceed 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion), which has
become a matter of public complaint.
These extravaganzas have fostered such a bureaucratic work style
that some civil servants even consider their principal task to be
attending meetings.
This, however, has been tackled with various initiatives. For
example, in the election of an administrative post in the
provincial government of Guangdong, one of the tests is to submit a
proposal for reforming the meeting style. The candidate who can
come up with the best solution to streamline meetings will get the
post.
The reform of the government meeting style has even become a hot
topic on the Internet. A commentator on the net said that meetings
will be meaningless if none of consensuses reached in those
meetings is implemented. In that case, meetings will become an
obstruction to building efficient and pragmatic government
organs.
(
March 18, 2002)