Coronavirus Crisis Shows China’s Governance Failure

[Nan Yang]

Australian forest forest fire. It that a failure of the Australian government?

 

[Viva_Viet]

China needs time. Despite its impressive economic achievements, China is still very much a developing country when it comes to educational attainment levels.

http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/2019-human-development-index-ranking

FYI the mean years of schooling in China is lower than Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Only around 25% of the population have received high school or above education with the majority being youths, compared to around 90% in the US. Most Chinese above the age of 50 (which officials are) aren't highly educated.

The Cultural Revolution had set back China badly and it's gonna take generations to repair the damage.

29:23

It has to take time for educated youths to take over the ranks gradually.

And a better educated population has to emerge so that adults won't behave like three-year old kids waiting to be governed with an iron fist.

I'm being realistic. Contrary to many Westerners' hope, democracy isn't gonna be some magical panacea for China overnight. What China needs is education, and time.

FYI the mean years of schooling in China is lower than Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Is thats true ??

Wow, Vietnam still poor bcs we had so many war and sanction till 1990. CN has No big war since 1949 and still so uneducated

Let me tell u one thing: no more time for CN to fix their problem, even when CN can stop Covirus, then trade war will still make CN economy keep falling fast.

As CN proverb said : luck does not come twice while bad luck come not only 1 time ( but many times together), so Covirus wilk not just the last " bad luck", more and more " bad luck" r coming to CN ( economic chaos, uprising, more disaster )

 

[Paul2]

There is a huge gap of competency between the central govt in China and the local govts. Most of the local government officials are uneducated and garbage. I don't know how they are going to reform this.

Do you find there is much of a gap? With 初中生 in power, what did you want? Things with grassroots level got worse over the years a lot.

Back during the Jiang-Hu, it was common that every few years, when the level of administrative messup passes the red line, Beijing gets serious and dispatches a round of disposable technocrats to provinces to undo the mess.

This https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...e-bureaucratic-shakeup-reveals-future-leaders was XI conceding for the first time since he came to power. And if we compare this to grand 100-150 people cadre reshuffles we saw back 10 years go, this can't compare. The primary reason this time is to fix bad debts, and treasuries of critically messed up provinces and major cities.

The party doesn't have the resolve to do this in anything but a top-down way, unfortunately, and with XI, the hope of things getting better here gets even smaller.

Would you spend 5 years of your life studying Marxism-Jediism, for a 1 to 60 chance to pass the civil service exam, and a "privilege" to sing songs about Xi, and study his "though" as your full time job for the first 3-4 years of your career?

This is why I am saying that I am a bit freaked out with the current cohort of 40 something up and rising officials. To agree to this voluntarily, and with such zeal, one needs to either be dumb, or have his own special interests in mind for that.

This news reminds me my childhood experience when Chinese newspapers told us how capitalistic governments failed and how wonderful socialistic systems were. When a country's major media is obsessed with the alleged failures of other countries, I take it as a sure sign of its own failure.

Indeed, late Hu, and early Xi was the time of relative sanity, probably the highest point we had since 1979. This is the best we will ever see.

China needs time. Despite its impressive economic achievements, China is still very much a developing country when it comes to educational attainment levels.

China already had 30 years to get this right. Lee is certainly missing the point about the post 1970 officials. One thing they are sharper people for sure, but them being a net improvement... saying that is a stretch.

I'm saying this with quite a bit of first hand knowledge. Take a look at what I wrote above for @tower9. You basically need your own agenda, and a whacking big one to go into the government, and advance your party career under Xi. There is really no other incentive whatsoever.

The youth league was providing the closest semblance to the professional civil service academy that China ever had. Now, it's ruined.

 

[Pan-Islamic-Pakistan]

Sensationalist article totally out of touch with reality.

China has made great strides to control the virus as best possible. I commend the Chinese response. No other country is possible of this quarantine which has been done in Wuhan. Building a new hospital in 6 days, just wow.

As I work in the medical field, I can tell you Coronavirus can cause epidemics quickly, and this form has multiple ways of transmission. Previous strains caused SARS, for example, which became an issue particularly in Makkah.

Wuhan’s mayor blamed higher-ups. A senior disease control official blamed layers of bureaucracy. A top government expert blamed the public: The people, he said, simply didn’t understand what he told them.

As China grapples with a mysterious coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 420 people and sickened thousands, the country’s 1.4 billion people are asking what went wrong. Senior officials are engaging in an unusually blunt display of finger pointing.

So many officials have denied responsibility that some online users joke that they are watching a passing-the-buck competition. (It’s “tossing the wok” in Chinese.)

The Chinese people are getting a rare glimpse of how China’s giant, opaque bureaucratic system works — or, rather, how it fails to work. Too many of its officials have become political apparatchiks, fearful of making decisions that anger their superiors and too removed and haughty when dealing with the public to admit mistakes and learn from them.


“The most important issue this outbreak exposed is the local government’s lack of action and fear of action,” said Xu Kaizhen, a best-selling author who is famous for his novels that explore the intricate workings of China’s bureaucratic politics.

“Under the high-pressure environment of anti-corruption campaign, most people, including senior government officials, only care about self-preservation,” Mr. Xu said. “They don’t want to be the first to speak up. They wait for their superiors to make decisions and are only accountable to their superiors instead of the people.”

The Chinese government appears to be aware of the problem. The Communist Party’s top leadership acknowledged in a meeting on Monday that the epidemic is “a major test of China’s system and capacity for governance.”


Growing numbers of people are questioning the government’s decisions as China enters a period of virtual shutdown. As the virus spread, officials in Wuhan and around the country withheld critical information, downplayed the threat and rebuked doctors who tried to raise the alarm. A reconstruction of the diseases’s spread by The New York Times showed that by not issuing earlier warnings, the Chinese government potentially lost the window to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.

The outbreak has undermined the myth that the Chinese political elites win assignments and promotion purely on merit. China has sold this system as its own unique innovation. Developing countries have sent thousands of their government officials to China to learn its model of governance, a political system that offers security and growth in return for submission to authoritarian rule.

People in China are now questioning that premise. They are focusing much of their anger on Xi Jinping, China’s top leader and the person many blame for creating a culture of fear and subservience within the Chinese government.

Few people dare to question Mr. Xi openly, for fear of provoking censors or the police. But after Mr. Xi disappeared from public in recent days, some social media users began asking euphemistically, “Where is that person?” They are also posting online and sharing pictures of former leaders at the site of past crises.


Critics say quietly that, under Mr. Xi, the party began promoting loyal political cadres over technocrats — the experts and skilled administrators who comprised the backbone of China’s bureaucracy in 1990s and 2000s, when the country grew the fastest.

Those officials could often be corrupt, but even the party’s fiercest critics sometimes acknowledged that they got things done. Liu Zhijun, the former railway minister, is serving a lifetime sentence for taking bribes and abusing power. He also oversaw the creation of China’s high speed rail system, which vastly improved life in the country.

The wok tossing in China stems in part from the tension between the technocrats, who hold a large number of positions with China’s provincial and national disease control centers, and the political cadres — the mayors, governors and the provincial party secretaries. The outbreak and lack of disclosure suggests the political cadres are winning. In fact, even the technocrats are becoming cadres because none of them had the courage to tell the public what they knew about the virus.

Chinese officials are spending as much as one third of their time on political studying sessions, a lot of which are about Mr. Xi’s speeches. Political loyalty weighs much more in performance evaluations than before. Now the rule of thumb in Chinese officialdom seems to be demonstrating loyalty as explicitly as possible, keeping everything else vague and evading responsibility at all costs when things go wrong.

The Chinese people may be paying the price. The failures span the system.


Zhou Xianwang, Wuhan’s mayor, said he didn’t disclose the scale and danger of the epidemic earlier because he needed the authorization from higher up. But he could have done something without sharing much information, including telling the residents to wear masks, wash hands frequently and stop big gatherings such as the potluck banquet attended by over 40,000 families just a few days before his city of 11 million was locked down.

When information began to dribble out, it was vague and misleading. In a series of online notices issued between Dec. 31 and Jan. 17, local officials disclosed they were treating pneumonia patients but didn't say when or how many.

The National Health Commission, the ministry with the authority to declare an epidemic emergency, didn’t issue its own notice about the outbreak until Jan. 19. But the notice essentially kicked blame back to the local authorities. The first sentence cited a rule that required the commission to work with local officials on epidemic prevention.


A top government health adviser, Wang Guangfa, who had reassured the public that the disease was controllable only to be sickened himself, said in an interview after he recovered that he had limited information at the time. He also defended his phrasing as a “misunderstanding” by the general public, saying most outbreaks of infectious diseases are controlled in the end.

Local officials don’t seem to have local people at the top of their list of priorities. In an interview with state television, Ma Guoqiang, the Communist Party secretary of Wuhan, acknowledged that Wuhan residents “are a little anxious and a little nervous” and said that he would mobilize all party cells to comfort them. “But the most important comfort,” he added, “came from Party Secretary Xi Jinping.”

Mr. Xu, the novelist, said Mr. Ma’s remarks demonstrated how officials have more concern for pleasing their bosses than taking care of the people they allegedly serve.

“If they can rearrange the order in their hearts," Mr. Xu said, “we’ll see a very different governance style.”


As they try to contain the spread, local governments are showing that they are better at looking busy than they are at finding a solution. Many are now finding ways to track down and even expel residents from Hubei Province to keep the coronavirus from spreading. Tracking potential spreaders is sound policy, but punishing or persecuting them risks driving them underground, making it even harder to fight the outbreak.

Even outside the hardest hit areas, local officials are showing they don’t make rules with the well-being of the people in mind. A video that went viral across China showed a couple stuck on a bridge connecting Guizhou Province to the city of Chongqing. The two governments had halted travel between them, and the couple — she from Guizhou, he from Chongqing — had no place to go.

On social media, low-level cadres are complaining that they are receiving so many instructions from the higher-ups that they spend most of their time filling out spreadsheets instead of getting real work done. In a social media post headlined, “The Formalism Under the Mask,” the author wrote, “Most people in the system don’t do things to solve problems. They do things to solve responsibilities.”

After the epidemic, the Chinese leadership will have to punish a few officials, even severely, to save face and win back some credibility. But for people who are suffering from the epidemic and the failure of governance, the Communist Party may have a hard time winning them back.

“I know before long this country will go back to being a peaceful, prosperous society. We will hear many people screaming how proud they are of its prosperity and power,” a Wuhan resident wrote on the social media site Weibo. “But after what I have witnessed, I refuse to watch the applause and commendation.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/business/china-coronavirus-government.html

Not only is this a massive government failure, it’s also a failure of Chinese society as a whole.

 

[tower9]

Do you find there is much of a gap? With 初中生 in power, what did you want? Things with grassroots level got worse over the years a lot.

Back during the Jiang-Hu, it was common that every few years, when the level of administrative messup passes the red line, Beijing gets serious and dispatches a round of disposable technocrats to provinces to undo the mess.

This https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...e-bureaucratic-shakeup-reveals-future-leaders was XI conceding for the first time since he came to power. And if we compare this to grand 100-150 people cadre reshuffles we saw back 10 years go, this can't compare. The primary reason this time is to fix bad debts, and treasuries of critically messed up provinces and major cities.

The party doesn't have the resolve to do this in anything but a top-down way, unfortunately, and with XI, the hope of things getting better here gets even smaller.

Would you spend 5 years of your life studying Marxism-Jediism, for a 1 to 60 chance to pass the civil service exam, and a "privilege" to sing songs about Xi, and study his "though" as your full time job for the first 3-4 years of your career?

This is why I am saying that I am a bit freaked out with the current cohort of 40 something up and rising officials. To do agree to this voluntarily, and with such zeal, one needs to be either dumb, or have his own special interests in mind for that.


Indeed, late Hu, and early Xi was the time of relative sanity, probably the highest point we had since 1979. This is the best we will ever see.


China already had 30 years to get this right. Lee is certainly missing the point about the post 1970 officials. One thing they are sharper people for sure, but them being a net improvement... saying that is a stretch.

I'm saying this with quite a bit of first hand knowledge. Take a look at what I wrote above for @tower9. You basically need your own agenda, and a whacking big one to go into the government, and advance your party career under Xi. There is really no other incentive whatsoever.

The youth league was providing the closest semblance to the professional civil service academy that China ever had. Now, it's ruined.

Interesting thoughts. How do most regular Chinese feel about Xi? Do they feel he has become too dictatorial?

I'm honestly not a big fan of Xi Jinping. He seems too power hungry and obsessed about control. Although I do agree that China's system does need a thorough cleansing of corruption, but he has basically reversed a lot of the openness during the Hu Wen Era.

Sensationalist article totally out of touch with reality.

China has made great strides to control the virus as best possible. I commend the Chinese response. No other country is possible of this quarantine which has been done in Wuhan. Building a new hospital in 6 days, just wow.

As I work in the medical field, I can tell you Coronavirus can cause epidemics quickly, and this form has multiple ways of transmission. Previous strains caused SARS, for example, which became an issue particularly in Makkah.

I think China's central govt is doing 110% to control the spread. The local govt. however screwed things up with its late and incompetent response. But again, this is all in hindsight. This virus mimics the common flu so it doesn't stand out until increasing numbers start dying.

 

[Paul2]

How do most regular Chinese feel about Xi? Do they feel he has become too dictatorial?

One phrase says its all: Fengqiao experience.

The masses, especially the cultural revolution generation, can't be more ecstatic seeing the purges going. Xi basically copied Bo's political cookbook after he purged him. Bo was thunderously popular in Chongqing.

Do they feel he has become too dictatorial?

If I am to go and ask in the street, we will meet in Xinjiang. Yes.

The wealthy class vote with their feet. Capitalists with their wallets. Immigration to any country far away from China is at all time high. People in the civil service are getting more, and more freaked out with each CCDI inspection team visit because they don't even know now for what they can be purged. CCDI branches now are basically an another party committee level, above a party committee. Totally above the law.

Xi is bordering on being paranoid, and lashes out at anybody he sees as not 200% loyal.

The talk of reptiloid illuminati Jiang Zemin still pulling the strings from behind the scenes is vastly overblown. Shanghai faction has been dead and burred for years. The only thing they can do now is to pull some passive aggressive small time sabotage from time to time, but nothing like coup bullsh1t American Beijinologists talk about.

Xi can now dispatch 8341 to Jiang, and have him deposed with a flick of a finger at any moment.

I'm honestly not a big fan of Xi Jinping. He seems too power hungry and obsessed about control. Although I do agree that China's system does need a thorough cleansing of corruption, but he has basically reversed a lot of the openness during the Hu Wen Era.

Have you heard of a Qiang dude called Dong Zhuo?

 

[tower9]

One phrase says its all: Fengqiao experience.

The masses, especially the cultural revolution generation, can't be more ecstatic seeing the purges going. Xi basically copied Bo's political cookbook after he purged him. Bo was thunderously popular in Chongqing.


If I am to go and ask in the street, we will meet in Xinjiang. Yes.

The wealthy class vote with their feet. Capitalists with their wallets. Immigration to any country far away from China is at all time high. People in the civil service are getting more, and more freaked out with each CCDI inspection team visit because they don't even know now for what they can be purged. CCDI branches now are basically an another party committee level, above a party committee. Totally above the law.

Xi is bordering on being paranoid, and lashes out at anybody he sees as not 200% loyal.

The talk of reptiloid illuminati Jiang Zemin still pulling the strings from behind the scenes is vastly overblown. Shanghai faction has been dead and burred for years. The only thing they can do now is to pull some passive aggressive small time sabotage from time to time, but nothing like coup bullsh1t American Beijinologists talk about.

Xi can now dispatch 8341 to Jiang, and have him deposed with a flick of a finger at any moment.

Have you heard of a Qiang dude called Dong Zhuo?

Xi does seem very paranoid.

Yeah I know of Dong Zhuo. I didn't know he was a Qiang ethnic.

 

[Mista]

How do most regular Chinese feel about Xi? Do they feel he has become too dictatorial?

If I am to go and ask in the street, we will meet in Xinjiang.

Lmao.

 

[FedererExpress]

This virus has shown that Communism is a complete disaster.

 

[Mista]

And a better educated population has to emerge so that adults won't behave like three-year old kids waiting to be governed with an iron fist.

I agree with what you are saying and I have felt the same way for a long time.

Just from news today; this sort of behavior is exactly what I mean:
https://www.weibo.com/1638782947/IsN3rFcqP
https://www.weibo.com/1638782947/IsL1D1wuL
https://www.weibo.com/1644114654/IsKtizKvr
https://www.weibo.com/1638782947/IsMQJ4n0G

You have frontline doctors in China dying of fatigue after working 10 days straight to contain the outbreak. On the other hand you have freaking adult retards acting irresponsibly and spreading the virus.

You can't blame the CPC's authoritarianism to rein in such behaviors:

The detained woman, a 36-year-old identified by her surname, Liu, had hurt virus prevention and control work through her action and public security authorities in the northern municipality of Tianjin took her into custody for "administrative detention".

The state news agency gave no details of what she had done or say if or when she would be released.

Authorities in some places have threatened dire punishment for anyone violating the law in connection with efforts to battle the virus.

A high court in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang said people who intentionally spread the virus could face the death penalty, according to a Jan. 31 court notice.

Police in Qinghai province in the northwest were investigating a man infected with the virus who "severely disrupted virus containment and harmed public health", Xinhua reported, without elaborating.

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/02/04/world/asia/03reuters-china-health-detention.html

 

[SEAISI]

This virus has shown that Communism is a complete disaster.

The way oz government handled the bushfire shows how democrazy is a complete disaster. Is that how an idiot's logic works?

 

[ILC]

So how is that Xi made it to the top with such big power now? I think persecuting everyone is not a good idea, because like you said earlier ppl with big money are leaving, the money which was made with help by a regular Chinese who sacrificed at factories at the beginning for low wages. People and the economy prefer very much stability for good healthy growth.

I wonder what Xi wants? I don't think he will be able to stay for a 3rd term after so many bad things happened in the last few years.
Maybe it's time to finally delete hukou? Also, more property rights would be a good start for stopping financial outflow.

 

[Paul2]

I wonder what Xi wants? I don't think he will be able to stay for a 3rd term after so many bad things happened in the last few years.

I think Xi doesn't know that either.

My observation: Xi was completely consumed by consolidation of power until 3-4 years ago, and when he finally got something resembling primacy in the central committee. Then, he caught himself thinking that he doesn't really know what to do next.

It was then when he first tried rolling out his own initiatives like Xiongan, Obor, "opening ups" and few other rather random undertakings

 

[tower9]

I think Xi doesn't know that either.

My observation: Xi was completely consumed by consolidation of power until 3-4 years ago, and when he finally got something resembling primacy in the central committee. Then, he caught himself thinking that he doesn't really know what to do next.

It was then when he first tried rolling out his own initiatives like Xiongan, Obor, "opening ups" and few other rather random undertakings

I disagree. The OBOR was already in the works since 2013. It was already being framed by the Hu Jintao administration as the New Silk Road even as early as 2006.

I do agree that Xi Jinping has way overreached and he is a very paranoid and power hungry person. I personally don't like him that much.

Do you think he will be able to hold on to power after his term is over? If not, who would likely be replacing him and what kind of policies will this successor have?

As far as confrontation with the US, I think it will be inevitable regardless of who replaces Xi. China is simply too big for its britches now, confrontation with the dominant power is inevitable.

 

[Paul2]

Do you think he will be able to hold on to power after his term is over?

He may keep power once he leave the post, but he has very tiny power base in comparison to the CPC's freemason supreme — Jiang. Jiang still has many thousands of loyalists, though Shanghai camp is slowly loosing the grip on power because they age, turn frail, and die. But things are even worse for Xi, as he relied greatly on personal connection with previous generation "elders" (basically everybody who ran politics in 90s, who were not with Jiang)

Unlike Jiang who retired, but kept power through loyalists stuffed into every department possible, or unlike Deng who had enough personal image to influence anything without a post, Xi has only 5-6 trusted men, with only Wang Qishan having an own "network" he built during his time in central bank and financial regulators. That network is tiny, and he can't do anything resembling a 100-200 people cadre campaigns.

To leave power, he needs to leave an extremely powerful spoiler for newcomers, or leave an extremely powerful loyalist in the standing committee. Given that's unlikely, he will likely stay for at least one more term until he can do that.

So, the expiration date of Xi's political system is set by following:

1. Succession — His power can slip when elites will see that the man sets his rule to end with himself. That's nothing CPC specific, just that's how every kingdom worked before.
2. Unrest — Hongkong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang were unsolved issues in the past, but Xi made things even worse. The Party really wants to close this topic for good. Any major screw-up on them will set him against the party at large. His authority depends on if he can deal with that.
3. Bad debt bomb in local governments — That's pretty much the one and only genuine threat to the party's power coming from the outside. Policemen will not work unless paid salaries. It seems that Beijing is finally addressing that by appointing finance people to be No. 3s and No.4s in troubled provinces and cities.

In one phrase: it's basically about the clock ticking on all of this, and him racing against time to build a political camp before that hits.

If not, who would likely be replacing him and what kind of policies will this successor have?

I'm somewhat afraid that it will be the current post 1970 generation. There are very few political heavyweights left from the sixties generation (largely thanks to Xi purging them,) so a jump to post 1970 generation is likely.

Before, I wrote a lot why I am saying that I have a lot of reservations about these people. Even without faction affiliations, a lot of them are troublesome people. They are much less of politicians, than total cutthroat careerists—corporatists. I keep my hopes.

I disagree. The OBOR was already in the works since 2013. It was already being framed by the Hu Jintao administration as the New Silk Road even as early as 2006.

Yes, OBOR kind of predated that time period