China scraps 130,000 ‘leading groups’ in effort to streamline local government

China, in an effort to streamline bureaucracy, has scrapped over 130,000 of the many “leading groups” that operate at all levels of governments across the nation, state media reported on Thursday.

Formally called “leading small groups”, these structures are set up independently by each local party or government body and they primarily serve the same purpose: bringing control over a broad policy area to a single conference table.

The central province of Hunan saw 13,000 groups abolished. The coastal eastern province of Jiangsu and the northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region each had over 8,000 such panels scrapped.

The cancelled groups spanned a broad range of industries – from foot therapy, watermelon sales, steamed bun retail, live pig auctions and even weed removal.

The “leading group” scheme was originally designed to allow the government to form temporary task forces to deal with specific issues by helping to cut through bureaucratic roadblocks and working more efficiently in the face of provisional incidents.

But the scheme has had the potential for abuse because it has enabled local party cadres to bypass formal government institutions. The “leading groups” are often kept opaque from the public’s perspective and the local officials’ inclination to rely on them to administrate has led to an excessive number, leading to waste and overstaffing.