Take the initiative to stop disasters, China orders local officials
- Nation must abandon ‘thoughts of luck’ and ‘overcome inertia’ to avoid missing opportunities to save lives
- Meanwhile, experts say floods have shown lower-down leaders need more flexibility, less centralised governance
The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top planning agency, issued a directive on Monday telling local officials to step up during emergencies.
“Once abnormal situations such as extreme weather happen, [officials] must take resolute steps to suspend schools, stop production and businesses, halt transport and close tunnels and flood-prone black spots,” the directive said.
“[We] must abandon any thoughts of luck, overcome inertia and avoid missing critical opportunities so [we can] do our best to save people’s lives and property.”
Meanwhile, experts say the floods have exposed the underbelly of the top-down and highly centralised governance of China’s Communist Party and the need for more flexibility for local officials to make decisions based on frontline situations.
Sudden and severe flooding in Henan last week, with the dead including 12 on a subway tunnel in the city of Zhengzhou, has kept senior leaders in eastern provinces on their toes.
With the arrival of Typhoon In-fa just days afterwards, some officials issued special orders over the weekend to subway operators, granting them the power to make on-the-spot decisions in an emergency with no need to wait for orders from above.
According to a book published by Central Party Literature Press last month, President Xi Jinping has expressed his frustration at a lack of initiative among officials, complaining that too many wait for orders before taking action.
He also spoke about the issue to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection – the Communist Party’s top anti-corruption body – in January. “Some only get moving when they receive written edicts issued by the leadership and they do nothing without such instructions,” Xi said.
“My written instructions are the last line of defence. If I didn’t hand out instructions, would these officials do any work?”
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Typhoon In-fa made a second landfall on Monday, in the city of Jiaxing in Zhejiang province. China’s meteorologists renewed their orange alert, expecting rainstorms in many parts of the country, and called for precautionary measures. Up to 220mm (8 inches) of rainfall is expected in some areas.
China has a four-tier weather-warning system, with red the most severe followed by orange, yellow and blue.
On Saturday, Zhejiang governor Zheng Shanjie said the division of responsibility among stations, lines, and the entire network needed to be clarified and “prompt and timely decisions” should be arrived at “scientifically and decisively”.
He inspected Hangzhou’s subway system ahead of Typhoon In-fa’s landfall and was quoted by Zhejiang Daily.
The spate of orders came days after hundreds of passengers were trapped in Zhengzhou’s subway trains with a dozen deaths there.
Video footage of commuters trapped for hours in flooded train compartments and pleading for rescue shocked the nation. Many Chinese internet users questioned the government’s slow response to suspend the subway or close tunnels in spite of rain alerts.
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Zhu Shunzhong, a veteran investigative reporter, published an open letter on social media on Sunday, saying Zhengzhou’s top officials should take responsibility for the tragedy.
Zhu said lives could have been saved “if the party and government leaders in Zhengzhou had paid enough attention to the red rain alarms issued by the meteorological department”.
The province’s official state media reported that during a video conference on flood prevention work on July 13 Zhengzhou party boss Xu Liyi asked the city to ensure there would be “no major traffic stoppages”.
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That goal may have caused the delay in the flood response, according to Gu Su, a political analyst and professor of philosophy and law at Nanjing University.
“Given such a target from the top, the rank and file would want to check with their seniors before they can shut down the subway system. But in critical situations, any minute wasted can be very costly,” Gu said.
“That is why we see the leadership in the eastern provinces, after witnessing what’s happening in Henan, taking a different approach by immediately asking their subordinates to cut the red tape and make on-the-spot decisions during emergencies to avoid repeating the same mistakes.”
Xi Jinping asks: why do Chinese officials wait for orders from the top?
China needs to strike a better balance between centralised control and autonomy for local officials, allowing local cadres to make decisions and honest mistakes because disasters caused by extreme weather will happen more frequently, according to Xie Maosong, a political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“With many guidelines to rein in local officials issued in recent years, Beijing should also look at ways to allow cadres [more decision-making power] so they will not be punished for making honest mistakes. Without such mechanisms, those on the ground will obviously not want to take risks and will always wait for decisions from the top,” Xie said.
“What if some local officials decide to stop subway services because of bad weather but flooding does not happen in the end? They will face criticism too.”
