China’s Plan B to Save the Economy: A Crusade Against Busywork

In the months since, policymakers have avoided unleashing a massive stimulus to get the economy roaring back to life, disappointing economists and investors who had hoped for more. The call for a renewed crusade against red tape had offered a clue. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is committed to his master plan and wants the party to unshackle its roughly 100 million members to make it work.

The directive to supervisors: Hold fewer meetings and make them shorter. Cut superfluous paperwork. Don’t burden the “grassroots”—local-level government workers—with cumbersome and unproductive tasks. Stop using phone apps to track staff and bombard them with instructions. Don’t overwhelm them with performance reviews, lest they focus on pleasing their bosses rather than getting work done.

Many local bureaucrats are required to submit weekly, monthly and quarterly reports, sapping their time and energy, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, which took up the campaign. “The job must be done well, but more important, the reports must be written beautifully!” one official lamented. “If the word counts in the documents are lower than that of other departments, we can’t showcase our achievements!” another said.

Excessive inspections were also cause for complaint. Government workers are often tied up preparing for appraisals, to the extent of setting aside their day-to-day work, according to a social-media post from the Henan provincial government. Then, some supervisors “visit multiple locations a day, shake hands, say a few words, take a few photos, and then leave,” a Xinhua report said. “They are also picky about their food and accommodation, and even ask for special cars and traffic clearance.”

Then there is the overreliance on digital devices to monitor workers. Officials are often glued to their phones, replying to their bosses and submitting reports on countless apps.

In the rural county of Huzhu in western China, officials had to use a dedicated mobile app to clock into work by 9 a.m. and upload daily logs of their activities, according to a party office. These requirements, the office said, left workers “exhausted and affected their enthusiasm for work.”

In other words, as one municipal party office put it, officials encumbered by busywork are “stepping hard on the accelerator without shifting into gear.”

Communist leaders since Stalin and Mao have fretted over how excessive bureaucracy saps their governments’ ability to execute edicts. Xi has called “formalism and bureaucratism”—party speak for box-ticking behavior that favors form over substance—a “major enemy” of the party and the people.

“The grassroots represent the ‘last kilometer’ in implementing the party center’s decisions and deployments, and shouldn’t be constrained by formalism and bureaucratism,” the Politburo said in July. Party members should be encouraged “to take responsibility and act, and devote more energy to implementation,” it said.

Xi has taken swings at the problem before. In 2019, Beijing launched a national campaign to ease bureaucratic burdens on local officials and free them to do real work. But formalism, the Politburo said, remains a stubborn scourge that requires great efforts to eradicate.

Xi’s leadership style hasn’t helped, with centralized decision-making and demands for fealty from the party’s rank and file. Under Xi, the party has punished officials deemed to have deviated from, or neglected, Beijing’s goals—often discouraging the economic experimentation that had powered China’s rapid growth in past decades.

Some front-line officials don’t adapt Beijing’s directives to suit local conditions for fear of being punished for missteps, said Li Daokui, an economics professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University and a former adviser to China’s central bank.

“They spend too much energy pretending they are implementing policies,” Li said. “Centralization is good for political decisions. However, for economics, you do need certain kinds of chaos.”

To reinforce the message, the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has ramped up a crackdown on bureaucracy-related offenses this year. It also named and shamed some officials, including those accused of perpetuating a problem that represents one of China’s economic challenges: wasting money on prestige projects to score political points.

In September, the CCDI rapped a municipal tourism official in the eastern province of Shandong for rushing out a project under Xi’s campaign to develop rural areas. 

The official got three villages to invest 2.4 million yuan, equivalent to about $332,000, in grape cultivation, skipping feasibility tests and defying residents’ wishes, according to the CCDI. But the soil and groundwater proved to be unsuitable—something the official should have checked—and the project failed. In July, the official was censured and demoted.

Such punishments have shot up since May, when party authorities disciplined 12,369 personnel for bureaucracy-related offenses, roughly twice the April total and nearly triple the number from a year earlier, according to CCDI. The numbers have continued to climb, hitting the highest levels since the party started releasing such data in 2020.

Personnel can be punished with warnings, probation, dismissal from their jobs or even expulsion from the party.

In August, the party codified its crackdown with new regulations. When drafting documents and convening meetings, officials should abide by the principles of “short, practical and new,” authorities said in summarizing the new rules. Meetings should only be attended by personnel directly involved in the matters being discussed. Another provision forbids improperly delegating duties to local officials—a tactic some superiors use to shirk responsibility for executing Beijing’s edicts.

Party and government agencies across China have started running seminars to teach the regulations to staff. Many have published accounts of these sessions—complete with photographs—to show they are complying.

State media weighed in by calling out alleged violators, such as the state-owned China Oil and Gas Pipeline Network, which summoned representatives from its affiliates to Beijing headquarters for more than 800 meetings in 2022, or more than three meetings each workday, according to Xinhua. 

The Politburo followed up in September with a bid to help bureaucrats feel more at ease about taking initiative. The 24-member body reiterated a directive from Xi that calls for distinguishing between officials who err because of inexperience or well-meaning experimentation, and those who act willfully or selfishly.

“The Politburo is now signaling to lower-level officials that they will not be punished for taking decisions to support economic growth, even if those later prove misguided—a contrast to its occasional earlier message to ‘strictly observe political discipline,’ ” Christopher Beddor, a China analyst at research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, wrote in a note to clients.

The “formalism” way of life often reaches beyond bureaucracy. Some Chinese social-media users recently expressed bewilderment about a rise in online sales of empty milk cartons and dry pen-ink chambers. A cottage industry had emerged, it appeared, catering to parents who wanted to help their children meet recycling quotas set by their schools. 

State-run magazine China Comment denounced the practice, calling it “an example of a good thing going sour.”

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com