PriorityShift
Environmental pollution is such an imminent issue that it threatens people’s health and social stability. The whole of society has reached a consensus that rapid economic growth at the cost of polluting the environment is meaningless.
Huang Langhui, former Chief of Enterprise Investigation Team of the National Bureau of Statistics
ALTHOUGH winter is fast fading into spring in northern China’s Hebei Province, the almost daily curtains of smog that cover the region are a great cause of concern for Jiang Ting, a 30-year-old new mom. Apart from inconveniences to life and work brought by the severe air pollution, Jiang worries more about the harm to her health, and more especially to that of her vulnerable young son.
Statistics released by China’s Meteorological Administration showed severe continuous smog clouded China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region on eight occasions from November 2016 to early February 2017.
“Indeed, our generation grew up in an affluent environment, but the sky is no bluer than the time when I was a kid,” Jiang told ChinAfrica, adding her new-year expectation is to have more blue sky days.
While seeing an improvement in livelihood both in her family and local community over the past three decades, Jiang said she also saw the negative side of this development, namely how the environment was gradually polluted. This was an unexpected result of some local governments’ pursuit of impressive GDP figures at the expense of environment.
The good news is that Jiang’s dream for blue skies is on the way to being realized as China embraces a new reform on evaluating its officials. For the first time since the late 1970s, when China adopted the reform and opening up policy, government officials’ commitment to environmental protection will be given higher priority than GDP growth in evaluating their administrative performance.
Changing priorities
On January 12, 2017, Zhao Chenxin, Spokesperson of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a press briefing that China would implement a new assessment mechanism for government officials in which officials’ performance would be evaluated mainly based on various environment-related indicators, including resources utilization, environment quality, ecological protection, green lifestyle and public satisfaction.
Under the new mechanism, indicators related to economic growth only carry a weight value of 9.2 percent, less than half of that related to environment such as resources utilization and environment quality, which stood at 29.3 percent and 19.2 percent respectively.
More specifially, the level of atmospheric particulate matters that have a diameter less than 2.5 micrometers (PM 2.5) is weight valued in the new mechanism at 2.75 percent.
Officials in China are evaluated every year and receive a general assessment every five years. Previously, GDP growth was the most important criterion in these processes. Experts believe that highlighting the environment-related indicators in the new mechanism means that the baton of China’s economic performance is about to be passed, from pursuing a pure growth rate to an approach of focusing on people’s wellbeing.
“The indicators and mechanism are designed to guide local governments to place improving people’s wellbeing in various aspects at the center of their work, pushing them [officials] to step up efforts on improving the environment quality,” said Zhao.
Huang Langhui, former Chief of Enterprise Investigation Team of the National Bureau of Statistics, noted that this symbolized a major change in China’s development mode.
“Environmental pollution is such an imminent issue that it threatens people’s health and social stability. The whole of society has reached a consensus that rapid economic growth at the cost of polluting the environment is meaningless,” he said.
Implementation key
With consensus and mechanism in place, execution is key to control pollution and reform the development mode. “Assessment and evaluation by superiors is the baton for officials. The direction it leads should be the goal officials fight for,” said media commentator Li Yiling. He argued that the target of green development would be easily reached if the impulse for pure GDP growth was contained.
However, it is no easy task to change an embedded GDP-oriented evaluation mechanism overnight and implement the new standards. “When it comes to implementation, it is difficult to collect statistics about these indicators. Therefore, most countries in the world still evaluate officials with GDP growth as the principal reference,” said Hu Chi, a researcher at the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.
Li also argued that it was predictable that local governments would continue to compete in GDP growth. “In the current stage, the tendency of judging officials based on the local economy, both by higher authorities and the public may continue as it is a simpler criterion,” said Li. “Actually, it is good for officials to be evaluated from various aspects, because economic growth rates may vary in different regions due to unique natural resources endowment, innovation ability, and stage of industrialization,” said Li.
Chai Fahe, a researcher from Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, praised the move of making environment-related indicators outweigh GDP growth in assessing officials. “It shows the Central Government is placing unprecedented emphasis on combating air pollution. However, it should be cautious in case some local officials report falsified statistics about pollution control so that they can reach the assessment criteria,” he warned.
To avoid this tendency, Li suggested zero-tolerance toward officials falsifying statistics and inviting the public to monitor officials. “A further detailed evaluation system should be put in place and results of the assessment should be made known to the public,” he said.
Shijiazhuang Railway Station in Hebei Province in smog in December last year. Fighting air pollution is one of the goals of the official evaluation system reform
Yao Baozhong, chief of Danshan Village in Shaoxing City of Zhejiang Province, is now responsible for the protection of a nearby river Comments to [email protected]