1. The impact of the economic downturn is comprehensive
The factories in the industrial park generally have insufficient production capacity. Several factories have many orders, but the profit margins have declined. A friend’s factory had very poor domestic sales in 2023, but its foreign trade with countries along the Belt and Road was not bad, but there are also uncertainties. There was a shipment to Jordan, which took two months to arrive in Singapore. The annual payment of 70-80 million yuan, nearly 20 million yuan has not been recovered, and they were still collecting payments on the 30th of the lunar New Year.
As long as migrant workers want to work, it’s not a problem to find a job, but they can’t talk about the treatment. In the past few years, if factories did not pay overtime wages in full, workers could still resist. Now, as long as they resist, the factory will immediately pay them and let them go.
A contractor who was investigated reflected that the total package now squeezes profits very low, and everything is transparent. If you don’t do it, there are plenty of people who want to do it. Now the contractor’s profit is very limited, and they have to work together. But the wages of migrant workers are guaranteed, and they are all special accounts, with the contractor issuing the bills and the total package directly paying to the workers’ accounts. However, they can only pay living expenses on a regular basis, and all wages are paid at the end of the year according to the progress of the project.
The most important impact of the economic downturn is that everyone has become more pragmatic. Expectations are not so high. The local governments’ overspending on development in the past few years and the overconsumption of ordinary people have decreased, but it has also led to a passive mentality of lying flat and accepting fate. Some new customs formed in the past few years stubbornly exist, and many people are resisting. A forty-year-old relative, who is honest and works diligently, may also be single because he is too “honest.” He said that instead of spending hundreds of thousands of yuan on betrothal gifts to marry a wife, it’s better to save money for old age.
2. Grassroots are facing the risk of giving up
In the several townships investigated, most township governments barely maintain operations, but the performance of most township cadres is discounted or cannot be realized. The wages of village cadres in some villages cannot be paid.
But almost all development projects in all places have been affected. In one township, the streets were dug up, but the funds could not be guaranteed, and construction was stopped. During the Chinese New Year, the roads were full of potholes, and the masses complained. All township leaders said that development is impossible, and they are trying their best to maintain.
In a village, four village cadres were investigated. One village cadre resigned, and two village cadres wanted to resign. The village secretary, in order to stabilize the village cadres, helped these two village cadres find side jobs to barely maintain. In another village, a village cadre, because he advanced funds for village affairs, and the superior did not fulfill the subsidy, could not bear it and resigned to work outside, and declared that he would not want the money he advanced.
The operating expenses of village-level organizations are generally not guaranteed, and they have to rely on the village collective to raise part of the funds. However, most villages do not have collective economic income and can only rely on local celebrities to solicit donations from bosses or government departments. Therefore, the individual ability of the village secretary is very critical. The problem is that capable village secretaries are completely relying on enthusiasm. If the enthusiasm is consumed, it is better to resign and make money themselves. The village secretary of the village investigated is a second-generation rich, and has made up his mind not to do it, and even asked the author how to resign so that the organization can more easily accept it.
Village-level organizations generally have new debts, mainly caused by project construction and off-budget office expenses in recent years. However, these debts are hidden and run outside the books. A village owes hundreds of thousands of yuan in debt, most of which have local celebrities promising to help pay off in installments, but there are still more than one hundred thousand yuan in debt that has not been settled, and the village secretary is very troubled.
3. All walks of life have a trend of “de-real to virtual”
All walks of life are de-real to virtual, and social empty rotation is the biggest crisis in today’s society. During the Spring Festival, I had a reunion with my middle school classmates. They came from all walks of life, including civil servants, doctors, teachers, bosses, employees of state-owned enterprises, migrant workers, and media practitioners. They all unanimously complained about formalism, not working hard, and hated it to the extreme, but they could do nothing. In middle age, they dare not express opinions, dare not insist on reality, and can only cope with the superiors.
Grassroots governments are responsible to the superiors, not to the actual situation. Everyone knows that the rectification of the image is unrealistic, but they can only torment the masses. Village-level organizations serve the superior indicators, not the masses, even if they serve the masses, they are doing it for the superiors to see. A village secretary said that if the work is not done well, the indicators must look good.
Government public services have expanded very quickly in recent years, but they are basically solved by purchasing services from the government, and third parties are very common. Functional departments do not engage in business, but push it to the grassroots and third parties. Formal staff do not engage in business, but only serve the leaders and supervise the temporary staff to engage in business, which is very common. Most townships do not have so much money to purchase services, so they squeeze the village cadres, and the village cadres have actually become temporary staff of the government.
The window guidance of the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission has become an order, otherwise it will suppress the grassroots with the lack of overall awareness, not talk about business, and reduce the requirements for profits. Many enterprises are financializing and platformizing, responsible to major shareholders, realizing short-term cash, trying to eat rent, rather than engaging in the real economy and serving customers. Those who really engage in the real economy have very low profits and are exhausted.
Academic innovation is being indexed, dialogue-style research is circulating internally between concepts and concepts, and whitewashing existing policies. The cultivation of innovative talents in universities shouts slogans loudly, but the specific measures are all encouraging low-level repetition. The research and development authorities are self-confident, and they believe that they can “buy” results with interests, projects, and symbols. As a result, research institutions and personnel are captured by interests, only paying attention to the completion indicators, and not paying attention to the actual research. A friend’s factory produces resin tiles, and has searched for research institutions in various local universities that study materials, hoping to improve the formula and improve efficiency, but the results are extremely disappointing. These researchers are all here to get projects. A friend said that a professor is not as good as a migrant worker on the production line!
Many media also do not report the actual situation, and have degenerated into repeaters. Media institutions cannot report the facts, the grassroots are afraid of reporters, and reporters cannot get in touch with the actual situation. The interview and investigation skills of the new generation of reporters are worrying.
A classmate who works in a state-owned enterprise said that the formalism satirized in the movie “The Annual Meeting Cannot Stop” is almost the same as the enterprise. The grassroots employees cannot work hard, everyone knows that profits come from technological innovation, but those who engage in technology have no future, and the senior executives are all engaged in marketing and making materials. A friend who runs a business said that even migrant workers are not down-to-earth. The machine operator in his factory was given a high salary, but he didn’t solve the problem at all. If there was a small problem with the machine, he would run to ask the boss to hire someone to repair it. He decided that starting in 2024, he would rather spend a high price to hire machine operators from Shandong than to train local technical workers.
4. You have to toss even if you have no money
Village-level organizations still use a simple system. The village in central China that was investigated merged two villages, with a radius of ten kilometers, and only four village committees, plus a party building liaison officer, and twelve villagers’ group leaders. The village group cadres are all middle-aged farmers, the village cadres’ salary is 30,000 to 40,000 yuan a year, and the group leaders’ salary is 2,000 to 3,000 yuan a year. The upper-level transfer payments are limited, about 200,000 yuan a year, and it is almost enough to pay the salaries of the village group cadres.
But the superiors have used the transfer payments to the extreme, and constantly toss the village cadres. The village secretary said that village-level organizations are the garbage pool and disaster relief station of government work, and every department has to assign work to the village, and every work with risks has to sign a responsibility letter with the village. Every work is evaluated, and the villages with the last few rankings will be deducted from the transfer payments, and the villages with the top few rankings will be rewarded. In order not to be deducted money, all villages have to bite the bullet and do it.
The village secretary is all kinds of chiefs, grid chief, forest chief, river chief, field chief, each department’s research APP, every once in a while to inspect, for example, inspect the river once a week, each time more than 500 meters, not less than ten minutes. The village secretary said that they know the situation of the village like the back of their hand, but they have to use high technology to rectify the grassroots, to prove it to the superiors.
In most cases, the village simply does not have the ability to complete the work of the superiors, so they can only spend money to eliminate disasters, which invisibly makes the village-level finances worse. In the past two years, the investigated villages have spent a lot of money in vain.
(1) Two printers are broken every year, and it costs more than 10,000 yuan to buy paper. Some need color printing, and the season and color pictures must match, which must be logical.
(2) In 2022, it cost more than 10,000 yuan just for the inspection of house registration, and the procedures are extremely complex. There must be pictures from various angles, front, back, left, and right of the house, close-up and long-distance shots, positioning, and a lot of data to be filled in, building age, structure, etc., and it must be completed in one or two months. These high-standard works are nothing more than to let the superiors see clearly in the computer. The village has no choice but to hire intern college students to help. The problem is that college students alone are not enough, and the village cadres have to participate, and the old and the young must be matched.
(3) The county is building a beautiful countryside, and there is no funding support, and it requires the trash cans to be uniform blue, and the village spent more than 10,000 yuan.
(4) In the past two years, the public security department promoted anti-fraud work, and the village cadres found that they could not complete the task at all. Some people found that they could buy indicators online and install software to complete the task. The number that started with installing anti-fraud software was 5 yuan, and then it kept rising, 8 yuan, 10 yuan, and finally reached 15 yuan. The village also spent more than 10,000 yuan to buy indicators to complete the task.
The village’s biggest worry is that all kinds of work are more about form than content, and all kinds of work have to find ways to add unnecessary things.
(1) Human settlement environment governance, the actual inspection only has a clean surface, clean river channels, front and back of the house and a few other items, but it is not just which god designed the indicators, but also has a position, establish an association, reward and punishment measures, etc., materials are more important than the actual work.
(2) Hanging maps to fight, in the past two years, the remediation of abandoned land, I don’t know where it started, learning from the appearance of the poverty alleviation battle, also hanging maps to fight, the leaders came down to see, it was clear at a glance. The village secretary said that they are all fake things. Even if it is rectified in the first year, it will definitely be abandoned in the second year, because the farmers simply cannot plant it.
(3) Bureaucracy kills people. As long as the village reports a geological hazard point, there will be endless trouble. As soon as there is a weather forecast risk, the population must be transferred, and the relevant departments have designed an APP, which must be positioned and photographed. At the end of last year, it snowed heavily, and the village cadres were on duty day and night. As a result, the snow melted on the second day of the lunar New Year, and the city came to spot check. The village secretary said, there is no risk, why come to check? The only explanation is that the superiors want to take pictures again to show that they are on the disaster site. Therefore, learn from the past, and do not report geological hazard points in the future.
(4) In the past two years, the county has carried out rural traffic safety rectification. It requires village cadres to complete a certain publicity and education task every day, and a village must have at least three safety officers to persuade people to wear safety helmets, etc. They also have to take pictures and record videos, and cannot fake it, which has exhausted the village cadres.
(5) A certain place innovated a rural governance model, with the length of the area, the group leader, and the neighbor, and each length has a task. The final result is that the group leader and the neighbor are meaningless, and the essence is to supervise the village cadres to work. This system imitates the poverty alleviation work model, and also has to spot check and ask the masses for satisfaction. The village cadres all feel inexplicable.
The current situation is that the superiors are tossing around, making everyone have no time to serve the masses, and now they are forcing everyone to mechanically copy and create service projects, such as collecting clothes for the masses on rainy days, what is this for?
Nowadays, the work mechanism of being responsible to the superiors, movement governance, and high standards has been formed, and the village cadres also have clear responsibilities, and all their time and energy are consumed in it, which makes the middle-aged farmers unable to be full-time village cadres. The key is that the finances in the central and western regions are not good, and it is impossible to be administrative and full-time, which leads to the instability of grassroots governance, and they do whatever they want, and they toss around. (This article is written by Lu Dewen, a professor at the School of Sociology of Wuhan University, and a doctoral supervisor)
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