Yu Laoliu | I’m not trying to smash 10,000 people’s rice bowls

A couple of days ago, I heard a term called “widow shop.” It refers to many small shops nowadays where only the proprietress sits there watching the shop without any customers, like a widow guarding an empty room alone. Even if you haven’t seen this situation yourself, you’ve definitely heard of it. Therefore, upon seeing that Henan is offering 10,000 job positions, my first feeling was happiness and that they were doing something practical.

After the initial joy, upon careful consideration, I felt there were shortcomings and areas that needed “remedy.” Therefore, the intention of this article is not to snatch away the jobs of these 10,000 people, but rather to ensure their jobs are secure without adding an extra burden to you and me (the taxpayers).

Let’s first look at what the recruitment is for: Rural Revitalization Assistant Coordinators. Next, let’s look at the recruitment targets: college graduates from 2024, 2025, and 2026, and current Rural Revitalization Assistant Coordinators in 2025. Next, let’s look at the job responsibilities: after 3 months of training in townships, they will work in selected villages, serving as assistants to the village party secretary if they are party members, and assistants to the village head if they are not party members. Lastly, let’s look at the benefits: they will be paid according to the salary standards of local public institution staff.

From the brief information above, Rural Revitalization Assistant Coordinators are not a new position this year; they are aimed at “new three sessions” college graduates. Before this year, it could be called “going up to the mountains and down to the countryside,” where after getting their feet muddy, they had to find their own way to make a living. Starting this year, it still looks like “going up to the mountains and down to the countryside,” but in reality, it’s like wearing a Zhongshan suit with four pockets – a public institution position.

As for autonomous rural areas, whether they truly need such people, or what kind of changes a recent college graduate can bring to the countryside, anyone with some social experience, especially rural living experience, knows. Therefore, I will not discuss this fundamental issue, but only discuss whether they should be given public institution status. Since it has already been given, what kind of “patch” needs to be added?

Public institution positions are not better the more there are, unless someone truly believes that paying public servants comes from the state and that money can be generated by simply running the printing press, which would involve basic political and economic common sense. If you don’t even understand this basic common sense, I suggest you don’t read this article and can just move along.

I checked, and the annual salary, subsidies, performance bonuses, social security, etc., for a public institution position in Henan is about 100,000 yuan. For 10,000 people, that’s 1 billion yuan. A 1 billion yuan expenditure might not seem like much for a province, but you need to understand this province’s fiscal situation.

Taking 2025 as an example, Henan’s general public budget revenue is 450.17 billion yuan, and its general public budget expenditure is 1,151.61 billion yuan, with a revenue-expenditure gap of about 700 billion yuan. What this means is that this 700 billion yuan gap needs to be filled by fiscal transfer payments and borrowing. I checked, and the fiscal transfer payment in 2025 was 596.789 billion yuan – which is why people say Henan’s actions are related to people who are not from Henan. The remaining gap naturally needs to be covered by debt.

As a populous province, Henan’s situation is not like this for just one year in 2025; it’s like this every year. Their fiscal self-sufficiency rate is only about 38%. 1 billion yuan out of 700 billion yuan is a drop in the bucket. But from another perspective, could it be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back?

There is a saying in folk circles, “Six provinces and one city support the whole country,” referring to Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Fujian, Liaoning, and Shanghai, which not only achieve fiscal self-sufficiency but also contribute a large amount of tax revenue. In the first quarter of this year, no province or city achieved 100% self-sufficiency, with Zhejiang being the best at 96.1%; followed by Shanghai at 90%.

When times are good, spending an extra 1 billion yuan a year is not a big deal; when times are tough, 1 billion yuan a year really is a big deal. Moreover, everyone has a clear idea of how much “effect” this 1 billion yuan can actually bring.

Therefore, how to make this 1 billion yuan expenditure not become an additional burden is what should truly be considered, rather than letting the fiscal system support 10,000 more people. If that’s the case, it’s still the same old “redundancy” strategy of the Northern Song Dynasty. Although Henan was a core region of the Northern Song Dynasty, it is not the same today; times have changed, and concepts cannot remain in the past.

In the “Management Training” section of the announcement, there is a passage that opens up our thinking: Rural Revitalization Assistant Coordinators have a minimum service period of 5 years in townships, with at least 2 years working in villages, after which they will be coordinated into township public institution positions based on actual circumstances.

It can be seen that these 10,000 people will not stay in the countryside until they die; they will eventually return to the townships. So, can it be understood that they are essentially township hires for public institution positions, just sent to the countryside for a few years of training first? Therefore, since these 10,000 public institution staff have already been hired, the recruitment of township public institution staff in the future should be reduced by 10,000 people accordingly to achieve a balance.

If a balance cannot be achieved, and it’s still a “two-pronged approach” with township public institution recruitment continuing as usual, then these 10,000 people will truly be an additional burden. 10,000 this year, another 10,000 next year, and then another 10,000 later. Although Henan is a populous province, eventually there will come a day when officials outnumber civilians.

When that day comes, a Henan hukou will become very valuable. Will the people of Henan be very happy? The people of Henan will happily shout: “What a joke!”