South China Morning Post
Keira Lu Huang
July 29,2015
Delegates meeting at the National People’s Congress in Beijing. The new regulations clarify the procedure for demoting officials. Photo: Xinhua
The Communist Party has started testing vague new rules to demote cadres who are not up to their jobs, after President Xi Jinping’s call a year ago for an institutionalised system of promotion and demotion.
The full text of the trial regulations – implemented on July 19 and applied to all cadres above county level – was released to the public on Monday.
The move gives Xi’s administration greater flexibility in personnel reshuffles, particularly as his relentless anti-graft campaign has pulled down many officials, leaving their positions open.
The measure also comes ahead of the annual Beidaihe meeting, during which party elites set the tone for major domestic issues including personnel appointments.
With the 19th party congress due in two years, the new rules also pave the way for political stars to rise as others fall from their demotions.
The rules set out six criteria for demotion, including health issues, expiry of term, violating party discipline and being “unsuitable” for the role.
Among them, the “unsuitable” criterion has sparked the most controversy as critics say it is subjective and hard to quantify.
Under that criterion, 10 scenarios are listed, including disloyalty to the party, committing misdemeanours, incompetence at work and having a spouse or children who relocate overseas. The party had previously warned that families of officials who emigrate could indicate that a cadre was about to abscond.
Demotions will span five stages, from opening an initial investigation to removing an official from his post. Promotions will not be granted within one to two years of demotion.
Analysts have expressed their concerns over the trial regulations, which they find confusing.
“Pragmatically, it’s extremely hard to implement these rules,” said Zhu Lijia , a professor of public policy at the Chinese Academy of Governance.
“The fundamental problem is that there are not enough details about the criteria and they are not quantitative standards.”
Zhu also said the new rules could become a weapon for retaliation against dissenting officials, which would further silence differing opinions.
The regulations would be the responsibility of party committees and were to be carried out by personnel departments, but they did not involve a third party that could monitor the process independently, he said.
Renmin University political science professor Zhang Ming said: “Something like this could further empower the already powerful.
“So it could be that no specific reasons would be required to demote or remove cadres from their roles.”
The party leadership has packaged the scheme as a milestone that would effectively tackle the difficult problem of administrative incompetence among officials, urging the propaganda departments to help in spreading the message.
State-run Xinhua cited an unnamed official in the Organisation Department, which controls personnel assignments, as saying party cadres regularly received promotions but never faced the threat of being demoted, and that this had long been a problem within the party.
“The difficulty lies mainly in how to demote the group of officials who have not committed serious mistakes or violated party law and discipline, and yet are not capable of performing in their roles or do not fully devote themselves to work,” the official was quoted as saying.
