Workload at grassroots level hard to ease

The voices calling to ease the workload of grassroots civil servants have become increasingly louder recently, exposing a key issue directly concerning the high-quality development of the country.

The hierarchical bureaucratic system of China means that although the grassroots government departments at sub-district and village levels constitute the large base of the pyramid-shaped governance system in the country, they are in charge of providing the majority of public services in their respective jurisdictions.

Governments at the county- and city-level and above have a complete architecture in which each bureau or department is responsible for one field of government work, such as agriculture, commerce, industry and technology, civil affairs, finance, environment protection, land and resources, education and public health. But when it comes to the village- or sub-district-level government departments, an office of several staff members might be responsible for the practical work related to all of these aforementioned fields in a village or community, which in many cases are home to tens of thousands of people.