Priorityshift

New criterion to evaluate officials’ performance sees environmental protection efforts trump GDP growth

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.

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. 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.