Local officials’ unwillingness to leave comfort zones holding back reform

AS THE THIRD-LARGEST provincial economy, Shandong province’s gross domestic product was 7.27 trillion yuan ($1.15 trillion) last year, an increase of 7.4 percent on 2016 and markedly higher than the national average of 6.9 percent. The per capita GDP in the province reached 72,851 yuan, exceeding the benchmark of wealthy nations. Beijing News comments:

What made the Shandong government’s announcement national headlines was the comments by Liu Jiayi, the Shandong Party chief, about the otherwise dazzling statistics at a news conference in Jinan, the provincial capital, on Thursday.

The mayors and county heads, who would on past experience have been expecting praise for their performance were instead greeted with criticism from Liu, who worked in the National Audit Office for nearly 30 years before he took current post in March last year.

Liu warned them that Shandong has been left farther and farther behind by the leading Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces in not only GDP, but more worryingly the speed of industrial restructuring. He attributes the widening gaps to local officials’ lack of drive to make breakthroughs in reform and opening-up, and their reluctance to challenge their comfort zones.

Liu’s remarks are to the point, going straight to the heart of some long-term problems ingrained in the bureaucracy and political ecology of not only Shandong, but many other provinces.

Hopefully, Liu’s words can raise the awareness of the officials, not only in Shandong but elsewhere, about the need to push ahead with the painful process of upgrading the economy from being resource and capital intensive to innovation driven, and that they must exert the utmost efforts to pave the way for that transformation. Local governments should be drivers of change, not obstacles.