“[We must] ensure that officials and enterprises dare to make decisions on their own, while local authorities and residents dare to blaze new trails,” a statement released after the meeting said.

Why a skit about lying-flat cadres is China’s Spring Festival gala hit

The commission vowed to tackle such officials “resolutely” and said the party should promote those who dared to tackle problems and correct the misconception that a “hands off and make no mistakes” attitude was better.

The initiative and morale of rank-and-file officials had dwindled in recent years, mainly because mounting disciplinary pressures brought much higher downside risks if their policies failed and caused social problems, and pay cuts as a result of local governments’ excessive spending on Covid-19 testing and quarantine, said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

“The consequences of party and government officials losing their drive will be very dire in China’s state-led economy,” Wu said. “Beijing must have realised how serious the problem is and is trying to mobilise all the party’s apparatus to reverse the dangerous trend.”

Wu said it was natural for lower-level officials to lose their initiative when their bosses consolidated power, because it left little room for decision making at the grass roots.

“China has seen a major power consolidation in the past 10 years,” he said. “The officials are required to report and seek proper approvals on major projects from their bosses. Those who fail to do so will face disciplinary actions.”

‘Lying flat’ is no more: frustrated Chinese youths are ‘letting it rot’

In the past two years, Chinese civil servants – some even working in the country’s richest and most developed areas such as Shanghai and Guangdong province – have taken to social media platforms to complain about pay cuts, saying it was now difficult to make ends meet.

Following a clear political signal from Beijing, which made a sudden U-turn on its zero-Covid policy in early December, China’s provinces and cities have resorted to various campaigns to restore officials’ spirits, with some early adopters even resorting to naming and shaming slackers.

The party committee of Suzhou, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, promised in a directive issued on January 26 to provide more incentives to those who “achieved breakthroughs in key industrial projects and major foreign investment projects”. It also promised to give more powers to district-level cadres to speed up decision making.

Why the US and China cannot ignore ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘lying flat’

Lishui, in neighbouring Zhejiang province – which is led by 50-year-old Hu Haifeng, the son of former president Hu Jintao – identified a batch of officials who had been “lying flat”. They were called onto a stage to receive a yellow flag printed with the words “Don’t be a slacker, be a fighter” from their superiors.

The party organisation department in Taizhou, Zhejiang, also said it planned to identify and evaluate work-shy agencies and cadres, with those listed to face penalties including removal from office and the loss of benefits and future promotion opportunities.

Lu Dewen, a sociology professor at Wuhan University, said the New Year gala’s satirical sketch was not “very fair” to grass-roots cadres because they had faced a “worsening working environment” in recent years and could not cross bureaucratic boundaries.

In an online commentary published on Sunday, Lu said that in real life, repairing the boundary between two districts should be coordinated by municipal authorities, as neither district had authority over the other.

“During my field research, I have encountered many grass-roots leaders who voluntarily quit their leadership position or voluntarily gave up promotion opportunities,” he said. “You can say that they ‘lie flat’, but on the other hand, the working environment faced by grass-roots cadres has become a lot worse in recent years.

Lu said there was no longer much room to manoeuvre at the grass-roots level, and it was unfair for rank and file officials “who have already taken most of the blame in the actual work, to still be targeted”.

“It is very saddening to see that the anti-bureaucracy campaign does not target leading grass-roots cadres, rather than being aimed at their subordinates,” he said.