China’s provinces trim thousands of government jobs to spend more on Beijing’s science and control priorities
- Facing budget blowouts and new policy directions, local governments are finding ways to shed ‘iron rice bowl’ positions without mass redundancies
- ’The workload on each head will increase and we have heard complaints. But it is still better than retrenchment’: Henan official
China’s regional governments are painstakingly trimming tens of thousands of staff from their vast public institutions to spend more on new policy priorities, including scientific research and grass-roots positions aimed at maintaining social stability.
It is also overshadowed by changes to major Communist Party and state institutions announced last year in the spring, which saw Beijing move to assert more direct party control over a wide range of key policy areas, including science and technology, the financial sector and social stability.
A year later, the nature and scale of the restructuring is starting to become apparent as new agencies covering these areas have been set up by central and local governments.
Central Henan province has drawn the attention of millions of Chinese civil servants since mid-April when its economic planner released the details of its downsizing of provincial public institutions, cutting the workforce by more than 5,600 in the past few years.
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It is estimated that more than 3,330 positions will be added to science research and tech innovation institutions, including at the provincial academy of sciences, key laboratories and in other areas such as worker training. The plan outlined jobs growth in fields concerning people’s livelihood and grass-roots stability.
