Chinese officials already have to deal with a series of inspectors knocking on their doors to keep tabs on their activities, but now they will also have a new group of “performance observers” looking over their shoulders to check that they are not wasting government funds.
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Local officials in China are often castigated for spending money on “white elephants”, such as flashy construction projects, in the hope these will provide a quick fix for the local economy and win favour with their supervisors.
But in recent years, as local government debts mounted, the central government has been trying to rein in such excesses, with President Xi Jinping saying officials should prioritise quality development over rapid growth.
Several provinces have started pilot programmes in recent months, especially after the Communist Party gave its austerity campaign a further push in March in an effort to cut waste and improve administrative efficiency.
Local officials already face a raft of inspections, covering areas such as party discipline, their conduct and the environmental impact of their work, but the emergence of the new performance observers may be the result of regional party bodies taking the initiative.
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Although the central government has called for wasteful spending to be eliminated nationwide, it has not issued a public decree calling for the new inspection teams.