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Escaping from a web of red tape
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WHEN Rachel Guo, 30, decided to buy an apartment in Shanghai, she had no idea she would be unlocking a door to a bureaucratic nightmare.
The paperwork for property ownership required that she provide proof that she was the person listed on her marriage license, which was registered in a Chinese embassy overseas where the wedding took place.
For two months she has been shuttling between government bureaucracies trying to get documentation verifying that she is who she says she is.
Guo’s experience is one of many that have come to light since Premier Li Keqiang declared war on red tape back in May. He has demanded that government offices review their procedures and eliminate the absurd sorts of rules that needlessly frustrate the public and hinder the development of innovation and modernization.
Li provided his own example in his May comments. He quoted the report of a man who was required to prove that his mother was indeed his mother, after listing her as an emergency contact for a travel agency tour.
“It’s ridiculous,“ said Li.
Red tape is generally defined as excessive regulation or rigid conformity to rules.
In more plain talk, red tape is just pointless rigamarole that makes citizens jump through hoops for no apparent reason.
Governments all over the world endlessly promise to cut red tape, but actions often don’t speak louder than words.
Many believe that Li’s much-publicized criticism will spur action. It certainly has churned up widespread comment on online forums, with netizens pouring out a litany of bad experiences with red tape.
One woman said she was required to prove her recently deceased father did not have an illegitimate child before she could withdraw money from his bank account. Applicants for teacher qualification tests said they are required to prove that they are “good people.”
About 98 percent of 14,700 people who responded to a survey by portal giant Sina.com, said they have had bad experiences with red tape when seeking licenses or other approvals.
Guo, who was married in the Chinese embassy in Singapore in 2012, returned to Shanghai last year. When filling out the paperwork for property ownership registration, she was asked to document her marital status.
Much to her surprise, officials at the housing management department said they could recognize only marriage licenses registered with ID cards. Since Guo’s marriage was registered with her passport, she found herself in bureaucratic no-man’s land.
“I tried everything,“ she said. “I showed them my passport, with my photo and date of birth, which are the same as on my ID card. I printed my travel records to prove that I was in Singapore at the time of my marriage. But they told me that I needed an official document verifying that the person in the passport and the person on the ID card were one in the same.”
Beyond their jurisdiction
Guo went to a local police station and to the city’s exit-entry administration bureau to see if they might issue such a document. No help there. The police said it was beyond their jurisdiction.
The exit-entry department, which had issued Guo’s passport, agreed that she was caught up in absurd red tape but said it had no policy allowing it to issue the sort of document she sought.
“It should be rather simple,” Guo said in utter frustration. “The information must be stored in the system. Why couldn’t an institution just provide it? And why is a marriage registered at a Chinese embassy any different than one registered here at home?”
In the Sina.com survey, 38 percent of respondents said their encounters with red tape required them to run around to various government offices trying to get documentation. Thirty-four percent said they used backdoor connections to try to untangle the mess.
Guo is still in limbo. She told Shanghai Daily that she has written a letter to the Shanghai mayor’s office, desperately seeking intervention on her behalf. There’s been no reply yet.
The hukou, or permanent residency permit that all Chinese must possess, is a common breeding ground for red tape quagmires.
With the country’s rapid urbanization, people are more mobile. They may live, work or study far from the place they were born and their hukou were registered.
Jane Wu, who came from the city of Ma’anshan in Anhui Province, has been studying at a university in Nanjing since 2012. When she applied to attend a student exchange program in the US, she found she had to prove that her parents were really her parents. That wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Other members of her family were registered under different hukou.
“There’s no information about me on their updated hukou,” said Wu.
She returned to Anhui Province, and she and her mother went to the local police station to seek the documentation she needed.
“At first, they declined our request,” she said. “But after my mother became quite argumentative, they finally agreed to issue us a paper verifying our relationship.”
Wu said the government really ought to have a centralized data base for all citizens.
“Many administrative officials consider they are just doing their duty,” said Yao Shangjian, vice dean of the Public Administration College at East China University of Political Science and Law. “But from the citizen perspective, application processes at all levels end up being senseless and very frustrating.”
The current system, he said, is too fragmented and too uncoordinated.
“The criticism from Premier Li should help address this problem and lead government offices in a more fruitful direction,” he added.
There are signs of change. The Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have announced they are reviewing rules and procedures with an eye to reducing red tape and making their processing systems more transparent.
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