Home » Opinion » Book review
Why fiats enacted at dawn are abolished at dusk
By Ni Tao |
October 8, 2011, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
FOR a long time short-lived decrees have been an unfortunate and sometimes laughable feature of the Chinese bureaucracy.
An old proverb aptly describes this inconsistency of politics, zhao ling xi gai, meaning decrees are implemented at dawn but abolished at dusk.
Lackadaisical or half-hearted enforcement is often cited as reason many well-intended policies are actually ineffective. In the past, directives from the central government sometimes got bogged down, misinterpreted or even failed to reach the target audience as they wound their way downward through the chain of command.
To some extent, another old saying that directives cannot get out of Zhongnanhai, the secluded compound where the supreme leadership resides and works, still holds true for Chinese officialdom.
Of course, some of the official fiats that are hastily abandoned upon enactment are plain silly and thus cannot be executed, for instance, the stillborn proposal of levying tax on mooncakes, a pastry eaten on the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Others falter because they are either not well designed or not executed in the right way. And often their failure can be ascribed to the discrepancy between the expectations of decision makers and the inability of local officials to comply due to unfavorable local conditions.
Discrepancy
The discrepancy is something Stephen Bungay, a business strategy consultant and military historian, seeks to explain in his book "The Art of Action."
For subordinates to execute a plan well, one must not give them minutely detailed instructions, says Bungay, for they will turn people into machines that operate robotically but are deprived of the incentives to adapt plans to changing situations.
Recent months have seen a plethora of well-intentioned but short-lived directives. The Ministry of Health ordered in August that hospitals nationwide work to reduce the typically long waiting time for patients.
It detailed in a decree the changes that were to be made to improve medical services: hospital registration time has to be reduced to 10 minutes while check-ups by doctors, cardiograms and X-ray scanning have also to become faster - to be finished in 30 minutes.
These mandates sound nice on paper but not all prove feasible in practice. According to a report by the Yangcheng Evening News on September 7, hospitals in Guangzhou have struggled to meet all these requirements but only succeeded in shortening the registration time. Patients still complain about long queues outside doctors' offices.
Lost credibility
A senior Guangzhou public health official groused that they can only try to keep pace with the Ministry of Health's aims but cannot guarantee full compliance.
After all, during busy hours, doctors cannot promise a standardized examination that lasts less than 10 minutes.
What went wrong with execution of the "quicker treatment" plan, following Bungay's logic, is not that it's unrealistic. Its failure owes as much to limited medical resources as to the practice of using a specific time frame to assess hospitals' work.
Without taking into account the difficulties that will arise in executing such a plan, health bosses will only confuse their subordinates with concrete requirements.
Similar unheeded fiats abound.
The education establishment sought to ease students' burden by imposing caps on the amount of time they spend on homework. The decree was later ignored as expected.
Likewise, civil aviation authorities' demand in August that flights delayed for more than two hours be given priority to take off also got nowhere. These irrelevant decrees combine to cost the government some credibility.
Unlike most corporate strategists wont to quote management guru Peter Drucker, Bungay takes his inspiration from German military history, on which he is an expert.
He compares business plan execution to giving and carrying out wartime directives, which have to be clear, short but not static. Carl von Clausewitz and Helmuth Carl Bernhard von Moltke, two acclaimed theorists on German army tactics, are his mentors in this regard.
They argued that changes ought to be made according to the rapidly changing circumstances of war.
Notwithstanding obedience to the highest order, officers on the frontline should think and act independently, rather than simply implementing orders received from superiors.
This principle of flexibility has its equivalent in Chinese, which goes something like this, "When a general is in the field, he cannot be expected to always obey orders."
Indeed, a decree that changes constantly cannot be taken seriously.
But neither can one that never responds to changes or leaves those who enforce it with little room to maneuver.
If we apply Bungay's thoughts to government in China, there are a few lessons that can be learned.
While authorities in general appear more receptive to people's grievances and grumblings, the way they go about addressing them is sometimes wrongheaded.
People's Daily editorialized on September 7 that the haste to solve problems in one fell swoop by issuing directives is both blind and counterproductive.
Policies will last longer if whims, clamor and indiscretion are filtered out when they are being contemplated and formulated.
An old proverb aptly describes this inconsistency of politics, zhao ling xi gai, meaning decrees are implemented at dawn but abolished at dusk.
Lackadaisical or half-hearted enforcement is often cited as reason many well-intended policies are actually ineffective. In the past, directives from the central government sometimes got bogged down, misinterpreted or even failed to reach the target audience as they wound their way downward through the chain of command.
To some extent, another old saying that directives cannot get out of Zhongnanhai, the secluded compound where the supreme leadership resides and works, still holds true for Chinese officialdom.
Of course, some of the official fiats that are hastily abandoned upon enactment are plain silly and thus cannot be executed, for instance, the stillborn proposal of levying tax on mooncakes, a pastry eaten on the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Others falter because they are either not well designed or not executed in the right way. And often their failure can be ascribed to the discrepancy between the expectations of decision makers and the inability of local officials to comply due to unfavorable local conditions.
Discrepancy
The discrepancy is something Stephen Bungay, a business strategy consultant and military historian, seeks to explain in his book "The Art of Action."
For subordinates to execute a plan well, one must not give them minutely detailed instructions, says Bungay, for they will turn people into machines that operate robotically but are deprived of the incentives to adapt plans to changing situations.
Recent months have seen a plethora of well-intentioned but short-lived directives. The Ministry of Health ordered in August that hospitals nationwide work to reduce the typically long waiting time for patients.
It detailed in a decree the changes that were to be made to improve medical services: hospital registration time has to be reduced to 10 minutes while check-ups by doctors, cardiograms and X-ray scanning have also to become faster - to be finished in 30 minutes.
These mandates sound nice on paper but not all prove feasible in practice. According to a report by the Yangcheng Evening News on September 7, hospitals in Guangzhou have struggled to meet all these requirements but only succeeded in shortening the registration time. Patients still complain about long queues outside doctors' offices.
Lost credibility
A senior Guangzhou public health official groused that they can only try to keep pace with the Ministry of Health's aims but cannot guarantee full compliance.
After all, during busy hours, doctors cannot promise a standardized examination that lasts less than 10 minutes.
What went wrong with execution of the "quicker treatment" plan, following Bungay's logic, is not that it's unrealistic. Its failure owes as much to limited medical resources as to the practice of using a specific time frame to assess hospitals' work.
Without taking into account the difficulties that will arise in executing such a plan, health bosses will only confuse their subordinates with concrete requirements.
Similar unheeded fiats abound.
The education establishment sought to ease students' burden by imposing caps on the amount of time they spend on homework. The decree was later ignored as expected.
Likewise, civil aviation authorities' demand in August that flights delayed for more than two hours be given priority to take off also got nowhere. These irrelevant decrees combine to cost the government some credibility.
Unlike most corporate strategists wont to quote management guru Peter Drucker, Bungay takes his inspiration from German military history, on which he is an expert.
He compares business plan execution to giving and carrying out wartime directives, which have to be clear, short but not static. Carl von Clausewitz and Helmuth Carl Bernhard von Moltke, two acclaimed theorists on German army tactics, are his mentors in this regard.
They argued that changes ought to be made according to the rapidly changing circumstances of war.
Notwithstanding obedience to the highest order, officers on the frontline should think and act independently, rather than simply implementing orders received from superiors.
This principle of flexibility has its equivalent in Chinese, which goes something like this, "When a general is in the field, he cannot be expected to always obey orders."
Indeed, a decree that changes constantly cannot be taken seriously.
But neither can one that never responds to changes or leaves those who enforce it with little room to maneuver.
If we apply Bungay's thoughts to government in China, there are a few lessons that can be learned.
While authorities in general appear more receptive to people's grievances and grumblings, the way they go about addressing them is sometimes wrongheaded.
People's Daily editorialized on September 7 that the haste to solve problems in one fell swoop by issuing directives is both blind and counterproductive.
Policies will last longer if whims, clamor and indiscretion are filtered out when they are being contemplated and formulated.
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