Economic Stagnation, Staffing Rolls Like a Snowball — Too Many Parasites Leave the People in Misery

Children in the mountains of Guizhou walk three hours every day to go to school. (Video screenshot)

[People News] The Chinese Communist Party does not engage in production. It is a huge organization that “lives off the imperial grain,” wildly squandering the resources of the state treasury. Especially during China’s economic stagnation, this enormous fiscal spending is a main reason why the Chinese people live in poverty and misery. Some Chinese netizens said, “No wonder ordinary people are so poor — there are too many parasites.”

Recently, Chinese Communist Party state media reported that a county-level integrated media center had an officially approved staffing of only 87 people, but in reality it had crammed in 490 people. Of those, the ones actually doing the work, including running news and writing copy, numbered only around seventy. The remaining more than 400 people were mostly doing administration, logistics, and odd jobs. Calculated by proportion, that means about 6 people are “serving” 1 reporter.

The report said that this county-level integrated media center opened in 2018, and by this year its staff had swollen by nearly 6 times. On the one hand, there were too many people and too little work, and the institution had become bloated; on the other hand, nobody watched the content it produced.

The report also said that twenty or thirty years ago, large numbers of people flooded into county-level television stations, newspapers, and radio stations. In 2018, when the nationwide integrated media reform was pushed forward, resources should have been consolidated and staff reduced, but in many places they merely “changed the signboard and merged the personnel,” squeezing all the original staff into a single institution.

At present, county-level integrated media centers across various localities have opened accounts on social media platforms and short-video platforms, but their click-through rates are generally low. Some official video accounts of county-level integrated media centers have hundreds of thousands or even several hundred thousand followers, yet the content they post often receives only single-digit numbers of likes.

Netizens commented: “Jobs are created for people — it has always been like this. In the past, county television stations were really just relay stations, yet they still made a big show of putting together a county news broadcast. Aside from relaying programs, they just aired advertisements with TV dramas in between,” “They do not do real work, do not tell the truth, do not speak honestly, and are completely out of touch; an entire unit is full of nepotistic relationships, while the actual work is outsourced — how could it possibly be any good?” “Every day it is fake, inflated nonsense detached from reality — where would any readers or audience come from?” “Nobody knows how many such rice parasites there are across the whole country,” “This is the reason for poverty,” “Too many parasites.”

In some mountainous areas of China, people have used this method to cross rivers for decades, yet the local government turns a blind eye. (Video screenshot)

Economic Stagnation, Staffing Snowballs

In recent years, as the economy in mainland China has continued to decline, local government finances have fallen into difficulty. But governments at all levels of the Chinese Communist Party have not reduced the number of people supported by public finance. Instead, they have preyed upon the public by constantly increasing taxes and fees and imposing improper fines in order to maintain fiscal spending.

A 2016 article titled “The Chinese People Support an Oversized Government” pointed out that for many years, ordinary Chinese people have paid heavy taxes to support a huge government. Chinese Communist Party organizations do not provide services to the people and are purely consumptive in nature, while the extent of their luxury and waste is impossible to calculate.

Quoting scholars, the article said that in China there exists a Chinese Communist Party organizational structure in which tens of millions of people are “eating from public finance,” meaning that they must be supported by the tax payments of ordinary people. These tens of millions are distributed across numerous institutions. These institutions that “eat from public finance” have no direct relationship to the country’s economic growth or public services. “They have no other value — they are there just to eat.” They are purely consumptive spending institutions. There are simply too many such people living off the ordinary people. Chinese taxpayers cannot bear the burden, and it also causes the overall efficiency of society to decline.

According to a 2005 report by International Herald Leader, CPPCC member and Counselor of the State Council Ren Yuling once again submitted a proposal at the CPPCC meeting calling for the streamlining of officials. She compiled statistics and pointed out that the current ratio of officials to ordinary people in China had reached 1:26, 306 times higher than in the Western Han, and 35 times higher than in the late Qing. Even compared with the ratios of 1:67 more than 20 years earlier and 1:40 ten years earlier, the speed at which the proportion of people “eating imperial grain” had risen within the total population was historically unprecedented.

Ren Yuling said that in a small county with a population of 300,000, the number of people supported by public finance was as high as more than 10,000, and more than 5,000 more were supported through arbitrary charges and fees. In a township, the number of people supported by public finance could reach three or four hundred, and in the most extreme cases as many as 1,000.

Ren Yuling pointed out that having too many official positions not only causes bloated institutions and too many people for too little work, but also increases consumption by officials. According to reports, vehicle expenses, entertainment expenses, and overseas training and inspection tour expenses for government organs alone had nationwide totals of 300 billion yuan, 200 billion yuan, and 250 billion yuan respectively, most of which were consumed by officials at various levels.

Meanwhile, Zhou Tianyong, deputy director of the Research Office of the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party, wrote in 2005 that the actual number of civil servants and quasi-civil-servant personnel supported by state finance in China exceeded 70 million, with the ratio of officials to ordinary people as high as 1:18.

According to information disclosed on Zhihu, public-finance support data show that in 2022, China had 80 million publicly funded personnel, consuming 40% of the tax revenue generated by a population of 1.4 billion every year.

In addition, China Economic Weekly disclosed information showing that in one provincial-level office, the entire unit had 82 people, of whom 61 were officials at section-chief level or above, and only 21 were ordinary civil servants without positions. On average, this means 3 officials lead 1 employee.

This phenomenon of redundant institutions and bloated staffing is especially exaggerated in some small county towns. Take Foping County in Hanzhong, Shaanxi, for example. The entire county has a registered population of 32,000, but a permanent population of only 8,000. By the end of 2020, the county had a total of 2,194 staffing slots of various kinds. On average, every 4 people support 1 public employee. The imbalance in the ratio of officials to ordinary people is shocking.

According to statistics from a Henan newspaper, by 1999, the ratio of officials to ordinary people was 1:34 in Shaanxi; 1:40 in Hebei; 1:41 in Henan; 1:27 in Shanxi; 1:24 in Ningxia; and 1:22 in Qinghai. Among the 32 counties in Shanxi Province that could not even pay basic salaries, 8 counties had official-to-ordinary-people ratios below 1:20, among them Daning County at 1:13. Even more extreme, in Huanglong County, Shaanxi Province, 9 farmers supported 1 official.

Current affairs commentator Cai Shenkun posted on X in September 2023: “Heavy taxation and too many officials are an important signal in Chinese history that a dynasty is declining from prosperity to decay. When the numbers of imperial relatives and privileged dependents surge, all kinds of taxes inevitably become heavier. The result is bound to increase the burden on ordinary people, leading to endless resistance as officials drive the people into revolt, and thus repeating one dynasty tragedy after another in history — ‘its rise was sudden and vigorous; its fall was sudden and swift.’”

A People Newsreader, “Qin Yue,” said: “In fact, the Chinese Communist Party is a malignant tumor in Chinese society. Its deformed system has caused the social ‘proliferation mechanism’ to malfunction. The development process of the Chinese Communist Party is exactly the same as cancer, and the ones who suffer are always the common people. Those who maintain Chinese Communist Party rule will meet the same end as people who think ‘cancer is also flesh on the body.’ Because if you do not cut out the cancer cells, the cancer cells can take your life at any moment.”

(First published by People News) △