Reform will make officials efficient

Because of lack of scientific or detailed redistribution of functions, the merger of different departments as part of the administrative reforms has increased the possibility of not one but multiple departments being answerable for one job. This problem can be solved only through expeditious administrative reforms, which will make the newly established departments strictly fulfill their responsibilities.

The NPC should also enact a specific law on administrative departments' reform that offers clear legal bases for the establishment of new government organs and their detailed functions.

The shared responsibilities of different administrative departments for verification or approval of a project is also a cause of some officials' low efficiency. For example, it is common for a business organization seeking approval of the development and reform authorities for a new project to be told to first get the approval of the financial or environmental protection department, and then to be directed by the latter to get the advance approval of the former. Such a complicated approval procedure should be simplified or done away with to raise functional efficiency.

The crackdown on corruption, therefore, is not the cause of some government officials' low efficiency. The fight against corruption eradicates the space for "power-money" trading and plugs the hole for "grey" or illegal incomes. The lower efficiency is the issue of their bad working style that the authorities should completely eradicate along with bureaucracy. In the long run, the ongoing anti-corruption campaign and administrative reforms will compel government officials to improve their working style and raise their efficiency level.

The author is dean of the Anti-Corruption Research School of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.