Every year in March at the annual plenary session of the National People's Congress, the Chinese premier delivers the Government Work Report (zhengfu gongzuo baogao 政府工作报告, hereinafter GWR or the Report) that is sometimes compared to America's State of the Union address.Footnote 1 As it contains important indicators of Beijing's socio-economic policies for the year, this document receives much attention from the media.Footnote 2 There lacks, however, an in-depth study of the overall GWR system, how it functions, its development, its political significance and its potential research value.
A large number of studies focusing on the Reports, both scholarly and non-scholarly, have emerged within China over the last decade. These studies more or less employ one approach: they use textual analysis of the Reports to examine the emergence, frequency and patterns of key words and phrases in order to gauge policies and changes. Of these studies, some focus on the Report for a single year to identify important events or new policies.Footnote 3 Some studies compare Reports across time to gauge the broader social and political trends in China.Footnote 4 Additionally, some studies trace the development trajectories of a particular policy, such as multilateral diplomacy,Footnote 5 social security,Footnote 6 Taiwan,Footnote 7 competitive sports,Footnote 8 and so on. This existing Chinese literature helps to illuminate that GWRs are a barometer of China's changing political and economic context and renders important clues to understanding government and Party policies, but it focuses almost exclusively on the Reports of the central government despite the fact that local Reports actually constitute the majority of the GWR system.Footnote 9
Drawing on field research conducted in Hubei and Anhui provinces and on Chinese sources, this article provides a systemic analysis of the GWR system integrating Reports of all administrative levels. My central argument is that, over time, the Reports have developed into a highly institutionalized system with consistent publication, open access, a uniform format, and established procedures for formulation and implementation. I also argue that the GWR system features two important aspects – local elites’ autonomy in setting work agendas, and their compliance with central government policy priorities. Additionally, my study shows that by using quantifiable targets and celebrating achievements framed in concrete statistics, current Reports help to sustain the legitimacy of the party-state. Finally, my study finds GWRs to be a versatile scholarly resource that can be used for various research interests and methods.
This article begins with a brief overview of the function and history of GWRs, followed by analyses of their format, how they are formulated, their content, and implementation. The conclusion discusses the potential ways of utilizing GWRs as a research source for China scholars as well as the political significance of the Reports.
Function
The current GWR is an annual document issued by every government in China, from the central down to the township level. Villages may also produce their own Reports, but doing so is not mandatory. Regardless of administrative levels, Reports from all governments serve the same function within their own jurisdictions – evaluating the performance of the previous year and outlining work for the current year.
The GWR system is said to have originated in the former Soviet Union, and was later formally adopted in China with assistance from the Soviets.Footnote 10 The very first central government Report was delivered by Premier Zhou Enlai 周恩来 in 1954. By 2015, a total of 47 central GWRs had been issued. Between 1954 and 1977, the production of GWRs was erratic owing to the disruption from the political turmoil of the time; however, since 1978, the Reports have been consistently issued every year. Given the large number of local Reports, however, further verification is needed to see whether they have all followed the same pattern. Moreover, current Reports are officially a public document and are available either at local government websites or through local yearbooks.Footnote 11 Overall, the consistency and accessibility of GWRs indicate a deeply established system.
Format
All Reports adopt a uniform format that often consists of three main sections.Footnote 12 The first section represents an evaluation of the work performed by the government in the previous year. It is largely devoted to reviewing and highlighting the work accomplished by the government, and the accomplishments tend to be presented in concrete facts and statistics. It is not until the very end of this section that the Report engages in a very cursory discussion of the challenges and problems encountered during the previous year, and the language tends to be rather obscure. This uneven focus on achievements versus problems suggests one essential feature of GWRs: they are created to celebrate successes and motivate citizens, not to confront drawbacks and difficulties. Zhu Guangxi and Jin Dongri also confirm this point in their study of provincial GWRs. They assert that on average the self-criticism portion only constitutes 1.96 per cent of the entire Report, and that even when human or natural disasters are documented in the Reports, they tend to be portrayed in a positive light by focusing on after-disaster rescue measures taken by the government instead of lessons to be learned or problems to be confronted.Footnote 13
The second section is where the government sets out the overarching development guidelines for the current year and articulates the core work targets in concrete statistics, such as GDP growth rate and energy consumption reduction, etc. The third section of the GWRs divides the guidelines of the second section further into several major tasks and specifies the details of what each of these tasks entails.
Although the Reports now prefer to utilize quantifiable indicators and statistical data to define work targets, this preference is a rather new phenomenon. For instance, Liu Xiaobiao's analysis of central Reports reveals that the amount of data used in the 1983 Report was double that used in the 1978 one.Footnote 14 This change shows that the GWR system has followed the path of the broader political and economic change in the country in that the emphasis has shifted away from abstract political ideology and towards concrete work performance and productivity.
Formulation
Like their uniform format, the formulating process for GWRs is remarkably similar across administrative levels and geographic locations. The Report is usually drafted by a designated writing team (qicao banzi 起草班子) within the general office of each government (zhengfu bangongshi 政府办公室). As the local government head must orally present the final Report draft for enactment at the annual people's congress plenary session, he or she often leads the work of the writing team. The formulating work takes months to complete and generally consists of the stages outlined below.
The first stage begins with outlining the Report's overall framework and selecting the major themes to be covered. At this stage, the designated writing team must consult leading local officials to ensure that their priority issues are addressed in the Report. Meanwhile, the team also studies important meetings,Footnote 15 speeches and documents of upper-level governments to stay abreast of their top policy concerns and their guiding principles (zhidao sixiang 指导思想) on those policy concerns.Footnote 16 Throughout this stage, the team makes sure that the finalized themes for the Report not only reflect the priority concerns of the local government but also are in line with the directives of higher-level governments.
What occurs at this stage indicates two forces at work: local autonomy and compliance with central policy priorities. Local autonomy grants leading local officials a substantial degree of authority in articulating what constitutes the work agenda in the Reports so as to accommodate the unique conditions of local economic and social development. In fact, the consideration given to local conditions is regarded as the most fundamental guideline for drafting the Report.Footnote 17 However, compliance with central policy priorities implies that a local GWR must defer to the guiding principles of higher-level governments. As a Chongqing official commented, “A successful municipal GWR must have yearly features, reflect central spirit (zhongyang jingshen 中央精神), and most importantly, relate to local realities.”Footnote 18
Having decided upon the major themes that drive the Report, the writing team moves on to the next stage, investigation and research (diaoyan 调研), which mainly involves requesting information from the government's functional departments (zhengfu zucheng bumen 政府组成部门). The requested information consists of three parts, largely resembling the format of the GWR: a summary of the previous year's work; the major challenges and problems that occurred; and the work plans and targets for the current year.Footnote 19 As an official of a prefectural functional department noted, “The work in the GWR is actually submitted by ourselves. It is simply that we propose the things to be done; if the mayor agrees, these things will be formalized through the Report as our work.”Footnote 20 Again, this fact underscores the high degree of local autonomy in formulating the Reports.
After all the requested information is submitted, the designated writing team integrates it into the major themes of the Report and produces the first draft, often referred to as the suggestion-seeking draft (zhengqiu yijian gao 征求意见稿). This draft is subject to several rounds of revisions while it is distributed for feedback to various units (danwei 单位), ranging from functional departments, the standing committee of the local people's congress (renda changwei 人大常委), the local committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (zhengxie 政协),Footnote 21 to the minor parties, the Communist Youth League (tuanwei 团委) and the women's federation (fulian 妇联).Footnote 22 Lastly, a meeting of the local politburo standing committee (changwei hui 常委会), the highest level decision-making body, is held to discuss the revised draft. The designated writing team makes the last round of revisions based on the discussions in this meeting and produces the final draft.
Content
The content of GWRs also reflects the two forces inherent to the formulation process: local autonomy and compliance with central policy priorities. Most importantly, the specific content of the GWRs varies substantially across localities. This demonstrates that local governments have the autonomy to define their own work agendas for the GWRs. Specifically, this local variation exhibits in two major ways. First, local governments choose to focus on different issues for their main work targets for the year. Many examples of this variation abound. For instance, in terms of the main socio-economic development targets for 2015, Hubei province lists population control as one of its main targets, while Anhui province does not.Footnote 23 Another prime example of local variation is the wide use of “ten concrete goals” (shijian shishi 十件实事) in local GWRs.Footnote 24 “Ten concrete goals” refers to the practice of laying out ten specific tasks to accomplish in the coming year and these tasks usually focus on people's livelihoods and well-being. Despite the fact that many local governments adopt this format of “ten concrete goals,” the ten tasks vary greatly across jurisdictions. Second, there is local variation in how governments attach different values to the same work targets. For example, Anhui provincial government set its GDP growth rate for 2015 to be around 8.5 per cent,Footnote 25 whereas Hubei aimed to achieve beyond 9 per cent,Footnote 26 and Shanghai for the very first time did not specify a number for GDP growth rate.Footnote 27 Similarly, this variation also exists within provinces. For instance, also in 2015, while Hubei's Gongan 公安 county set its GDP growth rate at 10 per cent, “striving for 11 per cent,”Footnote 28 Jianli 监利 county aimed for 10.5 per cent.Footnote 29 Together, these variations indicate that local governments have autonomy in adopting their own target values.
In addition to local variation, the content of the GWRs features another key component – conformity with the central government's policy priorities. This compliance with central directives is clearly demonstrated by the fact that all local GWRs, from provinces down to townships, incorporate every single target that the central government considers essential work for the year. For example, comparing the 2015 main socio-economic development targets of the central government,Footnote 30 Hubei province,Footnote 31 and Lixin 利辛 countyFootnote 32 shows that except for the target of achieving a balance of payments, which only applies to the central government, all the other seven targets of the central government have been adopted, although with different values, by the provincial and county governments in their own GWRs. This finding indicates that although GWRs vary in content across localities, they are also unified in that their main targets are structured one way or another in line with the priority agendas of the central government.
Both the formulation and content of GWRs suggest that the Reports have evolved into a system that not only grants local governments plenty of discretion in selecting issues and defining the values for their work targets, but also ensures that this discretion is exercised in a way that is consistent with the central priorities for the year.
Implementation
Once the final Report draft is enacted by the local people's congress, the government employs multiple mechanisms to help implement the work laid out in the Report. First of all, the government breaks down the Report into individual tasks and then assigns these tasks to the corresponding functional departments and subordinate governments. These assignments result in an elaborate document, often referred to as the “GWR targets broken-down document” (zhengfu gongzuo baogao renwu fenjie wenjian 政府工作报告任务分解文件). This document is distributed to all the government units involved so that everyone is on the same page in terms of whose work is what and when the work must be finished. Additionally, both the government and the Party have their own supervision and inspection office (ducha bangongshi 督查办公室) dedicated to enforcing the implementation of important projects and policies, including GWR targets. This office conducts regular inspections of functional departments and the progress of subordinate governments towards achieving the work targets in the Report and promulgates the inspection results.Footnote 33
Furthermore, in recent years, to help ensure completion of GWR targets, governments also tie the work progress of functional departments and subordinate governments to annual performance evaluations (jixiao kaohe 绩效考核).Footnote 34 The evaluated units and their leading cadres are ranked against each other based on how well they have performed on the GWR targets. Monetary rewards and career benefits, such as being given priority for promotion or important exchange positions, are offered to those with higher rankings while those with the lowest rankings are summoned for questioning and criticism (jiemian tanhua 诫勉谈话) and are subject to removal from leading positions or demotion.Footnote 35 Clearly, the material and career incentives built into the performance evaluation system help to induce timely completion of the Report targets.
Another mechanism that helps ensure implementation can be found in the workings of the people's congress standing committee. Although it is often dismissed as being little more than a rubber stamp for the Party's decisions, the people's congress has gained more power as a result of the Party's reform efforts towards the rule of law in recent years.Footnote 36 One such power is the authority to question and supervise the government on its progress in implementing important projects and policies, as stipulated in the “Opinions on improving the work of inquiring about special issues” (guanyu gaijin wanshan zhuanti xunwen gongzuo de ruogan yijian 关于改进完善专题询问工作的若干意见), which was recently issued by the general office of the National People's Congress Standing Committee.Footnote 37 My investigation of Gongan county also finds that, in September of each year, officials from the local people's congress standing committee would inspect the government's progress on its implementation of the “ten concrete goals,” as articulated in the local GWR. These officials conduct on-site visits, examine how much work has been completed and how much more needs to be done, evaluate the quality of work, make recommendations as to how to improve work, and write up reports. The responsible government units then take action to address the detected problems and eventually submit a response report to the local standing committee of the people's congress.Footnote 38
These concrete implementation mechanisms attest to the highly institutionalized nature of the GWR system, and indicate that the Reports are not just empty rhetoric but have real consequences for the material and political interests of officials.
Conclusion: Research Value and Political Implications
My analysis of GWRs demonstrates that they have transformed from a sporadic practice into a largely institutionalized system nationwide. The consistency and accessibility of GWRs make them one of the rare means by which to obtain information and gauge policy changes from a regime that is notorious for its poor record of data reliability. Specifically, GWRs can assist scholars with systematic data collection, conducting reliable comparisons across localities and administrative levels, and producing generalizable findings. Furthermore, as current Reports tend to use quantifiable targets with numeric values, scholars looking for statistical data can find GWRs a valuable resource. Additionally, as a system characterized by both local autonomy and conformity to central government priorities, GWRs provide ample empirical evidence for scholars interested in either national policies, local politics or intergovernmental relations.
Other than its research value, the Report system carries great political significance. First, the development trajectory of the Reports signals the Chinese Communist Party's capacity to learn, adapt and reinvent itself. By standardizing the GWR system, the government also has institutionalized the annual practice of celebrating its prior accomplishments, which helps to promote a can-do and caring image for the Party state. This image in turn cultivates a public consensus of authoritarian meritocracy and aids in sustaining the ruling legitimacy of the Party.
Biographical note
Zhen Wang is assistant professor at the department of political science and international relations, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN.
