How many vice governors or assistants should a local government leader have? This question should never arise. But, now it has and in a serious way.

The organizational department under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China last week released a document requiring local governments to cut down on the number of vice governors, mayors, secretary-generals or assistants.

The message is that overstaffing has become a serious problem with a bearing on the efficiency of local governments and the honest discharge of their duties.

A county-level public security department is reported to have as many as 16 leaders. Another county Party committee in Central China's Henan province is reported to have 16 members while its government boasts of 12 magistrates and deputies.

Such bloated leadership at various levels goes patently against the principle of a small government for higher efficiency.

It has long been a policy of the central authorities to trim the size of governments at all levels with a view to reducing wasteful expenditure. But, it seems that the size of most governments, particularly at the level of leadership, has been expanding all the time.

The central authorities have rightly called upon local governments to downsize. Such efforts are unlikely to succeed without a grasp of the root cause and the appropriate countermeasures for dealing with it.

How did we end up with such oversized governments? Did any of the redundant leaders reach their positions by paying their way up? In case that sale and purchase of official posts exist in any locality, it is necessary to ascertain whether dishonest local leaders have made money by covertly and illicitly trading leadership positions and resort to legal punishment in the end.

Or does nepotism play a part in inflating leadership size?

Some leaders have placed personal interest above public duty and promoted their favorite subordinates to leadership so that those around him or her will submit to his or her will in decision making. In order to promote those officials they favored, they shed scruples and increased the number of positions assigned to the leadership.

The central authorities should have known that corruption, including favoritism and nepotism, is the root cause of the oversized local government leadership. Downsizing such leadership without eliminating the underlying corruption would amount to mere tinkering.

Public interest would not be adequately served by making known the names of the redundant leaders. It is more important to publicize where the dismissed leaders are placed. Otherwise, there is every risk of the ejected excess being placed in positions elsewhere. The process calls for the utmost transparency.

Once a leader, always a leader until retirement, seems to have become a tacitly prevalent rule. As a result, quite a number of people do their best to get promoted not for doing a better job but for the benefits of the position.

Leadership entails not only benefits but also accountability. Unless the principle of accountability is enforced, just trimming the flab will neither raise efficiency nor make leaders discharge their duties in a responsible manner.

(China Daily April 28, 2009)