Combat Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy refers to the undesired leadership style of cadres that divorces them from the masses, from reality and which leads them to act as old type of officials. Mao Zedong said: “in terms of social origin, it reflects the survival in our Party and government of the reactionary style of work (an anti-popular style of work) of the reactionary ruling classes in dealing with the people”. Opposing bureaucracy is an important part of the Party's style of work and a Party and government measure that Mao Zedong has attached great importance to.

In August 1933, Mao Zedong used the concept of "bureaucracy" for the first time in his work " Pay Attention to Economic Work", emphasized that: “The ugly evil of bureaucracy, which no comrade likes, must be thrown into the cesspit.” In 1944, at a cadre meeting in Yan'an, Mao Zedong used clay statues to describe bureaucrats. In 1970, Mao Zedong wrote his work “Twenty Manifestations of Bureaucracy” where he classified the typical misbehaviors of the bureaucracy. In another comment he said: apart from the fact that they don't eat three meals as described in an ancient Chinese poem, but all the other aspects of the bureaucrats were well defined in this poem he quoted: silent and indifferent like a statue, they are confused; they do not have a mind of their own; they are rotten sensualists, do not eat three meals a day, weakness, faceless and their facial expression does not reflect their mind, their relatives cannot rely on them, distributed to them nowhere, awe-inspiring, sedentary, very useless! Mao Zedong's vivid description of bureaucracy deeply reveals the essential characteristics of the bureaucrats, such as placing themselves above the people, respect to those above them and are idle towards those below them, they are subjective and one-sided; they are careless; they do not listen to people thus divorced from the masses. Mao Zedong discussed the importance of combating bureaucracy, on many occasions: He sharply called bureaucracy “anti-popular (people) style of work”, it reflects the survival in our Party and government of the reactionary conduct (an anti-popular style of work, a KMT style of work) of the reactionary ruling classes in dealing with the people.

Mao Zedong especially criticized the bureaucratic practices of many Party members and cadres such as complacency, coercion and suppression of the opinions of the masses in their work; and stressed that cadres would be divorced from the masses if such mistakes were not corrected. In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong instructed the Party to launch the "Three-anti" campaign which targeted corruption, waste and bureaucracy, this campaign was combined with various unhealthy styles of work. Mao Zedong believed that strengthening ideological and political leadership should be the first prerequisite for opposing bureaucracy. To combat bureaucracy, we need to constantly strengthen the education of the masses' views, guarantee that cadres of our Party and state are ordinary workers and not overlords sitting on the backs of the people, strengthen the conception that Party and state only govern for the people, carry forward the style of forging close ties with the masses, overcome the feudal ideas of hierarchy and privilege, in this way fundamentally root out the soil breeding the ideology of bureaucracy. In order to eradicate the bureaucratic style and integrate cadres with the masses, we must also "eliminate errors in all aspects of work, plus errors in the style of work and in respect to systems". Strengthening people's supervision and strengthening the supervision by public opinion are the key link in combating bureaucracy. We must ensure that people—in accordance with the law—enjoy the rights to access information, rights to participate, rights to elect and rights to supervise, and ensure that all functionaries of the state will fully accept the supervision by the masses. The most effective measures to overcome bureaucracy include, improving the style of leadership and the conduct, at the same time improve the management and assessment system of Party members and Party cadres, and streamlining the leading agencies of the Party and the government departments.