The State Council, China's ruling cabinet, has issued "a national plan on emergency response:"
The emergency response plan aims to increase the government's capability to protect public safety, deal with unexpected incidents, minimize the losses of the incidents, maintain social stability, and promote the harmonious and sustainable development of the country.
When you strip away the anodyne rhetoric, what this appears to be is a centralization of power: the State Council is declared "the highest organ in the management of emergency response". In the context of the recent Songhua River pollution disaster and the Dongzhou killings, each of which included very bad decisions by local level administrators, the new emergency plan seems to be saying: trust the central government to do the right thing; it will protect the interests of the people and do the right thing.
The bad thing about this is that the central government does not have a good track record of doing the right thing when faced with growing public anger over deepening economic inequality and burgeoning corruption at all levels of government. Things are getting worse in China, at least as measured by the number and nature of public protests and demonstrations, and the central government seems only able to respond with proclamations and photo-ops, not effective responses to underlying economic and social problems.
The interesting thing here is that by declaring the State Council ultimately responsible for emergency response, Beijing will not be able to easily scapegoat local officials when bad things happen. Of course, the center will continue to scapegoat the locals, but now critics will be able to point to the State Council's own statement of responsibility. If things continue to get worse, it is clearly on Beijing.
All of this misses the key problem. Instead of centralizing power, Beijing needs to put more emphasis on the fair administration of justice at the local level. It needs to put more power in the hands of those people who are being hurt by economic and social change. The focus needs to be on the people, not the party and central government. A more powerful reaction to emergencies is an admission of failure; the emergencies, or at least many of them, need not happen in the first place if the government is open and honest and responsive. Mencius says it best:
If you use force to gain the people's submission, it isn't a submission of the heart. It's only a submission of the weak to the strong. But if you use Integrity to gain the people's submission, it's a submission of the sincere and delighted heart.
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