Chapter 8 Chapter 6 Investment Attraction by Officials: Duty or Offside

In order to stop the false exaggeration of attracting investment, it is necessary to reduce the mode of direct investment attracting by officials, so that power will gradually withdraw from this field. "This year's investment promotion task is particularly heavy. Now the first quarter is over, but the investment promotion work at hand has not made any progress." On April 3, 2009, when Zhou Hua said this to the reporter, he seemed a little nervous, but Also very helpless. Zhou Hua is a grassroots government official in a county in Yunnan Province who is attracting foreign investment.Throughout the year, Zhou Hua travels between Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The first thing he thinks about every day when he wakes up is where to find projects and attract funds. This has become a heavy stone on his heart.

In recent years, many places have used investment promotion as an indicator of official performance evaluation, implemented a rigid allocation of "indicators at different levels, assessment at each level, everyone has a task, and everyone is busy attracting investment" for officials, and corresponding punishments and encouragements have also been introduced. measure. The reporter's investigation found that although investment promotion has promoted the economic development of some places, this one-sided pursuit of political achievements and rewards for officials has also stimulated some officials to risk using their power resources to compete for "preferential benefits" in land, taxation and other aspects. ", without hesitating to introduce high-energy-consuming and heavy-pollution projects, and even resort to fraud, which has spawned many corruption phenomena.

"The investment promotion model led by officials is the root of many current social problems." Yin Yungong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with reporters. It is necessary to reduce the mode of directly attracting investment by officials, so that power will gradually withdraw from this economic field.” In the late 1990s, my country's economy entered a period of rapid development.No matter the coast or the inland, no matter the big city or the small place, they all regard economic development as the top priority of their work, and attracting investment naturally becomes the overriding task of the local government.

Generally speaking, local governments give officials who have completed the task of attracting investment, in addition to honoring due economic rewards, promotions in their positions.On the contrary, for officials who fail to complete their tasks, in addition to being deducted various bonuses, they must also give an explanation and have a conversation with admonishment, and those who are serious will be suspended or removed from their posts. According to reports, on February 4, 2009, Kunming City held a city-wide meeting to commend 10 advanced collectives and 50 advanced individuals in the work of attracting investment in 2008.At the same time, some relevant units and persons directly responsible for ineffective investment promotion have been punished to varying degrees.

The reporter learned that, under the pressure of performance appraisal, some localities, in order to attract investment, do not hesitate to carry out apportionment, pressure quotas for officials at all levels, tasks increase every year, and the amount is broken down layer by layer. Even the Education Bureau, Cultural Bureau, Organization Department Officials in the Ministry of Finance, the Propaganda Department and other departments are burdened with heavy investment targets. It is understood that in the weight distribution of the evaluation of economic and social development goals, the share of investment promotion in some places is as high as 30%.Due to the heavy task of attracting investment, the common practice in various places is to decompose the task to each government unit and each cadre, so that the work of attracting investment becomes the "conscious action" of everyone.

"The investment promotion task assigned by the city to the Beijing Office last year was 65 million yuan. We have 7 people, and each person has a task index of about 9.3 million yuan per year." In July 2009, a staff member of the Beijing Office of a western city Disclosed to the reporter, "The work of attracting investment is indeed very hard. It is extremely stressful to socialize with customers every day. But if the investment is successful, the rewards will be very generous." "Whoever can invite the chairman, president or general manager of the world's top 500 companies to visit Daye City, each person will be rewarded 12,000 yuan by the local finance. If the project is successfully introduced, the maximum reward can be 500,000 yuan..." This is February 2009 On the 19th, Hubei Daye City introduced the incentive measures for attracting investment.

It is understood that although the reward objects of Daye City include the city's investment promotion units, intermediary organizations, enterprises and individuals.But in fact, most of the people involved in investment promotion are government officials, and their power and connections are not comparable to ordinary people, so the biggest beneficiaries of this policy should be government officials. "In some places, several excellent investment promotion awards will be selected every year. The bonus depends on the size of the project. For the introduction of a project with a scale of over one million, there will be tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of bonuses." Yin Yun believes, "Such awards , For many officials, it has a certain temptation. As a result, some officials have planted land to attract investment, but left a lot of normal duties in the wild.”

It is understood that in order to facilitate investment promotion, many places also set up institutions such as China Merchants Bureau, some of which are subdivided into the Second Investment Promotion Bureau, the Third Investment Promotion Bureau, and the Fourth Investment Promotion Bureau. In addition to the director, each bureau also has three deputy directors. four.In addition, good offices, housing and high-end cars are also provided in the investment promotion resident. Judging from the reporter's investigation, the competition to share profits has become a "magic weapon" for some officials to improve the investment environment.For example, those who are in charge of taxation are more tax-reduced than others; those who are in charge of land are compared with lower land rents; and those who are in charge of environmental protection are simply more lenient in environmental approvals.The consequences of this are serious loss of tax revenue, tight land supply, continued deterioration of the ecology, and so on.

It is understood that some places are competing to advance taxes to settled enterprises in a disguised way by means of incentives, the proportion of which is as high as 30% to 50% of the tax paid.In addition to the tax reduction and exemption policies stipulated by the state, many local finances also use the method of "rewarding first and then rewarding" to give preferential treatment. "Relying on tax reductions and preferential treatment to attract foreign investment played a special and important role in the past development stage." Yang Shengming, a researcher at the Institute of Finance, Trade and Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told reporters, "But today, no matter how you look at it, relying solely on preferential treatment The idea of ​​using policies to seek development has really fallen into a misunderstanding.”

In order to complete the investment promotion targets issued by their superiors, some officials often meet the requirements of enterprises without principle, and even stand completely on the side of enterprises.According to reports, the mayor of a certain city in Hebei released his investment promotion slogan in an exclusive interview with the media: "Real estate developers come to invest in our city, and if they make money, it's theirs, and if they lose it, it's ours!" "Some officials play number games for the sake of their political achievements, signing a lot of intentional contracts, but in the end the projects and funds are very few." A friend in a southern province who often goes out to attract business told reporters, "In order to complete the task, some Some officials even spend their own money to invite relatives and friends to visit the local area, sign an investment intention report, or go to some investment promotion fairs, and the two parties sign some investment attraction contracts that they never intend to perform.”

This friend also reported such a thing to the reporter: In order to complete the task, a town mayor colluded with foreign relatives and friends to set up a joint venture in the local area. Foreign relatives and friends conspired to find a reason to divest. The reporter's investigation found that the official's investment promotion was reasonable in the early stage of economic development, but after the economic development reached a certain scale and stage, it would cause many social problems.It not only leads to vicious competition and produces a series of corruption phenomena, but also blurs government responsibilities and causes distortion of power. Relevant experts interviewed believe that attracting investment is a kind of market behavior, and the main body of the behavior should be the enterprise.Officials' "offside" intervention, in the short term, officials can rely on the public resources at their disposal to achieve certain results, but in the long run, it runs counter to the goal of establishing and improving the market economic system. "Under the market economy system, the main responsibility of the government is to provide high-quality public products and services for the public and the whole society. Even if the government sets up some departments to specialize in attracting investment, they should only do some work for investors." Peking University Economics Professor Li Shaorong, the doctoral supervisor of the college, said in an interview with reporters.In this regard, Professor Qi Shanhong, a doctoral supervisor at Nankai University, also said in an interview with reporters: "Letting officials attract investment is an abuse of power by higher-level agencies and higher-level officials, and the public power that originally served the public interest will directly fall into a dangerous situation of commercialization. , will ultimately damage the overall function of public institutions and lead to more responsibilities being neglected.” Du Liyuan, a lawyer from Beijing Zhongsheng Law Firm, said in an interview with reporters: "Investment attraction is a corporate behavior, local governments should not focus on the work of investment attraction, and should not issue policies that are contrary to the country's overall foreign investment policy in the name of investment attraction. Preferential policies for attracting investment should not be used to assess the performance of cadres based on the amount of investment attracted.” In his view, taking the completion of investment promotion as the standard for officials to go up and down, and ordering those who fail to meet the standards to leave their posts or dismiss them is not only suspected of violating regulations and exceeding powers and illegal administration, but also in fact voids the civil service law and other cadre assessment and The reward and punishment system runs counter to the goal of building a government ruled by law. Officials' eagerness for success in the process of attracting investment is often exploited by some criminals. In 2005, the Qingyunpu District Court of Nanchang City concluded a fraud case in which an online fugitive turned into a "Taiwanese businessman".At the same time, in recent years, corruption cases in which some officials enrich their own pockets by attracting investment are not uncommon. According to the analysis of the interviewed experts, this is mainly due to the serious "performance anxiety" of the government departments. They are always worried about affecting investment promotion, and they dare not delve into foreign investors, which allows criminals to take advantage of them. Of course, the problems of officials attracting investment have also attracted the attention of the state and some local governments. In July 2006, Zhejiang Province promulgated the "Implementation Measures for the Comprehensive Assessment and Evaluation of Party and Government Leading Groups and Leading Cadres", which introduced a total of 26 scientific evaluation indicators as the standard for measuring the performance of leading cadres, while the long-term favored investment promotion was excluded. On September 7, 2008, the State Council issued the "Guiding Opinions on Further Promoting Reform and Opening-up and Economic and Social Development in the Yangtze River Delta Region", which included curbing the intensified vicious investment competition in the Yangtze River Delta, and especially compressed the investment that violated the land policy in the Yangtze River Delta. Space. Many interviewed experts believe that in order to solve the problems existing in attracting investment, it is necessary to innovate the performance appraisal mechanism of officials and gradually hand over matters that should not be managed by the government to the market, enterprises, social organizations and intermediary agencies. regulation, market regulation, social management and public service functions. It is understood that in many developed countries, investment promotion is generally organized by private organizations such as chambers of commerce. The relationship between the government, chambers of commerce, and enterprises is very clear, and they will never do it for them, let alone attract investment and develop the economy. Ambiguity, dislocation and loss of regulatory identity. "Currently local governments should innovate the idea of ​​maintaining growth and promoting development." Professor Gong Weibin of the National School of Administration said in an interview with reporters, "In terms of attracting investment, we should abandon the practice of heavily rewarding officials, and at the same time reform the officials' performance evaluation system from top to bottom. , to change the officialdom and social atmosphere in which investment promotion is considered a hero.” "The government produces public goods. In terms of attracting foreign investment, the government's energy and funds should be used to improve the market environment, rather than directly participating in investment attraction through administrative hands. Investment attraction is essentially a commercial activity in the economy and should be Let it be decoupled from political achievements and return to the original intention." Li Shaorong thinks. For this reason, Qi Shanhong proposed four principles for attracting investment: "First, do not harm the interests of the masses; second, do not violate national laws and regulations; third, do not sacrifice the environment; fourth, maintain and increase the value of state-owned assets. A just social environment in exchange for temporary economic prosperity is bound to seriously damage the image of the party and the government and weaken the government’s credibility.” "The state should issue unified regulations for investment promotion measures in various regions. Only by clarifying the boundaries of government power and regulating government administration according to law can we rectify the root cause." Du Liyuan finally said.