In China, Government Jobs No Longer Mean ‘A Solid Rice Bowl’

Ruzhou's public employees have been without paychecks for months

Staff members monitoring students during their college entrance exam in Zhengzhou, central China's Henan province, on June 7, 2016. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

A city once known as one of China’s most robust has gone viral for a financial crisis that has left essential city workers without paychecks. Netizens are buzzing about its failure to pay public employees—for over six months, and in some cases, for more than a year.

Meanwhile, residents say that their city is just one of many in China that are struggling to make ends meet post-COVID.

Ruzhou, a county-level city in China’s central Henan province, was once honored as “China’s Model City for a Cyclic Economy.“ Ruzhou’s economy ranked 15th out of 140 counties in central China. Now it is unable to pay the teachers, firefighters, police, and health care workers who make things run smoothly in this city of almost one million residents.

In a post on China’s social media platform Weibo, one netizen said the situation in Ruzhou “is not an isolated case and shows that the local financial crisis is expanding further.”

‘The Most Solid Rice Bowl’ in China Runs Empty

The Epoch Times contacted the Ruzhou city government on June 23 for comment. The staff member who answered the phone hung up immediately when she heard that the reporter was calling to ask about the delinquent payroll. Subsequent phone calls were unanswered.

However, The Epoch Times was able to speak with several public employees, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Fu Xia (a pseudonym) is a civil servant; she told The Epoch Times that she and her colleagues have been put on furlough.“It’s hard to live without an income for more than half a year,” she said. She said they are counting the days until the government has money to pay them and they can return to work.

Fu said although some workers in other city agencies haven’t seen a paycheck for nearly a year, no one has resigned, due to a longstanding conviction that the civil service profession is “the most solid rice bowl” in China.

“I check my cell phone every day to see when my boss will call me back to work,” said Fu, complaining that she idled at home with nothing to do. “I’ve had enough!”

City employees were counseled to find temporary jobs to earn living expenses, which felt a bit cavalier, Fu said. “What about car loans and house loans? Raising children is also very costly; making a living is arduous!” she said.

Railway police on duty in Wuhan, China, on April 7, 2020. (Getty Images)

Cai Pengfei (a pseudonym), a retired health care worker, noted that part of the problem is the sheer size of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). To maintain the centralized regime of an organization so gargantuan, a huge number of political aides and civil servants are needed. In addition to the military, police, and government officials at all levels, there are public schools and public hospitals to be funded.

Funds for the many levels of government employees come from taxes paid to the party’s state treasury, Cai said, adding, “When the people are poor, they pay fewer taxes, and the [CCP] does not have enough money to spend.”  Further, due to mismanagement and corruption, there is no cushion for hard times. “When the [CCP regime] had money, it expanded extravagantly and devoured subsidies from the treasury. Now the treasury is depleted, and has no more money to pay salaries.”

Workers Demand Their Wages

According to a video news report posted on Chinese search engine Baidu in late December, Ruzhou Healthcare Commission employees had not been paid for thirteen months. The video showed employees protesting at the entrance of the Ruzhou Municipal Committee to demand their salaries.

They said refusing to pay health care workers is particularly unjust because the employees were on the front lines of the city’s pandemic fight.

The report said that prior to the health care workers’ protest, city traffic employees had protested at the Ruzhou city government over unpaid wages.

Although Ruzhou’s problems came to a head with COVID-19, they date back several years. The city education system’s provident fund and health insurance funds are also in arrears.

In 2019, the city made headlines for asking its health care workers to fund the construction of a badly needed new hospital by taking out personal loans and handing the money over to the hospital.

‘Gloomy Prospects’

Taxes and land use rights are the primary revenue sources for local governments in China. With the CCP’s harsh zero-COVID policies, Ruzhou authorities suffered crippling revenue losses.

Villagers gather to pay their taxes at the Xibu tax office, in China's eastern inland province of Anhui, on June 21, 2002. (Peter Harmsen/AFP via Getty Images)

According to official numbers, city revenue was down across the board in 2022, with total annual revenue at 6 billion yuan (about $864 million) down 8.3 percent, and tax revenue down 3.3 percent at 3 billion yuan (about $376 million).

From a tax perspective, the news was especially grim: real estate development investment was down 17.8 percent from the previous year. Of that, residential investment was down 17.1 percent, and commercial property sales were down more than 15 percent.

Along with the slump in real estate development, cement output and cast steep output were reduced by a staggering 28 percent and 47 percent year on year, respectively.

“Three-year-long anti-epidemic restrictions, coupled with the sluggish real estate industry, have completely ruined China’s economy, with many enterprises unable to go on operating regularly,” Zheng Qiang (a pseudonym), the owner of a private enterprise in Ruzhou, told The Epoch Times.

Customers aren’t placing orders and workers are being laid off. That has a direct impact on the income of civil servants.

“Prospects are gloomy,” Zheng said.