China’s ‘tragedy of the commons’

Public resources will be destroyed if there are no systems for clear labor distribution and effective supervision for those in charge of the resources, says an article in Study Times. Excerpts:

A British scholar developed a concept known as the “tragedy of the commons” in 1968. The concept assumed a patch of grassland collectively owned by a group of shepherds would worsen continuously because of overgrazing if every shepherd only thought of maximizing his own interests through expanding the scale of his own flock.

The tragedy of the commons finds context in the decision-making processes of some local governments in China.

The power of making decisions is concentrated in the hands of a few people or a few departments. Personal and department interests influence final decisions that concern public interests.

There are no effective restrictions to such power. The power distribution among different departments does not bring a balance of power, but gives absolute power to individual departments.

The evaluation system of civil servants’ performance in individual departments is not the business of people outside the departments, let alone local residents.

If the situation is not corrected, cronyism and nepotism will naturally prevail in some local government departments that are in charge of wealthy public resources.

The central government needs to eliminate these factors to avoid a tragedy of the commons.