{"id":18596,"date":"2012-01-11T21:59:48","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T13:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinahearsay.com\/?p=11711"},"modified":"2012-01-11T21:59:48","modified_gmt":"2012-01-11T13:59:48","slug":"shenyang-kindergarten-cant-get-license-plate-alas-%e6%b2%a1%e6%9c%89%e5%8a%9e%e6%b3%95","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2012\/01\/11\/shenyang-kindergarten-cant-get-license-plate-alas-%e6%b2%a1%e6%9c%89%e5%8a%9e%e6%b3%95\/","title":{"rendered":"Shenyang Kindergarten Can\u2019t Get License Plate: Alas, \u6ca1\u6709\u529e\u6cd5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Classic bureaucratic fuckedupedness<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A\u00a0kindergarten\u00a0in\u00a0Shenyang,\u00a0capital\u00a0of Liaoning\u00a0province,\u00a0is\u00a0frustrated\u00a0because\u00a0the\u00a0newly bought\u00a0school\u00a0bus\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0get\u00a0a\u00a0license\u00a0plate.\u00a0In the past two months, Zhang Xiujuan, deputy head of Shenyang Shangye Kindergarten, tried repeatedly to apply for a license plate without success.<\/p>\n

Gong Bin, an official with Shenyang transportation bureau, spoke of various transportation regulations in the city, the province and the country, but said that none specifically addresses urban school buses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>OK, there is a charitable way to look at this issue. Modern bureaucracies are complicated beasts that are not able to respond to everything immediately. So when you get new rules, and there are new rules every day, it takes some time for implementation. This is sometimes tougher than you’d think. In some instances, the new rule requires additional resources and new procedures, and often a path needs to be cleared through the existing bureaucratic thicket to ensure that such implementation is even possible.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, bureaucrats are inherently conservative and inflexible, knowing that they are almost never punished for doing things the old way. Doing things differently, in contrast, brings with it the possibility of getting something wrong, being criticized, and\/or ultimately losing one’s job. Can’t have that.<\/p>\n

If you think about it, it’s amazing that anything actually gets done at all. Indeed, I remember when I first came to China and started reading new laws and regulations, I was concerned that given the frequency of such updates, that we would eventually run into trouble with respect to overlapping agency power and internal contradictions. It’s scary (and I mean that in a “wow, I’m impressed” way) how much has been done in the past twenty years or so.<\/p>\n

The Shenyang school bus case is one of those frequent situations where one goes to an authority with a problem, and instead of receiving either a yes or a no, you get a “\u6ca1\u6709\u529e\u6cd5,” which basically means that there’s no way to do that. Happens every day when the bureaucratic structure isn’t equipped to deal with something.<\/p>\n

Of course, there is a less charitable way of looking at this. Apparently there is some dispute over whether existing rules are up to the task:<\/p>\n

There are regulations in place for the licensing procedure of rural-area school buses in Shenyang.<\/p>\n

Lin Chongfu, marketing manager of Dandong Huanghai, a school bus maker, confirmed that. \u201cAll of our buses are sold to rural areas. And there are no such problems,\u201d Lin said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So it’s possible that the regulatory authorities are just giving these guys the run around. Note that “\u6ca1\u6709\u529e\u6cd5” is also the response one sometimes gets from regulatory authorities who are empowered to deal with a situation but simply don’t want to say “no” outright.<\/p>\n

Apparently this issue of school busing from rural communities is a relatively new one and that urbanization has created some new problems that the bureaucrats still haven’t addressed. Sounds plausible, although I for one find it hard to believe that in a city the size of Shenyang, something like this has just popped up and caught everyone by surprise.<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that the appropriate folks in Shenyang (and elsewhere) should get off their asses and address this issue before the press attention makes them look bad. Kindergartners that can’t get to school? That’s some serious bad PR, guys.<\/p>\n

\n

© Stan for China Hearsay<\/a>, 2012. |\nPermalink<\/a> |\nNo comment<\/a> |\nAdd to\ndel.icio.us<\/a>\n\nPost tags: \n<\/small><\/p>\n

Feed enhanced by Better Feed<\/a> from Ozh<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think perhaps China invented this sort of bureaucratic weirdness thousands of years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[206,194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china-law","category-news-chinese-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}