Yesterday I chatted with a friend. He works in the district’s environmental protection system, and we talked about something that has recently happened within their system.

Under their administrative district, there are two new-area management committees. Last year, the two committees merged into a single team, reducing headcount and restructuring personnel, also to cut costs and improve efficiency. Recently, the management committee submitted a request to the district environmental protection bureau, asking the bureau to fully take over all environmental protection affairs within the committees’ jurisdiction. This way, the committees’ environmental protection department could be dissolved on the spot, saving a significant amount of funding every year.

In recent years, the management committee’s land has been hard to sell. With no fiscal revenue coming in, things have already become tight to the point where they cannot afford their subordinate units’ employees’ salaries. That’s why they’re急 to hand over the land and transfer enforcement authority—the goal is to survive after reducing staff.

But the district-level environmental protection bureau isn’t dumb either. If you say “hand it over,” then hand it over—what about such a large jurisdiction and such a huge workload? Who would handle it? In one sentence: no. They pushed the request back.

This phenomenon is only in the environmental protection department for now; later, there may be similar on-the-spot dissolutions in the education department, the finance department, the tax department, and others. The reason behind all these changes is that the finances are struggling.