China’s Civil Service Shows Signs of Strain as Economic Slowdown Deepens

China’s prolonged economic slowdown and worsening local government finances are increasingly affecting the country’s civil service system, with reports emerging from multiple regions of delayed salaries, shrinking bonuses, and growing dissatisfaction among grassroots officials.

Interviews with people inside the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) political establishment suggest a spreading sense of frustration and disengagement among local government workers, many of whom now view simply avoiding mistakes as their main priority. For some, the workday has become little more than “waiting for the workday to end.”

Several insiders from within the Party spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

In recent months, salary cuts for civil servants, canceled bonuses, and mounting fiscal strain in local governments have been trending on Chinese social media platforms, with recurring reports of delayed wages for teachers, health care workers, and even government employees.

A regime insider in the central Chinese city of Changsha told The Epoch Times that an increasing number of civil servants have stopped taking their work seriously and instead adopted a passive attitude toward their jobs.

“[Civil servants] surf the internet or play games,” he said. “Very few people are actually motivated to work.”

He said the phenomenon is especially widespread in lower-level government offices, where many employees believe local fiscal problems are unlikely to improve anytime soon and have little confidence in their future income.

“People are just trying to get through the day now,” he said. “If they can avoid doing something, they will. In the past, people still hoped for promotions. Now, everyone knows there’s little opportunity left. As long as they don’t get reprimanded, that’s enough.”

Formalism Replaces Economic Priorities

As local governments struggle financially, some insiders say many grassroots agencies have shifted their focus away from economic development and toward highly procedural or symbolic forms of governance.

One recent incident in Yuncheng, China, drew attention after a video spread online that showed local market regulation officials inspecting storefront rental advertisements. in the video, officials ordered shop owners to standardize where notices were posted and required uniform font sizes and formatting.

The video sparked online discussion, with some users questioning why officials were concentrating on minor visual regulations while broader economic pressures continued to weigh on businesses.

A retired civil servant in China, surnamed Song, told The Epoch Times that dissatisfaction within the bureaucracy has become increasingly common, and many officials privately blame China’s economic troubles on the CCP’s top leadership.

“Most civil servants are complaining now,” Song said. “Everyone says that after the economy has been turned into this situation, someone must be held responsible. They’re all talking about the same person, but nobody dares say the name openly.”

Song said that in some local offices in the city of Handan, weekly meetings have become dominated by political study sessions while substantive work discussions have diminished.

“In the past, there was one political study session each week, and younger staff still wrote ideological reports,” he said. “Now, even young people see through it. They’ve adopted a ‘lie flat’ mentality and just coast through the days. Even so, they still think their situation is far better than that of unemployed young people.”

He added that many officials now spend more time trying to interpret political messaging from the CCP’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, than focusing on local governance itself.

Fiscal Crisis Spreads

Local governments in some provinces have also publicly urged different levels of the government to tighten spending and “live frugally” as fiscal pressure intensifies, according to Chinese state media People’s Daily via Xinhua.

Yang, a resident of Changsha who previously worked as a government official, told The Epoch Times the growing financial strain has coincided with stricter oversight of pension payments.

“A neighbor of mine is over 90 years old, and she has to go to the social security office twice a year for facial recognition checks to prove she’s still alive,” Yang said. “If she doesn’t go, they stop her pension payments. How has the country become so financially strained? Civil servants are lying flat too. If they’re not getting paid properly, of course they lose motivation.”

Yang said the widespread disengagement within the civil service is closely tied to both deteriorating local finances and changes in China’s political environment.

“Before 2019, local governments relied heavily on land sales and investment-driven expansion,” he said. “The government kept hiring more people. But after the real estate market collapsed, fiscal revenue shrank. Governments themselves don’t really generate profits, so now they can only cut bonuses.”

Even so, Yang argued that civil servants still maintain advantages over ordinary Chinese workers.

“They still have subsidized cafeterias, access to fines and confiscation revenue, and all kinds of hidden benefits created through various channels,” he said.

Chen Chen contributed to this report.