ACCORDING TO REPORTS, many officials of a city in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region were mobilized to welcome colleagues from neighboring cities that were visiting to evaluate their poverty alleviation work. Beijing News comments:

According reports, many officials of the city were mobilized to welcome their colleagues: Some drafting materials, some making banners and posters, while some were responsible for dining with the visiting officials. One insider was quoted as saying they had spent at least 200,000 yuan ($30,241) on one reception alone, enough to buy 20 cows for 20 poor families.

The officials who were busy doing this could have been working on something that more directly benefits the impoverished people they are supposed to be helping.

Yet the local officials had to do it, because the groups of officials have the power to evaluate their performance. Officials from different cities are arranged to evaluate the effectiveness of the poverty alleviation work of each other.

The evaluation system is designed to supervise local officials, yet in practice it has caused bad results. It is urgent and necessary to replace this with third-party inspections.

Actually, the poor families that need help should be given the biggest say on whether the local officials have helped them enough. All that is needed is to publicize all the contact information of higher-level supervisors, so that the poor families can conveniently complain against local officials if there is any problem. That will be much more effective than the existing evaluation system.