As the end of the year approaches, a search on popular online website Tabao with the key words "year-end report ghostwriting" shows up to 270 shops doing such business. One of them with a high trading volume has got a surprising monthly number of 584, says an article in Wuhan Evening News. Excerpts:

A year-end report should be a summary that helps departments and individuals to learn from the experiences of others. But year-end reports have become a formality and lost their importance, with employees writing at the beginning of the year, then copying others and in the end buying reports online.

Year-end reports could have been more flexible. A summary of events and experiences will of course be helpful. But as a formality, a year-end report would be a mere waste of time, for it would not help solve crucial problems.

The buying and selling of year-end reports are undoubtedly a passive resistance to the process of formality. Policymakers should reflect on employees' non-cooperative attitude because when a certain behavior becomes a social phenomenon, it doesn't remain an individual's problem but becomes a social issue.

(China Daily 12/16/2011 page9)