Officials from Taixing in East China's Jiangsu province demolished over 300 billboards along local highways within two months, even though some of the billboard owners said they have certificates and their billboards are legal. Gmw.cn comments:

In 2016, the local government of Taizhou city, to which Taixing is affiliated, introduced a "Snail Award" to punish officials who failed to finish their jobs on time. Two months ago, officials from Taizhou came to review the job performance of Taixing officials, who demolished the billboards to avoid being given the "Snail Award".

It is understandable that the Taixing officials hoped to avoid being given the "Snail Award" as this would affect their chances of promotion, but that's no excuse for them to demolish legal billboards. According to the law, the government should have made a public announcement before removing the billboards as illegal structures. If the parties that owned the billboards did not apply for administrative reconsideration or file an administrative lawsuit within the statutory time limit and did not dismantle them, then they could be demolished. However, in the Taixing case, there was no public announcement so the billboard owners were not given the opportunity to have their own say over the matter.

Some billboard owners said they had already obtained government approvals when installing the billboards by the highways. The Taixing government responded that the billboard owners got approval from the town-level governments, while they should obtain them from the county-level government. If that's true, a new question emerges: Should the town-level governments compensate the billboard owners for their misdeeds?

According to latest reports, higher officials from Taizhou received complaints from the billboard owners and inspected Taixing again, saying what Taixing officials did was wrong. Yet the Taixing officials continued demolishing the billboards to avoid being given the "Snail Award". It seems they committed deeds not only against regulations, but also against higher orders.

Higher authorities need to investigate to find out if the Taixing officials should be penalized.