Anti-graft fight has to be taken to next level

This means that some officials' reluctance to push forward reforms or willingness to obstruct them is no longer an issue of perception, but an issue of interests, as some worry that further reforms will touch their vested interests. Some officials have even got accustomed to their privileges and the abuse of power for personal gain.

To deepen reforms means regulating public power, perfecting the market order and depriving vested groups of their tightly controlled privileges and interests.

However, by taking advantage of their privileges, these groups might try to form an opposing force and take all available measures and every possible pretext to negate, delay and even obstruct reform measures.

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Therefore, severely striking against both "tigers and flies" will effectively remove obstacles that stand in the way of the country's reforms.

In this sense, a resolute campaign to fight corruption and build a clean government will offer China chances for achieving breakthroughs for its comprehensive and deepened reforms.

A sweeping anti-corruption drive will help create a social environment for fair competition. With the deepening of reforms and the progress of society, the Party and the ordinary people have shown less tolerance toward corruption.

The former leader Deng Xiaoping said that some regions and people should be allowed to become rich first and then help other regions and people become wealthy and finally realize a common prosperity. Such a development approach was aimed at breaking the country's rigid economic structure at that time.

With such a policy environment, a number of private entrepreneurs have emerged and created enormous individual wealth. However, the excessive concentration of social wealth, especially at a time when the country's democracy and legal system are yet to improve, has also increased corruption.

Polarization of social wealth, when combined with corruption, can easily give rise to some social problems and make the encroachment into public, national and collective interests unavoidable and even ignite a fuse for the outbreak of some mass or unexpected incidents, thus endangering social and political stability.

Since Deng's inspection tour of the south in 1992, China has maintained high-speed economic development for more than 20 years but, in this process, conflicts among people and between man and nature have become fiercer - and such problems as the lack of coordination and sustainability have become more outstanding.

The Party and central government have taken some measures, such as the adoption of a scientific development perspective and setting the goal of building a harmonious society, to resolve or curb the problems.

The author is deputy head of the Research Institute of Procuratorial Theory, the Supreme People's Procuratorate. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.