Corruption: Above or below, squeeze them out

Government should create more ways for public to report corruption

BEIJING - Developing strategies to squeeze crooked officials from both above and below would help policymakers in their quest to clean up corruption - the task officially topping the agendas of both the National People's Congress (NPC) and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

The push against corruption led by Party discipline and inspection committees would receive new momentum if complemented by more public involvement.

So, while considering new mechanisms for government bodies to uncover and punish unscrupulous delegates, NPC and CPPCC delegates should also pave new avenues for ordinary people to monitor and act against graft and nepotism.

This is the third consecutive year corruption has topped the two sessions' agendas.

In online polls by Sina.com, China News Agency and Xinhua, citizens listed it as the primary concern of the two meetings.

In the past three decades, more than 4,000 officials have fled abroad with more than $50 billion in public funds, the Ministry of Commerce says.

It's worth pointing out that corruption may even be diminishing while growing in visibility, for reasons such as increased transparency and more extensive information flows. But this conspicuousness threatens social stability and erodes trust in the authorities.

Realizing the gravity of the situation, the central government has been undertaking an intensive anti-corruption drive. It punished about 150,000 officials, who surrendered more than 160 million yuan in bribe money last year.

In addition, it has been experimenting with and adopting new policies in realms such as asset declarations, gift exchanges and department auditing.

While the government should continue expanding these fruitful initiatives, it also should seek more assistance from ordinary citizens.

As the head of the Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, He Guoqiang, said that fighting corruption is a "common task of the whole of society". He also said it is a duty that every citizen should undertake.

So, the policymaking bodies should continue to expand the toolkit available to the public.

New mechanisms to this end have been developed by the government, largely through the NPC and CPPCC, in recent years.

Some provinces have started publishing officials' mobile phone numbers. Other initiatives include hotlines and websites for reporting misdoings, as well as expansions of democracy at the grassroots levels, where corruption seems to thrive most.

One such proposal on the NPC's table is a reform of the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees. It would enable migrant workers to cast absentee ballots for elections in their hometowns and allow village representatives to call meetings to determine community affairs in locations with large and scattered populations. And it would lower the threshold for removing committee members.

If passed, it would require at least one-fifth of the electorate or one-third of the population to sign referendums to oust village committee members. The process would be chaired by the independent electoral committees rather than the village committees, who currently oversee the fate of their peers. It would also place legal punishments on candidates who use threats, cheat, offer bribes, fake ballots or use violence.

Such measures to combat corruption should be coupled with education. Systems empowering the public to fight official misconduct are ineffective if ordinary people are unaware of them.

(China Daily 03/05/2010 page8)