Tighter supervision of officials

The Party leadership's grand road map for reform has signaled its resolve to achieve lasting results in its anti-corruption battle in a more systematic way, says a Xinhua News Agency commentary.

China's leading group for overall reform, headed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, last week announced six working groups covering the economy and the environment, democracy and law, culture, the social system, Party building, and discipline inspection.

Reform in these sectors needs an environment with zero tolerance of corruption in order to squeeze the space for abuse of power through meticulous regulations and new institutions.

Amid its reform drive, the new leadership has decided to grant more power to higher-level discipline inspection agencies, in contrast to the current system where local discipline inspection agencies are mostly under the leadership of the Party committee at the same level.

Supervision by the more powerful superior agencies will help ensure allegations of corruption are reported efficiently and that investigations proceed smoothly without any cover-ups.

In 2013, discipline inspection agencies punished about 182,000 officials nationwide, 13.3 percent more than in 2012.

Now, given more supervisory power, the higher-level agencies are expected to mete out harsher punishments to Party officials at all levels who violate Party guidelines or fail to curb corruption.

In the economic sector, reforms designed to ensure the market's decisive role in allocating resources will regulate the functions of the government to prevent it from intervening too much in the market, which results in high administrative costs, low efficiency and corruption.

Accepting the market's decisive role will help the government shoulder its task to build an open and unified market with orderly competition which leaves little room for corrupt behavior like power-for-money deals, judicial corruption and commercial bribery.

The promotion of transparency in government affairs, including publicizing information about government budgets and statements, will provide channels for supervision by relevant departments and the public.

Beside, the country's new leaders have been making unremitting efforts to promote the building of the country's legal system to ensure judicial independence as they step up the campaign to fight corruption.