Sessions to strengthen supervision of SOEs

The more corrupt elements uncovered, the more people expect of the contributions that the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the National People's Congress can make to the anti-graft fight. The annual session of the former, the top political advisory body, opened on Tuesday and the latter, the top legislature, is due to begin on Thursday.

With the national consensus that the anti-graft fight is key to the country's future and the governing Party's legitimacy, both NPC deputies and CPPCC National Committee members will undoubtedly voice their concerns over the issue.

On Monday, Dong Dasheng, former deputy auditor-in-chief and also a CPPCC National Committee member, said during a forum that the overseas assets of State-owned enterprises under the direct supervision of the central government totaled more than 4 trillion yuan ($637 billion), and pointed out such a large amount of assets has never been audited.

Given the various cases of abuse of power in central SOEs uncovered by the central inspection teams in 2014, it is more than necessary that the central SOEs' overseas assets be audited to make sure that they are well managed and not encroached upon by corrupt elements.

According to Dong, the National Audit Office only inspected about half of the 118 central SOEs over the economic responsibilities of their leaders. A mechanism to regularly audit SOEs is urgently needed, Dong said.

That inspection of nine SOEs by central inspection teams in 2014 has uncovered serious abuse of power in different forms by SOE executives has augmented the necessity of tightening supervision over the management of SOEs by systematic auditing and inspections.

Central inspection teams have already entered 20 central SOEs in the first round of inspections for 2015. But it will take time and manpower for the inspection teams to conduct inspections of all SOEs. What if the inspectors withdraw but the way SOEs are managed remains the same?

Among the NPC deputies and CPPCC National Committee members are managers and officials directly or indirectly in charge of SOEs. They should come up with good advice on effective supervision over SOEs.