China Society Issues (Part one): the corrupted officials
Why Are So Many Officials in China Corrupt?
A booming economy and rampant corruption is a spectacle mixed phenomenon stimulating curiosity of scholars and observers in nowadays China. Corruption is usually a terminology used to refer to the activities those working in public sectors abuse public power to develop their own private gains, the most visible and well-known forms of which is rent creation. Rent creation and rent seeking are a two sided-coin, implying some kinds of corporation, interaction and transaction between those who take public positions and have the opportunities to maneuver or abuse public power, and those who want to take advantages of the public power but have no positions in public sphere, thus have to develop passages leading to the use of public power through some exchanges and transactions with those holding public power. This understanding enables us to uncover corruption in several dimensions: First, corruption exists in public sectors but should be understood in a broader context. Corruption is usually a concord action both in public sectors and in business or private sectors. Second, to understand the situation of corruption and anti-corruption in a nation at certain development stages, a clarification of the corrupt activities in private sectors is needed. Therefore, thirdly, a comprehensive knowledge of corruption in a society should include the study of the relationships between corruption in public sectors and that in private sectors. Based on this understanding, in this paper, the analysis of the causes and events of corruption in private sectors will be discussed, while at the same time, the depending nature of corruption in private sectors on public power in present China will be targeted. And also, the anti-corruption efforts and achievements in China will be discussed in this paper.
Power being up for sale to the highest bidder has led to an irrational allocation of resources in China. Economists say that people have three basic needs: to satisfy their material needs/desires, the need to develop and the need to realize themselves. Why are so many officials in China corrupt? It isn't just money since while officials have low salaries they still have enough to live comfortably. Corrupt officials take the risk of being caught just as a businessperson risks capital in a business enterprise. A corrupt officials who gets caught suffers a permanent loss of status while a business person loses capital but still has the abilities and contacts to try again and perhaps succeed next time. In the West, people often become officials after having succeeded at something else that satisfied their basic materials needs. In China some call for increasing officials salaries in order to reduce corruption. This is a worthwhile strategy, but it is not the most important one.
More important is to reduce official power over business so that officials will have fewer opportunities to sell their power. Most important is to continue economic reform in which their are several different types of ownership (note: the author doesn't seem to want to say private property. end note) so that more and more of the high achievers will see that the way to make big bucks is not to be a corrupt officials but to be a businessperson. This will open up new avenues for people to realize their personal ambitions. And it will change the structure and flow of human talent in China. It will help end the situation in which the entire Chinese society believes that "top flight talent must go into government." China is changing. Many people are going into business. Many of the best graduates want to work not for the Chinese government but for multinational corporations or for private high tech companies. This is a very hopeful sign. As more and more of these people can find non-government means of satisfying their ambitions, corruption should become a less serious problem.
Why Chinese Corrupt Officials Always Fled to Canada?
Recently,there was a new Chinese corrupt officials in Vancouver, Canada,-- Ren Gaoshan former director of the He Song Street Branch of the Bank of China in Harbin. He arrested for stealing customer deposits more than one billion yuan, about 800 million yuan and suspected illegal transfers to Canada. Recently, the Canadian police a false entry in his career ground to arrest him.
According to the Canadian local Chinese, the Chinese community in Canada, can often be seen living in luxury houses, drive limousines, with a lot of money, but most are mother with her children and widows. Their fathers and husbands, some are already in the mianland "arrested", and some still serving, But wives and property had already transferred abroad, in preparation for future flight.
Canada as a country with the rule of law, why it has become a haven for Chinese corrupt officials? In an interview with professior Yang Cheng in February 2004,, the Canadian criminal justice system is a long-term study of the Macao University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Law, he has served as an expert witness hired by the Canadian government gave some suggestion to the leagal release of Lai Changxing.
China Youth Daily : Currently, the domestic media reports that have done a lot for alpine events. Why did so many chinese corrupt officials fled to Canada?
Yang Cheng : not entirely true. As far as I know, the United States is now the country with the highest number of Chinese corrupt officials.
China Youth Daily : Immigration Canada and the United States which is more easily? or the Canada's immigration system has loopholes ?
Decentralization, Marketization and Privatization: the Recreation of Private Sectors
The founding of P.R. China saw the emergence of a strong state power and a big government. Two cornerstones are vital for the creation of a totalitarian sate in China: One is the centralization of the state power and the integration of the society, the other is the formulation of planned economy and the monopoly of the production recourses. P.R.China fiercely underwent a process of social politicizing and economic collectivization at its early stages. Social politicizing placed a strict control over citizens and economic collectivization wiped out the influence of the market. The monopoly of production materials and even life materials of citizens in the hand of the state created a dependent society and shrank the private sphere.Before China launched its reform and open up policy, almost all the economic and business sectors were controlled by the state and the "collectives", only left two kinds of production units: the sate-owned enterprises and collective owned enterprises. It was hard to tell the existence of private sectors in such a situation. Thus, the reemergence and enlarging of private sectors actually means a kind of "recreation" after the state changed its basic social and economic policies in the name of reform and open up. This is a process in which the state decentralized and returned its power to the market and society gradually and reluctantly, also a process that the market regains its influence and the society revitalizes. Transitional economy and society are two exact names given to China by politicians and scholars. In such a transitional period, new social elements, private sphere and economic sectors are being created but highly dependent on the state policy of decentralization, marketization and privatization. The dependent nature of recreation of business sectors and private sphere by the will and policy of the state means almost the inevitability of corrupt activities both in public sectors and private sectors, which has been proved by the evidences provided in China. While corruption is engendered in all transitional economies, corruption in China is unique in character and forms. Unlike the implementation of a shock therapy policy in Russia and the former socialist nations in East Europe, the implementation of an incrementalist policy of economic reform caused changes in China through several stages. At each stage the reform deepened, the changing policy varied, and corruption was found different in features and forms.
Three policy adjustment stages have produced new economic growth, meanwhile have induced new tides of corruption. The first stage was when the government introduced the market mechanism to stimulate the economic activity. Policy adjustment was confined within the scope of the agricultural production and commodity circulation area, but it began to attach a nature of dual track that dogged China's economy until today. While the prices of some of the common commodities were made to be adjusted by the market, the prices of other more luxury commodities were still controlled by the government, which had to be purchased through special arrangements of certification and administrative supply. The big gap and profit produced by the market price and government price provided the opportunities of rent seeking. Bribing those who controlled providing plan of commodities was the primary choice of rent seekers, and those successful rent seekers became the first flock of people who have become rich in China.
The second stage was when the government introduced reform policy into cities and industrial area. At this stage, due to the production contract system initiated in rural areas and commodity circulation field, market revitalized in part of the nation's economy and the existed township owned enterprises and newly emerged household economy grew rapidly. But market in cities was still stiff and stagnate and did not conform the economic growth in rural areas. A new policy of reforming the state owned enterprises and collective owned enterprises by contract and renting out was initiated to further raise the productivity in the above two kinds of enterprises and activate the markets both in rural and urban areas. Production was promoted and the strength of the market was acknowledged, however, the default of productive materials soon became serious that deterred the growth of the economy. This is because the most important productive materials were still gripped in the hands of government and the monopoly departments of society, which meant the bigger opportunities of rent creation and seeking. Those individuals and enterprises who had the keys to the back door of gaining productive materials became another flock of stakeholders in China. In the meanwhile, albeit the policy of opening up, the economic door of the country was actually still half open and half closed to the outside world. Big gaps were found between the prices of products and productive materials in international market and domestic market. Foreign trade was still monopolized by some of the privileged departments and enterprises. But the enormous interests hidden behind stirred up smuggling activities though forbidden strictly by the law of the state. Also, during this stage, the mixed new policy and old one left great gauges between official interest rate and the market interest rate, foreign currency rate and domestic currency rate, official prices and market prices, international prices and domestic prices, which became the preys of whom were qualified to participate in the game of interest capture.
The third stage was when the basic market structure had been constructed and begun to play an increasingly important role in China's economy and when 90 per cent of the production materials were made to be allocated by market mechanism. However, the key production elements, such as capital, important services and land recourses, were not yet marketized, in which fields, corruption was most often committed. At this stage, another scarce chance for corrupt activities was produced by the reform of the large state owned enterprises, for which, the main strategies launched were to restructure the property rights of the state enterprises on the stock market, and to make the key persons of the sate owned enterprises become stakeholders in the restructuring.
In addition, at this stage, Chinese government initiated a new policy of tariff return for those foreign business related enterprises in order to encourage international trade after the 1997 financial crisis, which ascribed the power to relevant administrative departments to identify what enterprises were qualified for the new policy. This policy was misused and turned into a form for illegal activity of tax evasion through the collusion of those in government and those in business sectors, and caused heavy losses of the state. Rather different from the previous stage of policy adjustments, this stage was regarded as the last opportunity to gain. As known to all, the financial market and the market of key production elements in China were to a lowest level nourished, and were underdeveloped and immature. Taking the land recourses for example, the most land recourses, in the name, were collective owned, however, actually were controlled by local governments and their officials, and there lacked the second level market. But the need for land of construction and industrial use was increasingly enormous. This caused a great gauge of prices between the land in the market and the land controlled by local governments and their officials. To get the land at a lower price, bribery was thought as the only right strategy. Key production elements, such as land recourses, are judged as the most important state owned wealth, while the state owned enterprises are the backbones of political stability in China, but they are in great danger caused by the colluded corrupt activities of both public power and private strength in the process of economic reform and property rights restructuring. Great profits in these fields have fomented desperate and unbridled corrupt activities in China toward the end of 1990s and early 2000s.
The above statement helps us better understand the causes and facts of corruption and draw the following conclusion:
1) The reform policy in China was a process of incremental policy adjustments towards marketization and privatization, during which period, the state gradually decentralized power, changed the nature of planned economy and loosened the monopoly of economic sectors;
2) The recreation of private sectors or business sectors was the consequence of the state policy changes. The extent that the private sectors expanded and invaded heavily relied on the degree that the state stepped aside from the previous status quo of economic monopoly.
3)Each stage of the state policy adjustments yielded vacancy in economic sectors that could be filled out by the recreated private sectors. The retreat of the state power means the entrance of private strength. Now the non-state owned enterprises have occupied a proportion of more than 70 per cent of the nation's GNP.
4) The process seemed as a collusion between public power and private strength, but actually was a relation built between rent creators and seekers. New economic and social stakeholders were produced by corrupt actions mainly in the form of bribery to graft from the coffer of the state.
5) The further the economic reform progressed towards the core interest of the state, the more profits would be excavated for private sectors. The evidences were increasingly prominent as the economic reform policy touched upon from commodity circulation, production materials to the key production elements.
6) As long as the nature of dual-track economy lasts and a full market economy is completely systemized in China, rents will exist between the state monopoly and the need of private sectors, which will be desperately pursued. And no evidences provided have foreseen the immediate eradication of such a nature of dual-track economy.
7) Presently, corrupt gains are more than ever, thus corruption was even more difficult to be controlled, and the anti-corruption situation in China is extremely serious. The interwoven corrupt networks knitted both in public sectors and private sectors have dimmed the vision of anti-corruption.
The Serious Situation of Corruption in Private Sectors and its Relations with Public Power
Doubtlessly, corruption has dogged the reform process of China and has become even unconstrained nowadays. Corruption generated in the transitional period of the nation, and exacerbated by the uneven state developmental policy of making some people and regions prosperous first. Conservatively estimated at 13-16% of China's GDP, corruption is a huge economic loss and a "social pollution," contributing to problems such as environmental degradation, social and political instability, and decreased credibility of government officials. According to a survey, in 1998 and 1999, Chinese people viewed corruption as the number one factor contributing toward social instability. In 2000, fearful of the imminent pains of economic reform, Chinese people only named "unemployment and the fear of being laid off" ahead of corruption as the primary source of social instability. This despairing situation was to a much extent contributed by the corruption in private sectors.
The main types of corruption of private sectors in China are tax evasion; rent-seeking behavior; involvement in the underground economy, where the management of the goods is legal, but the income is illegal; involvement in the underground economy, where the management of the goods is illegal; and the fraudulent bidding in public investment and public expenditures.
Tax evasion is the largest economic loss to corruption in private sectors, accounting for 7.6-9.1% of GDP. Economic losses from lost tariff revenues are particularly large. In 1994, the official average tariff rate was 36%, while the effective tariff rate was only 2.73%. The loss of tariff revenue for the government was 7.1% of GDP. In 1998, the official tariff rate was 15%, while the effective tariff rate was 2.69%. The loss of revenue for the government was 1.7% of GDP. In 2000, the net economic loss from lost tariff revenue was 13.7% of GDP.
Illegal management through fraudulent bidding of public investments and public expenditures ranks the next of corruption in private sectors, which caused enormous economic loss of the state, accounting for 3.4-4.5% of GDP.
Third, rents from monopolies are the third largest economic loss to corruption in private sectors, accounting for 1.7-2.7% of GDP. Rent-seeking behavior leads to a loss in consumer surplus and in social welfare. The main sources of rent-seeking behavior are dual track Pricing; abuse of economic privilege and monopoly power; high import tariffs and quotas; and favorable government policies given to specific sectors or interest groups.
Income from the underground economy in illegal goods-smuggling, drugs, and trafficking is the fourth largest economic loss to corruption, accounting for 0.4-0.5% of GDP.
While it seemed that the heavy losses in China's economy were caused by corruption in private sectors, however, as aforementioned in this paper, each case of corruption in private sectors was inevitably involved governments or government officials in power. The smuggling case of Yuanhua Corporation clearly demonstrated this point. Hundreds of government officials were involved in the scandal. Cases ranged in scale from "special fees" to secure bank loans or business permits to the case of Lai Changxing – general manager of Yuanhua Corporation in XiamenCity, who reportedly smuggled $6 billion worth of goods, including cars and oil, into China during the 1990s and is now still hiding out in Canada trying to avoid extradition. Dozens of officials were jailed or sentenced to death for their role in the multi-billion dollar smuggling ring, including a deputy minister of public security, Li Jizhou, who was given a death sentence, suspended for two years.
Another notorious case of key administrative organs involved in corruption of trading money from private sectors with power was the one of Zhao Yucun, the former head of Shenzhen customs.Court investigations show that Zhao had close connections with Shenzhen Huiwei Industry and Trade Company Ltd and it is alleged that he once helped the company dodge taxes and smuggle automobiles. According to the court indictment, from 1995 to March 1997, Zhao help the company buy 201 confiscated automobiles from Shenzhen customhouse. During that time, the company also bought 13,000 tons of crude sugar from the Customhouse with Zhao's permission. The company obtained large profits from the two deals. In 1996, Zhao is accused of helping the company set up a public bonded warehouse which was used in smuggling more than 420,000 tons of vegetable oil and dodging 2.73 billion yuan of taxes. In return, Yang Gaiqing, general manager of the company, bribed Zhao a total of 30,000 US dollars and a Rolex watch, costing 68, 000 yuan. Zhao's daughters, Zhao Ying and Zhao Ping, received 5.14 million HK dollars, an apartment in Hong Kong worth three million HK dollars, an apartment in Shenzhen worth over 900,000 yuan and a Mercedes Benz car costing 390,000 yuan from Yang under Zhao's acquiescence.
While the above two cases are the typical examples of corruption committed by key administrative organs, economic regulation sectors, and sate-owned enterprises, such as customs, tax affairs bureaux, and banks with private economic entities, the day-to-day corruption activities are often found to be performed by local government officials to pursue money with their power. Every local cadre would experience to learn in the local normsfor taking bribes. He would get to know how often he could become ill and how often he could accept invitations to ribbon cuttings, both being occasions at which he couldaccept gifts, without, as long as he was politically loyaland doing a good job,worrying about being accused of corruption.As known, economic reform in China has been associated with anepidemic of corruption among local government officials. A largepart of the success of the Chinese economic reform is attributableto thetransformation of the typical local government official from being an unproductivepolitical entrepreneur to being a productive economic entrepreneur. It seems thattolerance ofcorruption, together with the threat of punishment for corruption and theselectiveenforcement of this threat, has been an effective way to induce local officials topromote economic reform and, equally importantly, has served the political objectivesof the Communist Party.Although the Chinese authorities have recognized the efficiency of markets,they have clung to a dual-track economy, that involves thecoexistence of newly instituted markets with pre-existing Guanxi arrangements, whereby the allocation of resources depends in part on personal connections amonggovernment officials and firm managers. Under Guanxi firm managers have to maintain good relations with relevant government officials and managers of other firms to ensure the provision of supporting resources (e.g. electricity, water, etc.) and the timely delivery of necessary raw materials and intermediate goods. In the dual-track economy the ability of local officials to continue to make Guanxi work effectively has been critical. This is because theincomes of local officials are nominally fixed and unrelated to their performance and the Chinese local officials are not allowed to moonlight as formal employees offirms. The main ways seem to bethe extraction of bribes or nepotistic favors and the appropriation ofpublic property or public funds for personal benefit. Those local officials who can most skillfully take advantages of Guanxi with firms are likely to be able to extract the largest bribes or nepotistic favors or to have the most valuable public property to appropriate. Local officials obtain through corruption, particularly in the form of bribery, is often paid directly by local firms, which have got preferential treatment from the former.
Corporate Ways to Combating Corruption in Private Sectors
Chinese government has been clearly aware of the disastrous effects of corruption in its governing system and economic structure. Too much government penetration and intervention in economic fields is recognized as one of the main factors causing corruption both in public sectors and private sectors. Therefore, to root off corruption from its fountainhead, e.g. to remodel the governance pattern of the state is regarded primarily important. Numerous measures have been taken to fight corruption. These measures include forbidding the government, police, and military to take part in business enterprises; implementing different accounting channels for revenues and for expenditures; and implementing a system of "accountant accreditation." Six anti-corruption policies have been developed in combating corruption: (1)increasing transparency of government affairs;(2)encouraging citizen participation in government affairs; (3) strengthening the role of the deputy of the People's Congress; (4) ensuring an independent judiciary; (5) holding major government officials responsible for mistakes made under their purview; and (6)broadening the freedoms of the media. In addition, governmental interference in the economy and the discretionary power of government officials is to be reduced.
As corruption is being proliferated, more anti-corruption strategies and methods have been initiated. These strategies and methods reflect the changes and continuities in the process of anti-corruption in China. First, the top leaders and political organs have become increasingly determined in struggling with corruption. An instance is that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has recently issued an outline for the establishment of an anti-corruption work mechanism that serves to punish and prevent corrupt activities by CPC members. The mechanism will be established to educate and supervise party members, punish those who turn corrupt, and prevent corruption. According to a schedule set by the outline, a basic framework for the mechanism should be installed by 2010 and a long-term education system, power-operation supervision system and a mechanism-based anti-corruption system will be completed later. The construction of the mechanism is expected to be scientific, systematic, feasible and practicable. According to the outline, the construction of the anti-corruption mechanism is a pressing but lasting task given that the anti-corruption situation remains serious.
Second, more emphases are laid on the institutional ways and a sound legal system to curb the corruption. To rule of law has been repeatedly stated in official documents and the building of a law-based society is thought to be the way leading toward a clean government. In fighting with corruption, People's Procutorates and their affiliated Anti-corruption Bureaus have played the key role. According to the 1982 Chinese Constitution, the People's Procuratorates are the "legal supervisory organs of the state". The procuratorates, on behalf of citizens' concerns, can investigate 22 kinds of criminal offences, including "violation of citizens' rights by officials, corruption and economic crimes committed by officials". The functions of the People's Procuratorates, according to the constitution, are available to the Chinese population who wish to seek action against government officials who are accused or suspected of engaging in corrupt activities. According to official statistics, 900,000 suits were filed by the common people against government officials in 1997 alone. China's Supreme People's Procuratorate has established a hotline to handle people's concerns and the prosecutors were asked to take to the streets to provide legal counseling to the common people about how to report corruption to the authorities. In 1988, the first corruption reporting centre was opened in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and since then, 3,600 others have been established. The public can provide information about government officials suspected of bribery, embezzlement or corruption. The prosecutors have also weighed a blacklist of bribers as part of prevention drive against corrupt government officials and businesses. Previously convicted officials and businessmen, and those known to have fled overseas with their illegal gains, have been hard to escape the naming and shaming.
Third, the reform of administrative system has been thought to be primarily important to eradicate corruption. At the Fourth National Anti-corruption Conference, in February 2002, the former Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji proposed a multi-pronged strategy to deal with the problem, including: continued transformation of the role of the state, further development of the rule of law and an enhanced role for monitoring agencies such as the auditor bureau. He also called for tighter budgetary control over government agencies and further reduction in the number of permits they issue, an effort that started in 2000. By the end of 2001, most provincial and major metropolitan administrations had reduced the number of administrative permits by 30 to 50 per cent. The administrative procedure would be to a more extent simplified since new act of the Law of Administrative Examination and approval has been initiaed and practiced. The ongoing administrative reform, which aims to remove unnecessary government intervention in corporate behavior by simplifying the traditional application-and-approval procedures for businesses, is expected to be conducive to corruption prevention and control. Now in China, academies are exited to talk about the construction of a clean, responsible, transparent, democratic and law-oriented government to fight against corruption.
In addition to the strategies and actions of curbing corruption generated in public sectors described in the above part of this paper, special means have been introduced to combat corruption in private sectors. As aforementioned, tax evasion has become the main cause of state financial loss resulted from the corrupt activities committed by the corporation between public power and private strength. A new tax regulation system has been formed, and new measures of tax collection and handling have been taken to optimize the situation of taxation. Too many items of tax remitting and exemption, too big gauges between the nominal tariff rate and practical tariff rate, the backwardness of tax collection and management are judged as the main systematic reasons of prevailing tax evasion, for which, the government has tried hard to promote reform programs andintroduce new measures since the middle 1990s. First, taxation laws and regulations have been unified, tax payment has been equilibrated and taxation system has been optimized. In the meantime, various tax remitting and exemption policies that governments at different levels enacted have been clarified and reregulated. To legitimize the taxation law and maintain the nature of a unified taxation law system, the local practices of "collect, then remit" , and illegal tax remitting and exemption are strictly forbidden. Second, taxation work has been strengthened and the loopholes in taxation system have been detected and blocked. Tax collection, handling, and censoring have been clearly separated, a "golden taxation program", together with a "fraudulent taxation prevention system", and a "cross checking and accounting system" were established, which aimed at lifting the level of tax collection and management. Third is to lower the nominal tariff rate, reform the smuggling detecting system, and strengthen the work of tariff collection and management. Up until now, the tariff rate in China has decreased from 43 per cent in 1994 to 15 per cent. Smuggling detecting system has been reformed and a smuggling detection police was established to fight with the crimes of taxation evasion and smuggling. A project of "golden customs" was launched and the practices of the departments of customs, exit and access quarantine, foreign exchange, bank, international trade, taxation are linked and processed through the networks of computer. Those policies and measures have to a great degree optimized the taxation, prevented and curbed economic crimes and corruption activities.
Public spending and public projects in China have long been the prey of private sector corruption, in whichfield, the actors in private sectors would often try hard to develop close ties with public power. This is an open secrecy and easy to lead to social outcry. Chinese government has focused more on the problem and various systematic ways and measures have been worked out to tackle it, including the formulation of government procurement system, public project bidding system, and accountant appointment and general accountant system. The government procurement system is based on the successful experiences gained in Shanghai, and Shenzhen. From 2000, this system has been put into action in central government, provincial governments and provincial capital city governments. The legislation of the system has been optimized, the procurement practices have been regularized, by which, the scale of government procurement surmounted to 20 billion yuan, and public expenditure decreased at a rate of 10 per cent in 2000. In order to control the corruption situation in public projects, the government has also promoted a public bidding system, for which, a public bidding law was enacted by the National People's Congress Standing Committee, aimed at establishing a public program bidding framework based on the principle of openness, fairness and equality, and generating a visible and normalized construction market. Railway, highway, water conservancy, post, communication, electricity and other special construction projects have been all put into the open market for construction bidding, to a great extent prevented occurrence of corrupt activities. The development of accountant appointment system and general accountant system in public sectors was expected to strengthen the financial control and management, and to block the loopholes leading to corruption. This system has regularized in 275 cities or prefectures, and 1029 counties and to a much extent tightened the control over pubic finance.
While corruption is an epidemic rotting all social fields, corruption in private sectors are neither able to be wiped out in one night. Corporate ways of anti-corruption illustrated in the previous part of this paper have been initiated and practiced, however, the effect produced are not always encouraging. In this situation, perhaps a more optimistic attitude is needed to face the problem.
Party Orders Weeding out of Corrupt OfficialsThe disciplinary watchdog of the Communist Party of China (CPC) warned local authorities on Tuesday to rigorously observe rules on assessing work performance in the ongoing nationwide leadership reshuffle to prevent the promotion of corrupt officials.
"Concrete measures should be taken in line with the rules to ensure job performance assessments are real and to prevent already corrupt officials from being appointed or promoted to higher positions," said Xia Zanzhong, deputy-secretary of the CPC Central Commission of Discipline Inspection.
It is not unusual that some Party and government officials who have committed serious crimes of embezzlement and bribery continue to rise in their political careers before being caught.
One recent example was Hu Xing, former deputy director of the Yunnan Provincial Transport Department, who was arrested in February for taking more than 40 million yuan (5.2 million U.S. dollars) in bribes and keeping a mistress.
Prosecution documents said he began taking 50,000 yuan in bribes as far back as in 1995, when he was working for the city planning section of Kunming City, capital of southwestern Yunnan Province.
China has been undergoing nationwide leadership elections and reshuffles in both the Party and government at county, city and provincial levels since last year, which will be completed later this year ahead of the CPC National Congress.
Xia said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua that in order to ensure clean and honest administration of the Party and government, a series of new reform measures are in the pipeline:
-- Government departments will be relieved of some administrative authority, especially in granting business or other permits. More government affairs and operations are to come under public scrutiny, especially those concerning the interests of the public;
-- Government bodies will be requested to strictly separate expenditure from income to avoid conflicts of interests;
-- More people's jurors and supervisors from outside the judiciary should be installed at legal proceedings to ensure trials are open and fair.
So far, the causes, facts and countermeasures of corruption in private sectors of China have been analyzed, yet corruption and anti-corruption situation, even of private sectors, in the nation is hard to be completely uncovered. For a fluid, messy, complicated and transitional China, a more cautious and deeper reflection on its anti-corruption efforts is necessary. Rather different from other nations, the political structure, social system, and market state quo in China are always double-edged in fighting with corruption. On one hand, the authorities of CPC and the state seem to never lack the determination to eradicate corruption, however, on another hand, corruption in China rather seem to develop in its own way and follow another logic, often contradictory to the will of the party and state leaders. The bottleneck of China's anti-corruption seems rather apparent for many, e.g. the lack of fundamental changes in political structure toward democratization will eventually make the anti-corruption efforts abortive. This is even true in the anti-corruption campaign in China's private sectors. As illustrated in the above part, all corrupt activities in private sectors are closely involved in the practices of public power. With a one-party political system, and with an unrestricted state power over society, the success of anti-corruption either in public sectors or private sectors is beyond imagination. Perhaps, China could create another miracle in its anti-corruption pursuance as it has done in economic development, however, it needs time to prove.
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