Anti-Corruption Successful, But Much Remaining to Be Done

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Anti-Corruption Successful, But Much Remaining to Be Done

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The reports by the Supreme People 's Procuratorate and the Supreme People's Court Monday were widely regarded as a manifestation of the firm conviction of the central authorities to bring corruption under control and as an ultimatum to corrupt officials still in the wild, said NPC deputies and CPPCC members.

In his report to the current session of the National People's Congress, President Han Zhubin of the Supreme People's Procuratorate reiterated: "All those who have committed crimes will be brought to book no matter who they are and what their positions. There is no room for leniency."

Sustained efforts yielded fruitful results

Chinese people's procuratorates at all levels investigated 36, 447 corruption cases involving 40,195 officials in 2001 and the people's courts throughout the country put into jail 20,120 corrupt officials, including quite a number holding considerably high positions.

In fact, six officials at the provincial and ministerial level were punished for corruption in 2001, following the execution of Cheng Kejie, vice-chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, and Hu Changqing, vice-governor of Jiangxi province.

Years of sustained efforts to fight corruption have yielded fruitful results and held back the momentum of the growth of corruption cases. Statistics show that most of the major cases handled in recent years took place in 1993-1997. The number of corruption cases began to drop from 1998 and discipline inspection departments began to receive less reports on crimes from 1999.

"It is groundless to say that the more we fight, the more serious corruption becomes," said Wei Jianxing, Secretary of the Central Discipline Inspection Commission.

Rooting out corruption needs various efforts

However, it is impossible to wipe out corruption overnight. It remains the number one concern of the people in the country as is shown by a survey report filed by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"Corruption grows and spreads because it has the soil and market," said Song Hai, member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee. "To root out corruption, it is imperative to eliminate the soil and market, namely, to strengthen management, establish a strong oversight and constraining mechanism and strictly standardize and restrict the administrative behavior, enterprise behavior and market behavior.

It is gratifying to note that China is moving well toward the direction. Now the anti-corruption struggle is following the principle of both attacks and prevention and both dealing with corruption cases and finding out root causes.

Document outlined to wipe out corruption

Of late, the State Development Planning Commission, the Ministry of Education and over 100 other government departments have formulated a joint document, outlining ways to eliminate corruption from the roots, including preventing and controlling corruption structurally and institutionally.

Song Qingwei, deputy head of the Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee of the NPC Standing Committee, appealed for the promulgation of an anti-corruption law.

Zhang Guo'an, a people's deputy from a rural village in Chongqing, compared corruption to the worms in his orange tree. " It won't do if we do not kill them; but it would be even worse if we do not wipe them out. But it is absolutely impossible to kill them all overnight. Pest control is a process that requires the combination of a number of methods," he said. "So long as we unite as one, the worms of corruption are sure to have no way of escaping."

Anti-Corruption Struggle Fruitful, Top Judge, Procurator

Reviewing the achievements in the anti-corruption struggle in 2001, the President of China's Supreme People's Court and the President of the Supreme People's Procuratorate said that the law-enforcement organs exhibited more teeth in fighting corruption, contributing their due share to building a clean government.

According to their reports to the ongoing session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the people's procuratorates at all levels investigated 36,447 corruption cases involving 40,195 people and more than 4.1 billion yuan in money terms. The number of cases each involving one million yuan ran up to 1,319 and people involved numbered 9,452, included 2,670 officials at the county level and above and six officials at provincial and ministerial level such as Li Jiating, former governor of southwest China's Yunnan Province. In detail

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