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China Takes New Move Fighting Graft
All Chinese Government and Party officials, including those at ministry level, are likely to be audited when they leave their posts under a plan being worked out by the National Audit Office, according to Monday's Chinadaily.
A new iron fist in the fight against corruption, the auditing of officials who are about to leave their posts, a unique and original process, is receiving "a great deal" of attention from top leaders in the Party and the central government, according to Li Jinhua, auditor-general of the office.
"Our aim is to build a new system under which every official will be checked when they leave their jobs - including when they retire," Li said. "We are going to make it routine."
Since last year, this system has been implemented nationwide for officials at and below county level and for heads of all State-owned or State-holding enterprises.
In East China's Zhejiang province, provincial government bureau chiefs have also been put under scrutiny.
Li said his office is trying to include officials from every level in the system.
The highest-ranking officials being audited at present are the former chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the former presidents of China's five largest State-holding banks, which were reshuffled in March.
The auditing of these financial heads began in May and is expected to be completed next month, Li said.
Analysts believe the move to extend post-leaving audits to higher-ranking officials further demonstrates the Chinese Govern-ment's firm determination to root out corruption in the Party and government.
In a wide-reaching anti-graft drive, a string of senior corrupt officials represented by Hu Changqing, former vice-governor of Jiangxi Province, and Cheng Kejie, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, were brought to justice this year.
"We cannot solve the problem of corruption solely with post-leaving auditing, but the system can play an important part in the anti-corruption war," Li said.
Auditing will help discover clues of corruption and, more importantly, will act as a preventative warning for officials who are still in their posts.
Li said it will be possible to audit all senior officials, such as ministers and provincial governors, in the future.
However, "we need time to establish the system. The work must be done gradually," he said.
He disclosed that a national audit meeting will be held next month in Beijing to promote post-leaving audit. "One of the meeting's aims is to find a way to bring more senior officials under the audit system," he said.
According to Li, post-leaving audit focuses on two things: on the one hand an investigation is made to determine whether or not the official has ever violated the country's financial regulations and rules, and on the other, an attempt is made to establish whether or not the official has fulfilled his or her duties.
Li said the past year of tests on the audit system had achieved initial successes.
"Governments at all levels have paid a great deal of attention to post-leaving audit and have regarded it as an important measure to assess officials," he said. "Meanwhile, many officials wish to have an objective assessment when they leave their posts."
In Northeast China's Liaoning Province, for example, a total of 3,600 officials have been audited. After the audit, 139 were promoted, 77 demoted, 344 removed from their posts and 10 were sent to judicial departments for further investigation.
However, with no international examples to follow, State auditors are facing some difficulties in fulfilling this unique and tough task, Li admitted.
The biggest problem is that there are still no criteria for the audit to follow. For example, it is easy to assess the work of government officials, but hard to assess Party officials.
Moreover, some officials who have a load on their minds are reluctant to be audited.
State auditors are also having difficulties deciding whether to audit officials before or after they leave their posts.
"Although the best way is to audit officials before they leave their posts, in practice, we have found this difficult because if you begin to audit somebody, everyone will know that he or she is about to leave," Li said.
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