China’s Premier Lays Out Corruption Fight Plan
February 27, 2014 Leave a comment
Feb 24, 2014
China’s Premier Lays Out Corruption Fight Plan
One of the biggest obstacles China’s leadership faces in fighting corruption, according to Premier Li Keqiang, is the Chinese government.
In newly published remarks, Premier Li said the government’s broad regulatory powers over markets and business are key drivers of rampant graft. He named bidding for construction projects, government procurement and the awarding of land-use and mining rights as areas particularly prone to corruption.
Such processes need to be better standardized this year, and “leading cadres should not meddle,” Mr. Li said at a meeting of the State Council, China’s cabinet, on Feb. 11.
Only excerpts of the remarks were published at the time. A more complete version of his remarks was released Sunday by the official Xinhua news agency (in Chinese).
While no explanation was given for the time lag, Mr. Li’s remarks painted a broad picture of the government’s anti-corruption efforts for this year.
Since being installed at the top of the Communist Party leadership in late 2012, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li have pledged to attack corruption at every level of the government and party.
A slew of officials and executives at state-owned enterprises have been detained. Only a few have been put up for public prosecution, and there has been little transparency in the investigations. That has raised questions among China watchers, legal reformers and many Chinese of whether the campaign will prove effective at eradicating root causes of corruption.
Mr. Li nodded to calls by some anti-corruption campaigners, saying that openness and greater public supervision are necessary for fighting graft.
“Openness is the most powerful anticorruption measure,” Mr. Li said in his remarks. He pledged greater transparency over the budget and government spending.
Absent from his comments, however, was a call for disclosure of officials’ assets. In recent months, some activists who have pushed for such new transparency measures have faced harsh reprisals. One well-known campaigner for disclosure, Xu Zhiyong,was sentenced in January to four years in prison on charges of disturbing public order for organizing demonstrations against corruption and social injustice.
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