Hu makes stern corruption warning

President Hu Jintao Monday called for strict discipline to be maintained within the Party, broadly seen as a stern warning against corruption amid elections of Party committees at all levels.

"The Communist Party of China (CPC) will tighten supervision on the whole procedure of electing and promoting officials and will improve transparency," Hu said at a plenary session of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the party's anti-corruption body.

"The Party will improve the education of senior and chief officials in its newly-elected organs. Newly-elected members of CPC committees should stick to the principles of putting people first and serving the people," said Hu, also the general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

"We should be fully aware that the battle against corruption is complicated and difficult yet we should be confident and step up efforts," the president added, vowing to work to prevent corruption before it happens.

The elections of CPC committees from township to provincial levels started last year. The CPC is expected to elect a new central committee at its 18th National Congress, scheduled to be held in the second half of 2012.

The Xinhua News Agency quoted a CCDI official as saying that 17 provincial CPC committees will hold elections this year, and deputies to the 18th National Congress of the CPC, National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference will also be elected.

Mao Shoulong, a professor of the Public Administration Institute under the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times that Hu's warning was timely.

"Corrupt officials who buy and sell government posts or recruit henchmen instead of competent personnel need to take note of this warning," Mao said.

With more and more public attention attached to government elections, wrongdoings in the process have been increasingly exposed by the media and on the Internet, which has pushed authorities to increase the transparency of elections, Mao added.

According to Xinhua, authorities have hired more than 73,000 inspectors across the country to supervise the elections. Last year, supervisory bodies received 846 reports of election fraud nationwide, among which 52 were verified, with 73 violators being punished.

Zhang Bingsheng, a former mayor of Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, was sacked last year for using text messages to win votes for the post of deputy provincial governor.

In another case, Hu Jianyong, Party secretary of Yudu county in Jiangxi Province, organized the slander of other candidates. He was removed from his post in July.

Lin Zhe, a professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, told the Global Times that in order to prevent such wrongdoing in the selection and promotion of officials, an accountability system must be put in place.

"Those who nominate or promote corrupt or incompetent officials should be held accountable. So should those who are responsible for supervising them," Lin said.

According to the CCDI, from July 2009 to November 2011, disciplinary watchdogs uncovered more than 20,000 corruption cases involving land use, transportation, railways, hydropower and urban infrastructure building projects.

In this same period, more than 15,100 officials received disciplinary punishments. Among them, 89 were prefecture-level officials and 1,465 were above the county level.

One of the most high-profile cases involved former railway minister Liu Zhijun, who was sacked in February for "serious disciplinary violations."

State media alleged that Liu had taken more than 800 million yuan ($126.8 million) in kickbacks over several years on contracts linked to the construction of high-speed rail.

A blue paper on the fight against corruption released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences last month said that in some regions, "one-third of officials being removed for corruption held top local posts."

"It has become a chronic problem. A corrupt official who holds a top post would set a bad example, and taint all his underlings. We have witnessed quite a few examples of this in the past, such as former Shanghai Party secretary Chen Liangyu and his followers," Lin said.

"In fact, we do not lack regulations. The problem is that many of them are just empty shells," Lin noted.

The paper found that more than 80 percent of people surveyed believed the government is working hard to fight corruption. Nearly 60 percent said they are "very confident" or "relatively confident" of authorities' anti-corruption efforts.