Anti-graft inspections underway: CCDI

China's top discipline watchdog started to send its first round of inspection teams for 2014 to various regions and sections from Tuesday. They will cover more regions and sections than previous inspections, a move observers see as the country further intensifying its crackdown on corruption.

Inspectors will be sent to the 10 provincial-level regions of Beijing, Tianjin, Liaoning, Fujian, Shandong, Henan, Hainan, Gansu, Ningxia, Xinjiang, as well as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the CPC said in a statement. The inspectors started their survey in Hainan on Tuesday.

The CCDI will also send special inspection teams to the Ministry of Science and Technology, Fudan University and the China Oil & Foodstuffs Co, it added.

This is the third round of inspection by the CCDI after the 18th CPC National Congress, which highlighted China's anti-corruption campaign. The first two rounds of inspection in 2012 covered a total of 11 provincial-level areas.

"The inspection covers more regions and sections than previous rounds, which indicates a stronger enforcement of anti-graft work," Yang Weidong, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Governance, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The addition of new special inspection teams this year will help cover more fields such as the use of funds or personnel management in scientific research departments or other institutions, Yang said, adding that it showed an expansion of the inspection effort.

Two top leaders of the China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC), a State-owned company which runs the world's largest hydropower project, were removed from their posts on Tuesday, a move that came after discipline inspectors uncovered "clues" related to wrongdoing in CTGC after a two-month inspection at the end of 2013.

The unusual move to remove two top leaders in a State-owned company was widely interpreted as a signal of reinforced anti-corruption efforts in the power sector.

However, Yang believed that with the expansion of inspection from government to public institutions, any sector that may generate power abuse will become the target of inspection.

The inspection is aimed at uncovering harmful behavior of officials, especially leading officials, including trading power for money, abusing power, and bribery, Xiang Zongxi, leader of the inspection team to Hainan, said on Tuesday at a conference in the island province.

Harmful work styles such as formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance will also be inspected, Xiang added at the conference.

Leading officials have been the major targets of the CCDI's inspection work, Ni Xing, a professor with the Center for Anti-Corruption Studies of Sun Yat-sen University, told the Global Times.

The CCDI's work report showed that 31 high-profile officials were investigated in 2013.

Ni believed that the CCDI's system of inspection work has been improved and become a model for inspections at local level.

"Although the effort from the top level has better effects, anti-graft work at the local level should also be strengthened to assist the campaign," Ni said.

Since the Chinese lunar new year in February, at least four ministerial-level officials have been investigated for suspected disciplinary and legal violations, including Ji Wenlin, former vice-governor of South China's Hainan province, and Shen Peiping, former vice-governor of Southwest China's Yunnan province.