A big data system to manage Communist Party of China (CPC) cadres has been introduced in the the city of Huai'an in eastern China's Jiangsu Province.[Special coverage]
Information on each of the city's 12,000 cadres has been compiled under 356 data fields.
The system will keep confidential data used for cadre selection, covering detailed personal information and work performance history. It was developed by the Huai'an municipal CPC organization department.
"If there is a vacancy, the system is fast to screen all candidates with qualifications matching the position. In the past, people depended on their connections to recommend someone they know," said Zhang Xu, an official with the department.
The database pools information that used to be kept separately by 20 departments.
The system puts cadres in a color grouping system, using red, orange and green. Zhang said red showed cadres that had received disciplinary punishments or warnings, yellow indicated cadres accused of discipline violations but with no ruling made, and green indicated a clean record that could suggest a cadre was suitable for promotion.
CPC organizations from both within and without Jiangsu have come to Huai'an to learn from its experiment.
Big data is the latest method used by the CPC to motivate and select outstanding CPC cadres, while punishing those implicated in corruption.
In addition to the big data technology, China's first commercial quantum private communication network is being piloted by the Party and government. The network provides secure telephone and data communication services in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong Province.
Alongside technology, the CPC has been quick to embrace more subtle methods as part of its management strategy.
One such method is the introduction of special centers to educate grassroots members on appropriate behavior.
In the city of Zibo in Shandong, grassroots Party members are now required to receive a "health check" at Party education centers.
Shi Caihua, 52, is among 200,000 Party members who have received the health check.
"I was asked whether I had observed all social norms, such as protecting the community environment, not illegally parking and not dumping garbage," said the community worker who serves 400 households.
Shi was embarrassed by the health check as she had been using a public corner of her residential community as her own vegetable garden.
Sure enough, the day after her Party purity education she removed the fences and pulled up her vegetables.
Liu Wei, head of the CPC organization department in Zibo, said there were 32 Party education centers in the city to provide Party purity health checks. Cadres who failed to meet the right standards will go through an education process six-months later.
Every examinee is given 20 questions. In addition to matching their daily behavior with the oath at the CPC joining ceremony, questions include whether they would face danger on behalf of other people or for the Party, and whether they would extend help to people that were in difficult circumstances.
Over the past year, 26 Party members were judged as unqualified through the checks and expelled from the Party in Zibo.
Similar Party management techniques have also been tried in Huzhou in eastern China's Zhejiang Province.
Such pilots are expected to rejuvenate the Party and innovate its organization and management.
The CPC has introduced a string of new solutions to manage the 4.5 million groups that organize its 89 million members. They include standardizing Party working procedures, introducing a performance appraisal system and publishing information via bulletin boards and the Internet.
