Intensified SOE corruption fight to aid 'New Normal'

China will intensify anti-graft work targeting the country's major state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with the first round of disciplinary inspection in 2015 covering 26 centrally-administered SOEs.

The focus on SOEs in the anti-corruption efforts is unprecedented, indicating the urgent need to solve the problem.

Previous inspections have uncovered multiple problems with the administration of many SOEs, ranging from officials seeking promotion via bribery, cheating in cadre selection and forming cliques to power abuse for personal benefits and encroaching state-owned assets.

Such inspections led to the fall of more than 70 SOE executives in 2014.

SOEs are playing an important role in China's public ownership economy and their assets and resources are the common property of all people. No one should be allowed to undermine such wealth and any attempt to do so must get seriously investigated and punished.

In the country's resolute anti-corruption drive, the SOEs should by no means be an exception. Like all the other sectors in China, the continuous fight against corruption and misconduct in SOEs will continue on a regular basis, becoming part of the country's "New Normal".

Also, in addition to efforts to arrest existing problems, SOEs should be streamlined to make effective corruption prevention a new industry normal.

Communist Party of China (CPC) leadership over SOEs should be further strengthen and the supervision of SOE administration should be improved and efficiently function.

Moreover, modern corporate practices need to be established in SOEs to regulate the operation and management of these enterprises in a more scientific and reasonable manner in order to squeeze out the chance for the officials to become corrupt.

To achieve a "new normal" for SOEs, advanced reforms are needed to break existing vested interests.

Breaking vested interests, whose monopolized power and resources are prone to be a source of corruption, will help the current anti-graft drive remove obstacles for reforms and bring about real change.

Experts believe cleaning up SOEs is important for China as it copes with slower growth. Corruption and abuse of power raise market operation costs, impair market openness, and harm the entire economy and society.

In this regard, intensified efforts to fight corruption and carry forward reforms in SOEs will help create a healthier market for the Chinese economy's "New Normal".