Beijing's candour on corruption
Richard Halloran is surprised by Beijing's uncharacteristic candour
The Chinese Communist Party usually goes to great lengths to cover up events or trends they think will challenge their rule. But every now and then they surprise the world with their candour.
Take corruption: the party recently disclosed that 660,000 officials had been punished for corruption over the past five years. He Guoqiang, head of the party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, called investigating corruption cases a "long-term task in the process of building a clean government".
The most prominent of the recent cases of corruption has been that of Bo Xilai, the former party chief of Chongqing , who was dismissed for alleged abuse of power. But the discipline commission chief also pointed out that a railways minister and the mayor of Shenzhen had been fired.
He's disclosure did not specify the forms of corruption, but anecdotal evidence suggests that bribery and embezzlement were commonplace. Local party officials have long been accused of seizing land and property for their personal gain.
To put it in perspective, the 660,000 punished bureaucrats comprise but a fraction of China's millions of government employees - at the national, regional and local levels. The officials who were penalised evidently broke a tradition dating back at least to the Han dynasty 22 centuries ago when the mandarins who peopled government positions at every level were among the best educated and most respected men in the land.
He, who is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, said earlier that a five-year anti-corruption campaign would be launched by the party congress scheduled to meet in Beijing next month. "A sound system for punishing and curbing corruption is an important guarantee for the nation's development," He said.
In another anti-corruption plea, He recently visited major mainland publications to encourage editorial staff to make greater contributions to public education against corruption. He told them anti-graft education was fundamental to the party's endeavour to build a clean government.
