Friday 15 May 2009

Graft-fighters sharpen skills

The first group of 780 county-level graft-fighters was summoned to Beijing last week for eight days of training on stemming corruption in local governments.

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Guanyu said...

Graft-fighters sharpen skills

Ivan Zhai
15 May 2009

The first group of 780 county-level graft-fighters was summoned to Beijing last week for eight days of training on stemming corruption in local governments.

For the first time, all 2,000 secretaries of county-level Commissions for Discipline Inspection (CDI) will attend courses at the Central Communist Party School, according to The Southern Metropolis News.

They are being taught skills such as how to properly receive petitioners. Handling social unrest, which is closely linked to corruption, is one of the focal points. On the second day of the course, participants were addressed by one of the mainland’s top graft-busters, CDI deputy head Zhang Huixin.

Dong Yaoming , a top graft fighter in Shanxi’s Ji county, acknowledged that many protests were rooted in anger at corruption, an issue to which local governments and party committees had not given enough attention, the report said.

The gathering followed similar meetings for county-level party bosses last year, and police chiefs in February. Experts said it was a sign of Beijing’s attempts to improve county-level governance. Graft was rampant at that level, said one anti-corruption expert at the party school.

“The trend is that more cases involving lower-level officials have been exposed, and corruption in coastal areas is worse than in inland provinces,” Lin Zhe said. She denied that the mainland’s anti-graft effort was failing, saying the fact that more cases involving higher ranking officials were coming to light showed Beijing was succeeding.

The public is increasingly concerned about the honesty of the watchdog itself because of the growing numbers of scandals involving graft-busters.

Earlier this week, Beijing appointed a new chief of the Zhejiang watchdog after its former chief, Wang Huayuan , was detained.

Professor Lin said this case clearly showed the problems that arose because of a lack of proper supervision. “It is still about how to restrict [graft-busters’] power,” she said.

Beijing has listed party committees and party members as the weakest link in the system. Professor Lin said party members, especially the party chiefs, relied on professional graft-fighters and contributed little to the exposure of corruption.