Strict rules for clean governance will help ensure honest officials

FOSHAN CITY in South China's Guangdong province recently adopted a plan to set up "experimental zones for clean governance" in which new anti-graft regulations will be experimented. The regulations require officials to report their activities during non-working hours, as well as personal matters. Ye Zhusheng, a law scholar at South China University of Technology, says in Beijing News that strict implementation is needed to make these regulations effective:

Many people argue that it is too strict for the disciplinary authorities to supervise officials' deeds during non-working hours. It is natural for people, government staff included, to send and accept gifts and attend parties with their friends, they claim.

History shows that to clean up corruption-stricken governance, high-pressure anti-graft measures are needed to curb the trend first before long-term regulations can be rooted in the political ecology.