The fight against corruption should rely on legislation and regulations rather than orders from senior officials, says an article in the Beijing News. An excerpt follows:

Huang Jingao, Party Secretary of Lianjiang County in Fujian Province, wrote a letter to the media to reveal his life under death threats over the past six years, definitely becoming a rare example in China's anti-corruption campaign.

China has always been trying to build an effective mechanism against corruption in the past years, especially since economic reform was launched in the late 1970s.

Two models of combating corruption developed in this process: fighting corruption with the attention and instructions of senior officials or fighting it with a framework of rules and regulations.

The latter line has made remarkable progress in recent years after new legislation and regulations were put into effect.

But China's anti-corruption system still needs much improvement.

Admittedly, the senior officials' attention and instructions are important in eliminating corruption. However, it should never be the only way to fix the problem.

It is proven in practice that solely relying on the personal determination and efforts of some officials is costly and inefficient.

If a corrupt official finds he is under investigation by another official, he will try to protect himself by abusing the public power he is entrusted with, either to stop such an investigation, move the investigating official out of the post or even physically threaten the official.

In this way, public power will be misused and the society will suffer setbacks in fighting the social scourge of corruption.

On the other hand, when the anti-corruption efforts are mainly led by individuals, the relative rules and regulations appear to be less valid, hence further weakening the power of rules and regulations designed to combat corruption.

An effective and unified system of rules and regulations is the real cure to corruption. China has basically completed the construction of such a network, although it has still not been fully put into practice.

Another important step is to increase anti-corruption awareness among the general public.

(China Daily 08/14/2004 page4)