OPINION> Commentary
House cleaning
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-03 07:28

The fifth session of the 11th NPC Standing Committee last week announced a number of appointments and dismissals.

If you missed the announcements, make it up. Especially if you care about what the country's corruption busters are up to.

Huang Songyou, a vice president of the Supreme People's Court was removed. He is the highest-ranking official in the judiciary to be sacked since 1949, on corruption charges.

Besides, you can also see the national legislature's own house-cleaning. The conference accepted the resignation of Zhu Zhigang, a member of the NPC Standing Committee and deputy director of the NPC Financial and Economic Affairs Committee. It also confirmed termination of memberships of two other NPC delegates, from Guangdong and Sichuan respectively.

The reasons differ. But all had to do with financial irregularities.

There were a lot more worth mentioning last month. On October 18, former vice mayor of Beijing Liu Zhihua was sentenced to death, with a two-year reprieve, for taking bribes.

Few of the 31 days of the past month have passed without reports of officials, from central government ministries to the provinces, being probed by the Communist Party of China's disciplinary watchdog, or the judiciary for involvement in corruption scandals.

In spite of the surprisingly low profile, there is every sign that the national leadership is anxious to make real headway in its fight against corruption.

They have to be.

With corruption standing high on the list of foremost public concerns, there is no way to skirt around it any more.

President Hu Jintao is only the latest national leader to associate corruption with the life or death of the Communist Party of China, not just its ruling status. But he is the first to come up with a comprehensive prescription aiming at uprooting it.

You must have noticed the establishment of the National Bureau for Corruption Prevention last fall. President Hu's approach to corruption accentuates prevention.

At the 17th National Congress of the CPC, Hu talked about an approach to corruption control and clean governance "with Chinese characteristics". Such characteristics, as are obvious from between the lines, refer to a combination of ideological work, system building, and supervision. The formula was faithfully applied to the 2008-2012 roadmap for corruption control published in May.

It is important to bring the corrupt to justice. People want to see actual cases and hard blows.

But beyond that, we need well-thought-out designs to make sure those in positions of power cannot so easily abuse them. The central authorities have promised to present such a framework in five years. One has almost slipped away.

So from now on, we need to see more practical efforts to place public powers, not just corrupt individuals, in check.

(China Daily 11/03/2008 page4)