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Smoke signals from a fire

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-01 07:48

These days, quite a few cases of corruption, which had long been concealed, were revealed by chance. People want a more open system of combating corruption and for building a clean government, says an article in the Zhujiang Evening News. Excerpts:

With further progress in the investigation of the February 15 fire at China Central Television (CCTV) Station's new headquarters buildings, three more employees were detained on May 22, taking the total number of suspects to 20. All the three employees were management-level officials of the CCTV Relocation Office, which was charged with the responsibility to oversee the construction work of the new buildings.

According to the confession of Xu Wei, ex-director of CCTV Relocation Office, the case involved economic issues related to the bidding process.

It is this suspicion of corruption that triggered a public uproar. In addition to a series of corruption cases, which were previously exposed by occasional incidents, the CCTV fire "contributed" to yet another exposure. The suspicion is that the bidding process was not above board and this probably resulted in regulatory and supervisory lapses.

The anti-corruption system in our country, assumed to be sound and well established, is once again embarrassed as well as challenged by the "big deal" which was uncovered by an abnormal incident. The lesson from the CCTV building fire and the scandal it revealed is that the only way to the fundamental to combat corruption and build a clean government is to strengthen the anti-corruption mechanism.

The anti-corruption mechanism should be more open, transparent and capable of developing new and effective channels to nip corruption at the very source.

(China Daily 06/01/2009 page4)