The collusion of officials in the Communist Party of China (CPC)
and government with big business is posing new challenges in
China's fight against corruption, according to a CPC expert.
More than 100 provincial and ministerial-level Party and
government officials had been investigated for corruption and
related charges since the present CPC Central Committee was
installed at the 16th CPC National Congress in 2002, said Shao
Daosheng, a retired special researcher with the CPC Central
Commission for Discipline Inspection.
"The number of high-level officials being investigated and
arrested in the past four years is higher than any other period in
the Party's history," Shao said in an interview with Xinhua.
Last year alone, nine officials at the provincial and
ministerial level were convicted and jailed for corruption, Chief
Justice Xiao Yang said in his work report to the ongoing session of
the national legislature.
Shao said the most striking feature of last year's corruption
cases was Party and government officials colluding with business
people to misappropriate billions of yuan.
Shao cited the Shanghai pension scandal, which led to the
downfall of Chen Liangyu, former party chief of Shanghai, and Qiu
Xiaohua, former head of the National Bureau of Statistics, as a
typical case of abuse of power and illicit collaboration with
business people.
"These interest groups have been found taking advantage of
state-owned enterprise reform, urban resettlement projects and
large-scale construction projects for their own gain," Shao said,
adding that finance and the stock markets were also sources for
such corruption.
However, "land corruption", often found in real estate industry
and land approval projects, was the key to be addressed in the
battle against corruption, said Shao.
"If land corruption was dealt with, the government would get
twice the results with half the effort in the fight against
corruption," he said.
In February, Minister of Construction Wang Guangtao, warned that
the real estate industry had become a hotbed of power-for-money
deals. "The industry has institutional loopholes in preventing and
combating corruption, especially the collusion between government
officials and businesses," he said.
"Land corruption" led to the fall of many high-profile officials
from power last year, including Li Baojin, former chief procurator
of Tianjin municipal procuratorate, He Minxu, vice governor of
Anhui Province, and Liu Zhihua, vice mayor of Beijing
Municipality.
Last year, 415 people in the construction sector were found to
have committed criminal offences of breaching the ruling Communist
Party's disciplinary code. About 68 percent were in administrative
departments.
From January to July, 1,608 commercial corruption cases involved
the construction sector, 26.3 percent of the country's total
commercial corruption cases for that period.
Curbing corruption in real estate and land approval would also
lead to more efficient land use, said Shao.
China had 1,95 billion mu (130 million hectares) of farmland in
1996, but by 2005, the area had dwindled by 121 million mu to 1.83
billion mu.
Another major concern was corruption affecting the lives of
ordinary people, particularly concerning healthcare, education and
housing costs.
In 2006, an increased number of officials in all government
departments were blacklisted by the government in the campaign
against corruption.
A report on China's procuratorial work in 2006 by Jia Chunwang,
procurator-general of China's Supreme People's Procuratorate, says
prosecutors investigated allegation of corruption, bribery and
dereliction of duty against 40,041 government employees, of whom
29,966 were prosecuted.
The government attempted to break up alliances between officials
and business people last year by reshuffling the discipline and
inspection chiefs in 15 provinces and municipalities.
The central government would monitor and evaluate provincial
discipline and inspection officials and help them tackle local
problems, Shao said.
Shao also called for improved supervision within government
departments to control the absolute power of government leaders,
adding that a national anti-graft bureau should be set up to
prevent corruption and punish corrupt officials.
(Xinhua News Agency March 15, 2007)