According to a report in China Youth Daily last week,
the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline
Inspection (CCDI) has decided to continue a pilot monitoring the
movements of officials' families to help prevent corruption.
The Central Committee of Taiwan Democratic Self-Government
League, which proposed the motion, said that the number of
government officials and state-owned enterprise leaders fleeing
abroad with huge sums of money has risen in recent years, so being
aware of their moves is essential to detecting corruption.
The CCDI has been recording officials' travel plans and their
children's job applications since July in Xiangfang in Hubei
Province, Shuozhou in Shanxi
Province and at two big enterprises in Beijing.
"We will accumulate experience from the pilot and formulate next
steps," an official from the CCDI was quoted as saying.
Anti-corruption experts have found a general modus
operandi for fugitive officials: they first search for an
ideal destination in the name of overseas work, then send relatives
there and transfer money to them before finally fleeing
themselves.
"The number of corrupt officials who run overseas has increased
since 2000, the year Hu Changqing, former vice governor of Jiangxi
Province, was sentenced to death for corruption," said Wang
Minggao, a professor at Hunan University
and leader of a state-funded anti-corruption strategy research
program.
Though the government has not disclosed the number of corrupt
officials who have fled overseas, Jia Chunwang, procurator-general
of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said 596 fugitive corrupt
officials were brought back in 2003.
(Xinhua News Agency January 26, 2005)