Authorities target county-level top officials

Global Times, February 17, 2011

China is exploring options to restrict the power of chief decision makers at local government agencies and county-level Party committees as they tend to be more prone to corruption, People's Daily reported Tuesday.

Experts called for more substantial measures to be taken to reform the personnel system, and for local officials to be appointed through a more democratic process.

Some local decision makers, commonly referred to as "all powerful men" in media, abuse their powers for personal favors due to a lack of checks and balances, the report said.

Data provided by the disciplinary committee of the Wuhan government, Hubei Province, revealed that these officials accounted for 44 percent of the total number of corrupt officials at director-level or above since 2002.

The report said powers, such as local official appointments, are excessively centralized in the hands of these officials.

Ji Hanping, a former head of a district in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, received 1.35 million yuan ($204,854) in bribes from construction and land acquisition projects in 2007, the report said.

Lin Zhe, a professor studying anti-corruption at the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, told the Global Times Tuesday that this unchecked power presented a major challenge to the country's anti-corruption effort.

She said county-level Party secretaries are those most vulnerable to corruption.

"County-level Party secretaries are in charge of everything within a county from official promotions to approval of large-scale construction programs," she said.