Making government clean and accountable
- By Wen Jiabao
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E-mail China.org.cn, November 2, 2012
(4) Government ethics and industry morals have been enhanced. Government ethics are symbolic of the government's image; and industry morals represent the image of industries. The construction of government ethics and industry morals is a key task of the anti-corruption drive. In recent years, to better the government ethics, the government has reigned in extravagant spending, curbed waste and cut back on formality. These actions have resulted in greatly reduced administrative expenses, with the three public consumptions falling annually. Awarding activities have also been carefully examined and cleaned up, resulting in an abolishment of 73,726 awarding schemes. Special management measured has been implemented to oversee the use of commercial prepaid cards, as well as clean up of "private accounts" and official vehicles. In terms of the construction of industry morals, instances of malpractice in some key industries have been rectified and issues which have negatively impacted on the public interest have been solved. When dealing with the problems concerning education, health care, production safety, land acquisition and resettlement, environmental protection, food and drug safety and engineering construction, the government launched special treatment initiatives, carried out follow-up auditing, issued new rules and regulations and improved the institutional mechanisms for safeguarding people's interests. Democratic appraisals of government ethics and industry morals have been carried out, with more than 60 million people directly participating in these drives annually. Generally, industry morals have been improved.
(5) Supervision and management related to the transparent and fair governance of officials has been bolstered. Officials, who play a key role in the anti-corruption drive, should on the one hand abide by the rules of clean governance themselves; on the other hand, they should also strengthen the supervision and inspection of clean governance. The system, which requires officials to report all personal matters, has been implemented. Officials whose spouses and children have moved abroad have been placed under more intense scrutiny. The auditing system targeting officials' economic responsibility while they are in office has been improved. Illegal behavior among officials, such as accepting cash and gifts, seeking illicit interests by house trade and trust financing, has been addressed and rectified. The self-discipline of leaders in state-owned enterprises has also come under supervision. Their on-the-job consumption has been regulated. A crackdown has been launched on officials seeking illegitimate interests for themselves or their relatives through horizontal and connected transactions. Thorough investigations into official misdeeds, followed by the punishments of offenders have always been the most effective and direct method to fight corruption. Punishments have been increased for those involved in cases of corruption, including abuses of power and trading power and influence for money. As a result, numerous high-ranking officials have been punished and we have seen high-profile cases which have involved huge amounts of money.
However, in spite of the many successful government measures which have been introduced to fight corruption and ensure the construction of a clean and transparent system of government, the situation is still far from perfect. The fight against anti-corruption is, however, still at a critical stage. Corruption can easily breed in departments where power is concentrated, especially those which deal with project approval and law enforcement organs, as well as fund and resource management. Public service units and state-owned enterprises have seen an increasing number of corruption cases and cases involving high-level officials are still of particular concern. Some cases have involved huge funds and a big number of officials in some agencies, bring very negative influence. One reason why these problems continue to haunt us is that some departments with an excessive concentration of power lack effective supervision. Corruption, which poses the greatest threat to a ruling party, would, if inadequately addressed, lead to the change of the regime, therefore ending the era of the party's leadership. This, then, is the major test which currently faces the government.
2. Important anti-corruption tasks for 2012
The year 2012 is the final year of the present administration's period of service, but this should not result in any letting up of endeavor. Measures to ensure clean and transparent governance and ensure a corruption-free government should be fully implemented; both the reform and system construction should be strengthened and the following aspects should be prioritized.
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