Progress in China's war on corruption
By FRANK CHING
LAST March, Xiao Yang, the president of the Supreme People's Court, reported that more than 83,000 Chinese officials had been found guilty of corruption in the past five years.
In the months since then, the land and resources minister was dismissed on allegations of corruption and two provincial party secretaries accused of corruption have lost their jobs. Clearly, corruption continues to be a serious problem in China. And yet, despite all the adverse publicity, there are signs that the Chinese government and the Communist Party are slowly making headway in the fight against corruption.
Signs of progress can be seen in China's rankings by Transparency International (TI), the Berlin-based international non-governmental body devoted to combating corruption. In 1995, the first year that TI published its rankings, China received a score of 2.16 on a scale of 10, with 10 being highly clean and zero highly corrupt. The following year, China scored 2.43, still very low but clearly an improvement. In 1997, China moved higher still, to 2.88 and in 1998, China reached its highest score of 3.5. In the years since then, China has hovered in that range, scoring 3.5 in 2002 and dropping slightly to 3.4 this year.
Clearly, the situation has improved substantially. Professor Dali Yang of the University of Chicago, who tracks corruption in China, said in an interview that China still looks bad but it is not becoming worse. According to Prof Yang, corruption was the foremost public issue in the late 1990s but had by 2001 receded in importance relative to other issues such as unemployment.
The Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC), the party's anti-corruption body, published a survey in the late 1990s showing that the majority of people felt that Beijing could not deal effectively with corruption. After that, the commission stopped releasing the findings of such surveys. However, this year, the commission resumed making data available, indicating that the situation has improved. Surveys by the commission and by other bodies show that, while the level of corruption is still high by global standards, corruption has receded as an issue for the average Chinese.
Recently, even the nine members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo - the country's most powerful body - agreed to submit themselves to supervision by the disciplinary commission. There is a trend for the CDIC to be more independent, Prof Yang said, but not as independent as Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption. President Hu Jintao is a tougher corruption fighter, willing to make examples, he said, while former President Jiang Zemin was more of a compromiser.
Interestingly, the Asian financial crisis appears to have played a key role in the battle against corruption. Since then, a combination of a political will to crack down on corruption and the creation of new institutions and mechanisms have combined to make it a little more difficult for officials to be corrupt. While, in the past, people could open bank accounts using false names, this is now forbidden. All new accounts must use real names. All land for commercial use must now go through a public auction, minimising the discretionary power of officials. And, in terms of government procurement, increasingly, competitive bidding is required for things like provision of office supplies or school uniforms. Reduction of officials' discretionary power also reduces opportunities for corruption.
Moreover, governmental and party bodies were told to get out of business as the party emphasised the need to separate the roles of the government and the private sector. The military, the armed police and the judiciary were all told to divest themselves of business interests. The divestiture by now is fairly complete. Technology also played a role. Computerisation meant that in many cases there was no need for a middleman. And some cities, such as Shanghai, are putting the results of auctions on websites so that anyone can check. Such initiatives make it harder for officials to become corrupt.
Perhaps as a result of the crackdown within China, many corrupt officials have fled overseas. Shao Daosheng of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, estimates that 4,000 people have fled the country, taking with them US$600 million worth of assets. China has also detected the '59 phenomenon'. Since officials have to retire at 60, some try to make a killing before stepping down. While the situation may have improved somewhat, China still has a long way to go. At 3.4, China is in the same league as Panama, Sri Lanka and Syria - and way below Hong Kong (8.0), or Singapore (9.4).
The writer is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator
business-times.asia1.com.sg |
