China’s anti-corruption campaign garnering momentum, congress told

The Chinese Communist Party’s anti-corruption campaign is picking up momentum, delegates gathered at the National People’s Congress in Beijing for the country’s annual parliament, the National People’s Congress, heard yesterday.

The campaign is a key plank in the policies of President Xi Jinping and work reports by the relevant ministries were delivered yesterday to the rubberstamp parliament. “Do not let regulations become ‘paper tigers’ or ‘scarecrows’,” Mr Xi said of the campaign.

The reports have been seen as a nod to the potential fate of China’s former security czar Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the all-powerful standing committee of the Politburo, who has reportedly been caught up in a corruption investigation, and an announcement is awaited, possibly even at this congress.

Investigations
According to the Supreme People's Procuratorate, prosecutors last year investigated 2,871 public servants at county levels and above, including 253 at city levels and eight at provincial and ministerial levels, in 2,581 cases of graft, bribery and embezzlement of public funds involving more than one million yuan (€720,000).

The work report of the Supreme People's Court showed that Chinese courts in 2013 convicted and punished 31,000 criminals in 29,000 cases of embezzlement, bribery and breach of duty. The highest profile of these was the former rising star of the Communist Party, Bo Xilai, who was purged shortly after he appeared at the congress in 2012, and former rail minister Liu Zhijun.

Mr Xi launched the anti-graft campaign two years ago to target both “tigers and flies”, referring to high and low ranking corrupt officials.

Punishments
According to the work report of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), discipline inspection agencies punished about 182,000 officials nationwide in 2013, 13.3 per cent more than in 2012. Thirty-one high-profile officials were investigated by the CCDI itself and eight of them were handed over to prosecutors.

Elsewhere at the congress, Yu Zhengsheng, the chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the parliament, stressed adherence to the "rule of law" in Tibet and criticised the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

He said strengthening the frontier region is key to governing a country, and maintaining stability in Tibet was a prerequisite of strengthening the frontier region. Efforts should be made to help local officials and people get a clear understanding of the nature and danger of the Dalai Lama’s preaching of the “middle way” and “high-degree autonomy”, he said.