Legislative Remedy

By Li Li

Lawmakers echo calls for comprehensive anti-corruption legislation

Over the past decade, China has been instituting a variety of efforts to stamp out corruption, such as amending existing laws and creating new laws pertaining to civil servants and money laundering, and establishing the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention. However, the campaign to systematically address corruption is far from over.

Legal experts and lawmakers have called for drafting a more specific anti-graft law and enhancing the independence, professionalism and authority of supervisory bodies.

On March 8, at a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC),China’s top legislature, Lang Sheng,Deputy Director of the Commission for Legislative Affairs of the NPC Standing Committee, said that improving antigraft legislation to punish and prevent corruption will be a legislative priority over the next five years.

According to Lang, legislation to constrain the power of public officials and government bodies specifically addressing their organizations, functions,operational procedures and supervisory mechanisms will be put in place during that period.

Lang’s announcement is the first mention of a timetable for a national anti-corruption law since the first motion on the issue was submitted to an NPC session 14 years ago. Zhang Zhongli, President of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, submitted the historic motion in 1999. Similar motions and suggestions were also submitted to NPC sessions in 2002, 2005,2010 and 2012, respectively.

PRIORITY HIGHLIGHTED: Lang Sheng addresses anti-graft legislation at a press conference on March 8

Li Chengyan, head of Peking University’s Clean Government Research Center, told newspaper Procuratorial Daily that there are several reasons for the extended wait. “With a transitional economy, the government has been busy solving problems hindering growth efficiency and lacked theoretical and practical preparation for drafting an anti-corruption law.Moreover, Confucianism emphasizes officials’personal moral standards over legislative imperatives. Political reform in China also falls behind other practices of reform and opening up,” he said.

At this year’s NPC session, a dominant view among deputies, especially those from the legal circle, was that China badly needs anti-corruption laws to create a sound legal environment.

“Anti-corruption campaigns should not be like harvesting leeks, which grow back soon after being cut off. We should focus on removing the roots and soil for corruption,” said Zhang Zhao’an, an economist from Shanghai.His remarks were echoed by fellow deputies.

Su Zelin, Vice President of the Supreme People’s Court, said that only laws and regulations can prevent officials of certain positions from falling into corruption.

Prosecutors have investigated approximately13,000 officials at the county head level or above for corruption and other duty-related crimes since 2008,including 30 officials at the ministerial level or higher, according to a work report delivered by Cao Jianming, Procurator General of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, to this year’s NPC session.

Bo Xilai, a former member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and Liu Zhijun, former Minister of Railways,were among the high-ranking officials investigated.

Ma Huaide, Vice President of the Beijing-based China University of Political Science and Law, is a long-time advocate for curbing corruption in China using laws and regulations. He has been invited to three expert seminars held by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Wang Qishan, head of the commission, hosted the most recent seminar last November.

Ma told The Beijing News that China still lacks several key laws to effectively contain power, which fall into three categories: basic laws curbing corruption at its origin, laws on strengthening supervision and those regulating the conduct of civil servants.

Ma said that the first category of laws includes a law governing procedures of government’s administrative conduct, which could reduce the abuse of power by stipulating that any major government decision must go through the procedures of soliciting public opinions, consulting experts, assessing possible legal and other risks, and group discussion.Ma said that laws regulating the government’s organizational setup should also fall under this category.

“China also needs to promulgate a law regulating the disclosure of government information, which has been proven internationally to be effective in fighting corruption,” Ma said.

According to him, although the Regulations on the Disclosure of Government Information already came into force in 2008, there are still cases in which the government refused to reveal certain information with the excuse of maintaining “state secrets” or “class ified documents.” Ma believes a law is needed to prevent misuse of the Law on Guarding State Secrets and the Archives Law.

Despite the hundreds of documents regulating civil servants’ conduct, such as the use of government vehicles and receiving gifts, hospitality or other benefits, Ma called for an overall law on the standards of conduct for civil service.

Ma predicted that China would have a complete anti-corruption legal framework within three to five years and the most urgent task was to draft the procedural law on government’s administrative conduct.

“Some people’s concern that exerting high standards on government’s administrative conduct could impede stability in a transitional society is totally unnecessary. An anti-graft legal framework contains only the most basic requirements on civil service and it would be difficult to prevent and punish corruption without it,” Ma said.

Transparent wealth

Liu Ling, an NPC deputy and lawyer from east China’s Jiangsu Province, suggested that the future anti-corruption law should mandate the disclosure of officials’ assets. She said that the increase in the total number of abuse-of-power cases in recent years, as well as the growing amount of money involved, can be attributed to the lack of supervision on the wealth of civil servants.

China has previously piloted such asset disclosure programs in parts of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, as well as Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, but mostly among lowranking officials.

In 2012, the Guangdong Provincial Government announced that similar programs would be launched in Nansha New District in Guangzhou City and Hengqin New District in Zhuhai City, as well as in Shixing County, on a trial basis.

The government of Shixing would ask 526 local officials to declare their families’ assets,including salaries, bonuses, subsidies, service income, real estate holdings, cars and investment portfolios, said Zheng Zhentao, Party chief of Shaoguan City, which administers Shixing, in January.

However, he added that the financial status of these officials would only be available for inquiry via internal government networks, rather than being fully revealed to the public.

According to the Procuratorial Daily, NPC deputies proposed laws on the disclosure of officials’ assets as early as the 1980s. In 1994,such a law was listed on the NPC’s five-year legislative agenda. Until this year’s NPC session,Han Deyun, an NPC deputy and lawyer from southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, had submitted the suggestion of drafting laws on disclosing officials’ assets for seven consecutive years.

Han told the New Express Daily that previous pilot programs often proved ineffective mainly due to a lack of firm legal or regulatory basis.

Over the past year, several government officials from across the country have been ousted for corruption after whistleblowers posted records of their families’ colossal real estate holdings on the Internet.

One noteworthy case involves Cai Bin, former head of the Urban Management Bureau of Panyu District in Guangzhou, who twice declared to higher authorities as required by Party discipline that his family owned only two properties.

On October 9, 2012, an anonymous whistleblower posted records of 21 properties owned by Cai and later investigations showed Cai’s family owned 22 properties, including a villa, a factory building, apartments and commercial properties. Cai was subsequently removed from his position and investigated for bribery.

According to a cabinet reshuffling program adopted by the NPC on March 14, the country will introduce a unified social credit code and establish a real property registration system, as well as improve the identity registration system used for financial accounting.Establishing these systems will enhance and innovate social management systems as well as lay the groundwork for preventing and punishing corruption, it said. ■