A Study on the Influence of Local Top Leaders’ Corruption— An Empirical Analysis Based on the Municipal Party Committee Secretaries Sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China

Liao Chongxu, Li Huoqiang, Zhou Dong＊

A Study on the Influence of Local Top Leaders’ Corruption— An Empirical Analysis Based on the Municipal Party Committee Secretaries Sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China

Liao Chongxu, Li Huoqiang, Zhou Dong＊

Based on the cross-sectional data about the municipal Party committee secretaries sacked since the 18th CPC National Congress, this paper adopts a regression model to examine and assess the impact of local top Party leaders’corruption.The study discovers that local heads’ integrity directly affects local political ecology they are in; that regions in the charge of corruptive heads suffer a higher degree of corruption; and that the tenure of corruptive local heads relates much to the degree of local corruption (i.e.the longer their tenure is, the more baneful influence they exert on the clean governance of local leaders and cadres).Consequently, it is imperative to establish and consolidate a power structure and a corresponding operating mechanism which enable effective mutual constraint and balance among decisionmaking power, executive power and supervision power.Only by doing so can China alleviate the negative impact of local heads’ corruption, effectively restrict and supervise local heads’ exercise of power, and maintain a well balance between “power delegation” and “power supervision”.

local heads; sacked secretaries of municipal Party committee; degree of corruption; proportion of secretaries investigated

The top leader occupying the core position in a leading body plays an important and even decisive role in the overall work of the group or department, and his personal corruption might lead to collective corruption of the group, even the whole department.Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, pointed out, “Among the corrupt officials investigated by us, top leaders of various quarters account for a large proportion.This shows that supervision over top leaders is still a weak link.”According to scholar Qiao Defu’s statistics, from the beginning of reform and opening–up to the end of 2013, a total of 54 top leaders at the provincial and departmental level, 177 top leaders at the prefecture level and 544 top leaders at the county level were sacked for corruption, and the cases of collective corruption masterminded by them account for nearly 70%.A few top leaders’ corruption not only seriously damages the local political ecology, but also hinders healthy local economic and social development.This paper, according to cross–sectional data of the municipal Party committee secretaries sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (as of June 2016), uses a regression model to carry out analysis and further examine and evaluate the influence of local top Party leaders’ corruption in the hope of strengthening prediction of corruption trends and selection of corruption governance strategies.

1.Research hypotheses

After controlling economic and institutional factors, this paper selects the influence factor of municipal Party committee secretaries, examines sacked municipal Party committee secretaries’influence on corruption in the places where they held office through analyzing the dimensions of whether the municipal Party committee secretary is corrupt or not, the sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s term of office, the sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s length of work at the place of service①The sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s length of work at the place of service refers to the sum of the length of serving as municipal Party committee secretary and the length of holding other posts in the same place.and the sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s original post,②The sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s origin is dispatch from a provincial department, promotion in the same city, cross-city promotion or samelevel transfer.and measures the intensity of such influence.Therefore, the following research hypotheses are put forward:

H1: A corrupt municipal Party committee secretary worsens the degree of corruption in the place of service.

H2: The longer a corrupt municipal Party committee secretary’s term of office, the higher the level of the place’s corruption.

H3: The longer a corrupt municipal Party committee secretary’s length of work at the place of service (including the length of serving as municipal Party committee secretary and the length of holding other posts in the same place), the higher the level of the place’s corruption.

H4a: A corrupt municipal Party committee secretary promoted in the same city has greater influence on the degree of local corruption.

H4b: A corrupt municipal Party committee secretary promoted in another city or transferred at the same level has greater influence on the degree of local corruption.

H4c: A corrupt municipal Party committee secretary dispatched from a provincial department has greater influence on the degree of local corruption.

2.Statistical description and empirical method

2.1 Sample and sources of data

Based on theoretical analysis of officials’corruption and collective corruption, this paper puts forward the above theoretical hypotheses and establishes the corresponding regression models to empirically test them with the municipal Party committee secretaries sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China as the sample.The data selected for research include personal data of the municipal Party committee secretaries sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, statistical data of the cities where the sacked municipal Party committee secretaries held office,statistical data of the cities where no municipal Party committee secretary was sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and data of cities’ degree of corruption.

As for personal data of the sacked municipal Party committee secretaries, their data are mainly obtained through checking publicly available information about the municipal Party committee secretaries sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China from the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, main Chinese news media, newspapers, periodicals and books to confirm that 36 municipal Party committee secretaries were sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China,involving 17 provinces and autonomous regions including Henan, Sichuan, Anhui, Shanxi, Hebei,Jiangxi, Fujian, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong,Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, Zhejiang, Guizhou,Qinghai, Heilongjiang and Guangxi.Data include the sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s name, age, length of service as secretary, length of work, original post and time of downfall.

As for data of numbers of people involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file in the cities where the sacked municipal Party committee secretaries worked, the precondition of obtaining such cross–sectional data is selecting data of numbers of people involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file in the work reports of the cities’prosecutors for the years when they were sacked.If there was no data, then the data for the year before the downfall are selected to ensure the work–related crimes in the cities occurred within their terms of office and near the years of their downfall.Data of numbers of people involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file in the cities where 23 municipal Party committee secretaries sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China worked were obtained from public data.Among them, the corruption of Gao Jinsong(sacked as Secretary of the Kunming Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China)mainly took place in Qujing and the corruption of Liao Shaohua (sacked as Secretary of the Zunyi Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China) mainly took place in Qiandongnan, so the numbers of people involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file in Qujing and Qiandongnan Prefecture for the years when they left the two cities were selected for data entry.

As for data of numbers of people involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file in the cities where no municipal Party committee secretary was sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, with the exception of the cities in Tibet and Xinjiang, control cities’data are obtained through random sampling without replacement.Because many cities did not publicly release work reports of the local procuratorates online, even though there are relevant public data of some cities, they are excluded in this paper to ensure data authenticity and reliability because they are not from official websites.Data of numbers of people involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file in 22 cities were finally selected, all from the 2015 work reports of these cities’ procuratorates.

As for statistical data for the cities where the municipal Party committee secretaries sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China worked and the cities where no municipal Party committee secretary was sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, such data comes from China’s city statistical yearbooks and various provinces’ statistical yearbooks, with the years of data corresponding to the years of data about degrees of corruption.The specific data include per capita GDP, government expenditures, employers’ average pay, number of employees, number of employees in public administration and social organizations and average pay of employees in public administration and social organizations.

2.2 Selection of variables

The dependent variable is the city’s degree of corruption, the independent variables are whether the municipal Party committee secretary is corrupt or not, the sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s length of work at the place of service and the sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s origin, and the control variables are economic development, the government size, government officials’ relative pay and separation of powers at the municipal level.

(1) Dependent variable

Because corruption has very complicated,diverse and secret forms, it is difficult to accurately measure it.At present, academic circles mainly use two methods to measure a region’s degree of corruption.One is obtaining the corruption index through calculation with survey data, e.g.data such as a country’s clean government index, corruption governance and corruption records in International Country Risk Guide, which are mainly subjective data for country–to–country comparisons of corruption.The other is measuring corruption with actual corruption crime rates.This paper adopts the ratio of the number of people investigated for work–related crimes in various cities’ government officials, i.e.a region’s degree of corruption=number of people involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file/number of employees in public administration and social organizations, denoted by corruption.

(2) Independent variables

The core independent variables to which this paper gives attention include whether the municipal Party committee secretary is corrupt or not, the sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s term of office,the sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s length of work at the place of service and the sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s origin.Whether the municipal Party committee secretary is corrupt or not is a dummy variable, denoted by sacked.The corrupt municipal Party committee secretaries are the treatment group, assigned the value of 1; the uncorrupt municipal Party committee secretaries are the reference group, assigned the value of 0.The sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s term of office, denoted by tenure, is the specific number of years since the sacked municipal Party committee secretary took up the post.The sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s length of work at the place where he was finally sacked, denoted by working life, is the sum of the length of serving as municipal Party committee secretary and the length of holding other posts in the same place.The sacked municipal Party committee secretary’s origin is dispatch from a provincial department, promotion in the same city,cross–city promotion or same–level transfer, denoted by where.With dispatch from provincial departments as reference groups, the dummy variables of promotion in the same city, cross–city promotion and same–level transfer were selected, assigned the value of 1 respectively.

(3) Control variables

Economic development: China’s economic development and the trend of frequent occurrence of corruption have always been a hot topic of discussion in the academic circles, but no consensus on the causal relationship between the two has been reached until now.Some scholars point out that decisive factors of corruption and the causal relationship theory emphasize existence of an overt relationship between economic development and corruption and that a higher level of economic development can lead to a lower degree of corruption, while corruption causes slower economic development.Other scholars think that corruption originated from economic development and that corrupt officials plunder new wealth created through reform instead of existing wealth.Still other scholars propose that economic development’s influence on corruption is manifested as a reverse U–shaped curve and that the observed results are a positive correlation between economic development and corruption because China’s level of economic development is still low.Finally, some scholars think that the influence of various Chinese provinces and cities’ economic development on the circumstances of local corrupt officials’ corruption is not prominent.This paper selects the level of economic development as a control variable for measuring the degree of corruption, represented by various areas’ actual per capita GDPs and denoted by Gross Domestic Product Per Capita.

The government size: The government size is a variable exerting important influence on occurrence of corruption.Some scholars think expansion of the government size is deemed as a country’s absorption and extension of modern structures and an adjustment of systems and structures combining organization members and collective interests effectively.Other scholars propose that a larger government size also means that government departments can control economic activities by means of administrative examination and approval to obtain more rent–seeking opportunities, so expansion of the government size is one of the main reasons for corruption.For China, the number of government officials measured according to the standard of fiscally dependent population is quite large and expands too fast, which is not suitable for China’s current level of economic development and the public services provided by the government.This study selected the government size as a control variable for measuring the degree of corruption, represented by various areas’ proportions of employees in public administration and social organizations to employees in all units and denoted by government.

Government officials’ relative pay: The occurrence mechanism of officials’ corruption shows that one of the reasons for occurrence of officials as rational economic individuals is the influence of pay.In today’s empirical studies, most documents show that public servants’ high pay can alleviate corruption.However, because some areas or departments use extra–budgetary funds to distribute internal subsidies in periods when local governments’ extra–budgetary funds expands rapidly, public servants’pay is higher, they provide soil for departmental and collective corruption.But some scholars point out upon research that as salaries rise, China’s degree of corruption becomes worse, and that there is a positive correlation between high pay and corruption.This paper selects public servants’ relative pay as a control variable for measuring the degree of corruption,represented by proportions of the pay of employees in public administration and social organizations to the average pay of employees (because there are no data of public servants’ pay in statistical yearbooks,we use “the average pay of employees in public administration and social organizations”) as denoted by wage.

Separation of powers at the municipal level:There are two completely different views on the influence of separation official powers at the municipal level on corruption.One view is represented by Weingast (1995), Huther&Shah (1998)and Fisman&Gatti (2002).They think there is a significant negative correlation between separation of powers and officials’ corruption.Scholars represented by Wu Yiping hold an opposite view,thinking separation of the government’s powers increases demand for bribery and worsens the problem of corruption.For this variable, we select the assessment method adopted by Yu Qin (2013)in Input of Resources for Mainland China’s Fight against Corruption: Regional Differences, Causes and Influences.Separation of powers at the municipal level=fiscal expenditure at the municipal level/total fiscal expenditure at the provincial level.A higher proportion indicates the city’s high financial autonomy and a lower proportion indicates the city’s low financial autonomy.This variable is denoted by decentral.

(3) Model design

According to analysis of existing documents and the research purpose of this paper, the following quantitative models were established:

subscript i represents the cities where the municipal Party committee secretaries were sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (23 in the treatment group) and the cities where no municipal Party committee secretary were sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (22 in the control group), 45 in total.Because variable corruption is the proportion of the number of people involved in cases of embezzlement, bribery,malfeasance and infringement placed on file by the procuratorate every year to the number of local government officials as defined above (number of people involved in cases placed on file/number of government officials), we use it to measure the 45 sample cities’ degrees of corruption.Independent variable sacked is a dummy variable, and its coefficient α1measures the influence of the top leader on a city’s degree of corruption.Xiis a control variable influencing the degree of corruption,including gdppc, wage, gov and decentral, and αj(j=1、2、3、4) represents these variables’ influence on a city’s degree of corruption.ε is a random distracter, representing the elements influencing the level of corruption but not captured by the model.

The second model tests hypotheses H2, H3 and H4 (H4a, H4b and H4c).

The subscript i represents the 23 sample cities where the municipal Party committee secretaries were sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China.Because variable corruption is the proportion of the number of people involved in cases of embezzlement, bribery,malfeasance and infringement placed on file by the procuratorate every year to the number of local government officials as defined above (number of people involved in cases placed on file/number of government officials), we use it to measure the 23 sample cities’ degrees of corruption.The independent variables include tenure, working life and where, and β1β2β3are the corresponding variables’ coefficients measuring their influence on the degree of corruption.Xiis a control variable influencing the degree of corruption, including gdppc, wage, gov and decentral, and βj(j=4、5、6、7) represents these variables’ influence on a city’s degree of corruption.ε is a random distracter,representing the elements influencing the level of corruption but not captured by the model.

3.Quantitative tests and research fi ndings

3.1 Descriptive statistics

After the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China’s overall degree of corruption showed a stable trend.In the four years from 2012 to 2015, the proportion of the number of government officials involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file fluctuated around 0.0033.The proportion of municipal Party committee secretaries involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file rose notably from 0.009 in 2013 to 0.048 in 2015.(See Figure 1)

A total of 36 municipal Party committee secretaries were sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China,involving 17 provinces and autonomous regions; 7 in Henan, 4 in Shanxi, 3 in Sichuan, 3 in Yunnan, 3 in Guangdong, 2 in Anhui, 2 in Hebei, 2 in Jiangsu,2 in Shandong, 1 in Jiangxi, 1 in Fujian, 1 in Inner Mongolia, 1 in Zhejiang, 1 in Guizhou, 1 in Qinghai,1 in Heilongjiang and 1 in Guangxi.

Figure 1 National Proportion of People Involved in Cases of Work-Related Crimes Placed on File after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China and Proportion of Sacked Municipal Party Committee Secretaries

Table 1 Information on the Municipal Party Committee Secretaries Sacked after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China

City Name Year of Birth Length of Serving as Secretary of Work Original Post Time of Downfall Length Zhumadian Liu Guoqing 1957 1 6 Promotion in the same city 2014 Yuncheng Wang Maoshe 1957 1.5 1.5 Transfer from another place 2015 Huainan Fang Xiping 1958 1.5 1.5 Dispatch from a provincial department 2015 Xingtai Wang Aimin 1958 3 3 Transfer from another place 2014 Pingxiang Chen Weimin 1959 1 6 Promotion in the same city 2015 Lianyungang Li Qiang 1955 3 3 Transfer from another place 2014 Datong Feng Lixiang 1957 6.5 8.5 Promotion in the same city 2014 Ziyang Li Jia 1966 5.5 5.5 Dispatch from a provincial department 2014 Xinzhou Dong Hongyun 1956 5.5 5.5 Transfer from another place 2014 Kaifeng Qi Jinli 1959 3.5 3.5 Transfer from another place 2014 Chengde Zheng Xuebi 1958 3.5 3.5 Transfer from another place 2015 Sanmenxia Yang Shuping 1957 4 7 Promotion in the same city 2015 Dali Chu Zhongzhi 1967 1.5 1.5 Transfer from another place 2015 Wuhai HouFengqi 1962 2.5 7.5 Promotion in the same city 2015 Taizhou Wu Weirong 1963 2.5 6 Promotion in the same city 2015 Nanchong Liu Hongjian 1962 7.5 7.5 Transfer from another place 2014 Jiaozuo Sun Likun 1957 3 8 Promotion in the same city 2016 Sanmenxia Zhao Haiyan 1963 0.5 5 Promotion in the same city 2016

In view of specific cities’ circumstances, various cities’ degrees of corruption are different.Huainan’s degree of corruption is the lowest, the proportion of people involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file being 0.000789; Xining’s degree of corruption is the highest, the proportion of people involved in cases of work–related crimes placed on file being 0.00685.

3.2 Research findings

Figure 2 Proportions of People Involved in Cases of Work-related Crimes Placed on File in 23 Sample Cities where Municipal Party Committee Secretaries Were Sacked

The influence of various factors on the level of corruption is judged through OLS estimated regression equation 1.The VIFs of the variables in model 1 are all below 2, with no multicollinearity problem.Model 1–1 does not include control variable test results, the sacked coefficient is positive and it passes the significance test at the 0.01 level, showing corrupt municipal Party committee secretaries have obvious influence on the degrees of corruption at their places of service.After the control variables are included in the regression equation, the estimated coefficient of the variable sacked is still positive at the 0.01 level of significance, meaning municipal Party committee secretaries’ corruption does positively influence the degrees of corruption at their places of service.In consideration of possible existence of the heteroscedasticity problem in regression, WLS was adopted for further testing, and it still passes the test at the 0.01 level of significance.Therefore, hypothesis H1 is established: A corrupt municipal Party committee secretary worsens the degree of corruption in the place of service.

Table 2 Model 1

The influence of various factors on the level of corruption is judged through OLS estimated regression equation 2.Multicollinearity diagnosis of model 2 shows the variables have multicollinearity problems, so tenure and working life were adopted to establish models separately.The tenure coefficient of model 2–1 is positive and it passes the significance test at the 0.05 level, showing the longer a corrupt municipal Party committee secretary’s term of office, the deeper the influence on local corruption.The working life coefficient of model 2–2 is positive and it passes the significance test at the 0.1 level, showing the longer a corrupt municipal Party committee secretary’s length of work at the place of service (including the length of serving as municipal Party committee secretary and the length of holding other posts in the same place), the deeper the influence on local corruption.Where 1 (dummy variable) coefficients of models 2–1 and 2–2 are positive and they pass the significance tests at the 0.05 and 0.1 levels respectively; where 2 (dummy variable) coefficients are positive but fail to pass the significance tests, showing that municipal Party committee secretaries promoted locally have greater influence on local corruption than those dispatched from provincial departments and promoted or transferred at the same level elsewhere, while there is no significant difference between dispatch from a provincial department and promotion in another place or same–level transfer.To further eliminate heteroscedasticity, models 2–3 and 2–4 were established, the tenure coefficient is positive and passes the significance test at the 0.05 level, and the working life coefficient is positive and passes the significance test at the 0.05 level.Where1 (dummy variable) coefficient of model 2–3 is positive and passes the significance test at the 0.05 level, and the where1 (dummy variable) coefficient of model 2–4 is positive and passes the significance test at the 0.1 level.Hypotheses H2, H3 and H4a are established.The longer a corrupt municipal Party committee secretary’s term of office, the higher the level of local corruption.The longer a corrupt municipal Party committee secretary’s length of work at the place of service, the higher the level of local corruption.Municipal Party committee secretaries promoted in the same city have greater influence on local corruption than those dispatched from provincial departments and promoted or transferred at the same level elsewhere.

Table 3 Model 2

The estimated results of the two models with respect to the control variables are as follows.As for the government size, the two models both show that the gov coefficients are positive but not significant.The main reason is, just as Prof.Zhu Guanglei said, the main problem of the number of Chinese government officials is not the general aggregate surplus but the structural surplus and operational surplus.This shows the influence of the government’s size and its power operation model on the level of local corruption needs to be further examined.As for public servants’ relative pay, only model 1–3 shows wage has a significant influence on the level of local corruption.This indicates that the influence of public servants’ pay on the level of local corruption is uncertain.As for separation of powers at the municipal level, models 1–2 and 2 show decentralization has a significant influence on the level of local corruption, and the coefficients are positive.This conclusion verifies the view of Ni Xing and other scholars, i.e.separation of powers at the municipal level weakens the local fight against corruption.Stronger municipal autonomy leads to increasing the appeal for the realization of self–interests and strengthens the motivation and ability to realize the interests of local governments and departments, thus giving rise to collective corruption.As for economic development, both models show gdppc has a negative influence on the level of local corruption, and models 2–3 and 2–4 pass significance tests, the coefficient being –0.000,showing economic development has very little effect of curbing local corruption.

4.Conclusions and recommended countermeasures

With the rapid development of information technology, using big data to study corruption and fight against corruption has become a trend of the times.Because relevant data cannot be accurately obtained for various reasons, this paper adopts cross–sectional data instead of panel data to study the influence of local top leaders’ corruption and puts forward the following conclusions and countermeasures.

Whether the Party’s local top leaders are clean–fingered or not directly influences the political ecology of the place of service.The longer a corrupt top leader’s length of service is, the higher the degree of corruption in the place of service is.If a top leader holds office in the same place for long before becoming the top leader, the influence on the degree of local corruption is magnified.In other words, a leading cadre working in the same place for a long time can form a tightly integrated chain of interests and easily form a community of interests.Once appointed as a top leader, such a leader’s collective corruption will corrupt more Party and government cadres and organization members and form an interconnected corruption network.Therefore, in the selection of Party and government chiefs, more efforts should be made for selection in other places and cross–departmental postings.For leading cadres having served in the same places for long periods,their integrity should be the focus of survey and their local social networks should be investigated to discover key nodes where corruption is likely to occur and thus effectively avoid the occurrence of promotion of officials having problems.

A sound power structure and operational mechanism featuring mutual restriction and mutual coordination among the decision–making power,executive power and supervisory power should be established to practically prevent local top leaders’corruption.First, top leaders’ powers should be separated and decentralized.Based on clear division of work tasks and responsibilities, rules should be made for each key link of exercising powers to realize decentralization of powers so that top leaders can only exercise their powers within the scope defined by laws, regulations and disciplines.Important matters such as decision–making on projects, fund use, appointment and dismissals must be studied and discussed collectively to limit top leaders’ sole approval power and sole decision–making power and make their powers decentralized and incomplete.Second, the accountability system should be strictly implemented.Supervision and examination of top leaders’ implementation of rules should be strengthened to enhance top leaders’consciousness of rule implementation and hold them accountable for acts of exercising powers in violation of rules and systems.Top leaders who seriously neglect work duties, fail to resolutely and steadily improve Party conduct, promote integrity and combat corruption in their areas and departments,fail to effectively curb the spread of corruption within their jurisdictions and have improper conduct and corruption that harm people’s interests should be held accountable, seriously and resolutely, according to the requirement of “dual investigation of cases.”Third, the system and mechanism of promotion and demotion of top leaders should be improved.Several Provisions on Advancing Promotion and Demotion of Leading Cadres (For Trial) should be implemented strictly to further establish and improve the rules and standards for “promotion” and “demotion” of top leaders.A scientific assessment mechanism should be established to assess and evaluate top leaders who evade responsibility, abstain from action,have problems and are reported according to facts.Meanwhile, the path of their demotion should also be considered to form an institutional environment for the benign circle of leading cadres’ promotion and demotion and prevent expansion of leading cadres’corruption and the emergence of their spillover effect.Fourth, disciplinary inspection organs’power of supervision over top Party leaders at the same level should be strengthened.On the basis of comprehensively promoting full coverage of Party and government organs by dispatched disciplinary inspection and supervision bodies, exploration should be made to realize financial independence of dispatched bodies and their persons–in–charge from the departments they are dispatched to so that their positions and those of local or departmental leading cadres will be at the same level and they will be entitled to attend Party committee or leading Party group meetings as nonvoting delegates and exercise the duty of supervision independently and effectively.

(Translator: CCTB Translation Service;Editor: Jia Fengrong)

This paper has been translated and reprinted with the permission of Xinhua Digest, No.6, 2017.

*Liao Chongxu，PhD of school of Marxism of Southwest Jiaotong University, associate professor, Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences.Li Houqiang, professor, Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences.Zhou Dong, research associate, Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences.