杂志汇中国与非洲

The Chinese people are totally opposed to corruption. Establishing supervisory commissions to perform duties in accordance with the Supervision Law will be the most effective way to fight corruption.

Liu Jianchao, a deputy to the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), head of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Zhejiang Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Director of the Supervisory Commission of Zhejiang Province, made the comment at a media briefing during a plenary meeting of the Zhejiang delegation to discuss the draft supervision law on March 13 during the First Session of the 13th NPC.

The law, which was adopted on March 20, sets out to establish national, provincial, municipal and county supervisory commissions, and create a centralized system. The law is designed to act as guidance in matters of state supervision and fighting corruption.

Liu, former spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the law covers almost all the reform practices adopted by Beijing, Zhejiang and Shanxi provinces in the pilot reform of the supervisory system implemented in the country over the past one and a half years, and utilizes the important knowledge and experience obtained during the process.

Supervisory bodies

In November 2016, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee issued a document on the establishment of supervisory commissions at various levels in Beijing, Zhejiang and Shanxi. Take Zhejiang for instance, according to Liu, under the leadership of Party committees at every level, supervisory commissions in the province act as special anti-corruption bodies, performing unified decision-making and command responsibilities. This solves the problem of overlapping duties among the Party’s discipline inspection commissions, the administrative supervision departments and the procuratorates in the fight against corruption and the investigation of duty-related crimes.

Zhejiang transferred 1,889 posts t o supervisory commissions from related anti-corruption, anti-misconduct, corruption prevention and duty-related crime prevention departments. Some 1,645 officials have already been transferred to supervisory commissions, expanding the discipline enforcement on the frontlines and efficiently utilizing the resources available for fighting corruption. “This has effectively solved the problem of anti-graft duties being performed separately, where the system didn’t run smoothly and powers were dispersed,” Liu said.

Article 127 of the amended Constitution states, “Supervisory commissions shall independently exercise their power of supervision and shall not be subject to interference by any administrative organ, public organization or individual.”

“Reform of the supervisory system is a historic response to the deepening of political system reform,” Zeng Wenming, an NPC deputy and Mayor of Ganzhou, southeast China’s Jiangxi Province, told ChinAfrica.

In Zeng’s view, the establishment of supervisory commissions prevents a situation where the government oversees itself. “In the past, the torch of supervision was partially in the hands of government, but now it will be shifted to supervisory commissions, changing the internal supervision of those in the public sector to external supervision. Thus the supervision will be more independent and rigorous,” Zeng said,

Xu Rui, an NPC deputy from Jiangxi and Party Secretary of the CPC Ruijin Committee, was a ballot examiner while the NPC deputies voted for the draft amendment to the Constitution. He told ChinAfrica that the supervisory commission section being included in the Constitution indicates that anti-graft work is advancing from Party discipline inspection and supervision to the state level, and supervision will cover everyone in the public sector.

In November 2017, the Standing Committee of the 12th NPC decided to spread the pilot reform of the supervisory system to the entire country. Liu Jianchao, an NPC deputy and Director of the Supervisory Commission of Zhejiang Province, speaks to reporters in Beijing on March 13 Law on supervision

Chinese President Xi Jinping once said that the fundamental way of improving the Party’s capability for self-purification is to rely on the Party’s self-supervision as well as public supervision. Self-supervision is a worldwide challenge in the field of national governance, but the CPC is determined to be successful and achieve “peerless capability” to attain a clean government.

Zeng said the Supervision Law will be part of this “peerless capability,” and when the law is promulgated, China’s supervision work will definitely broaden. “The Supervision Law is a national law on anti-corruption, gathering the scattered supervisory forces and making the supervisory institutions more authoritative,” said Zeng.

According to the Supervision Law, everyone in the public sector falls under supervision, including civil servants, quasi-civil servants, persons engaged in public affairs in organizations with public management authorization, management team members in state-owned enterprises and public educational institutions, academic researchers, health care and sports professionals, management team members in community-level self-governance organizations and others performing public duties in accordance with the law.

Ke Jianhua, an NPC deputy and Party Secretary of the CPC Guigan Community Committee of Lucheng District in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, said that as a community-level deputy, she is in favor of incorporating management team members from community-level organizations into the supervisory commissions as prescribed in the Supervision Law. “Classifying us ‘non-officials’ as ‘officials’ in the eyes of ordinary people subject to supervision shows that the country attaches great importance to and is responsible for community-level organizations, and this will, in effect, help supervise community-level governance,” said Ke. She added that this will deter all those performing public duties from illegal activity and will help protect community-level management teams.

“We must meet the demand of the times and accept supervision on our own initiative, especially for those affairs concerning public interests. We must think more carefully, consult more and collect more opinions from the public in order to be open, transparent, democratic and conform to the law when carrying out work,” said Ke.

More on the way

“After the Supervision Law is adopted, we need to revise many other related laws so that they are consistent with the amended Constitution and the Supervision Law,” said Liu. Fang Lingmin, an NPC deputy and Director of the Supervisory Commission of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, agrees with Liu. According to the amendments to the Constitution, the supervisory organs will coordinate with judicial organs, procuratorial organs and law enforcement departments in the handling of duty-related offenses. Fang said that as the reform of the supervisory system deepens and the Supervision Law is promulgated, more laws will have to be revised to keep in line with the supervisory system reform and the Supervision Law, requiring that related departments better cooperate with each other.

“After the Supervision Law became effective, the Criminal Procedure Law, the Public Procurators Law and the State Compensation Law must be revised. We also need to establish and improve some other related systems and institutions,” said Fang. “In the future, we will also strengthen anti-graft cooperation with other countries, including the exchange of ideas and collaboration in measures and specific cases. If other countries need help from China in fighting corruption, China is ready to lend a hand,” said Liu.

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