For China, Corruption Fight is 'Life or Death' Struggle
China’s fight against the rampant problem of corruption has long lacked a tool that many believe could help shine a light on graft: a requirement from the central government that officials publicly disclose their assets.
In the past, authorities tried such policies at the local level, but there has not been a top-down approach to give the public more information about officials’ assets.
That, however, could be changing.
China's Communist Party has publicly acknowledged its fight against corruption is a life or death struggle, and in the coming weeks several new - albeit small scale - asset disclosure programs are expected to be initiated, one in the eastern city of Ningbo and three others in the progressive southern province of Guangdong.
Transparency
Details of the programs are still coming together, but state media report that the program in Ningbo will only be applied to newly appointed government officials.
The program in Guangdong will require major party and government officials to report their assets, investments and employment details of their spouses and children.
He Bing, assistant dean of the law school of the China University of Political Science and Law, says there are signs that the new measures could succeed where past experiments failed. He says the public demand for disclosure is stronger and China’s change in leadership is helping to intensify the anti-corruption push.
“Given all these factors, I think that these new policies like the one that is going into place in Guangdong are different from the past,” He Ping says.
“The ones we have seen before were just tests, but these new pilot programs are more like a signal that something is about to begin. And slowly these experiments will expand.”
Not everyone is optimistic. Some of the programs that already have been experimented with in the past, such as one in Xinjiang and the provinces of Hunan and Zhejiang, have had mixed results, says Allen Clayton-Greene, a senior analyst with China Policy.
The program in Xinjiang lasted for less than a year and ended when the anti-corruption official there passed away, Clayton-Greene says. But the program in Zhejiang’s Cixi has been going on since 2009.
“That [program] required people to disclose their personal income, private cars and houses as well as those owned by their children and family members,” he says. “But one of the issues with the Cixi pilot program is that there were zero complaints received from the public and there was sort of fury about the fact there was actually no way in which the public could file complaints, in respect to officials' assets.”
Source: Voice of America
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