Vowing thorough investigations into the Wang Lijun incident, the death of Briton Neil Heywood and Bo Xilai's serious violations, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has shown its dedication to the fight against corruption.

The Party's unequivocal and consistent opposition to corruption and the steady, notable new progress made in fighting corruption and upholding integrity provide an important guarantee for advancing reform, opening up, and socialist modernization.

However, it's a fact that the country's anti-graft fight is still very challenging, and for a very long time, achievements will be accompanied by problems, just as increasing crackdown efforts and higher public expectations will meet with frequent and die-hard corrupt phenomena.

The country's anti-corruption drive is set to be a long-term, complicated and arduous one. It is not surprising that the CPC, with more than 80 million members, have some black sheep. The important thing is that the Party is fully aware of the grave situation and has been resorting to forceful measures to improve the institutions for punishing and preventing corruption.

Corruption is a common enemy for all, especially for a country that is undergoing social and economic transformations. If the issue is left unattended, a country may implode, its ruling power will collapse, and its society left in chaos.

In this war of triumph or downfall, the CPC has chosen its stance from the very start.

After its founding in the 1920s, the CPC issued its first document on fighting corrupt members within the Party. And then there was the three-year Rectification Movement in the 1940s and numerous campaigns after the founding of the New China in 1949 that aimed to curb graft, extravagance and bureaucracy.

Following the Wang Lijun incident, the death of Neil Heywood and Bo Xilai's discipline violations, the CPC is expected to further heighten officials' awareness of self-discipline and integrity, and develop intra-Party democracy.

It should improve the mechanism to effectively spot corrupt behaviors, such as strengthening a declaration system for officials' assets and major personal issues, adopting more measures to protect and reward whistleblowers, and enhance inspection and supervision.

While maintaining a high-profile crackdown coupled with harsh punishment, the Party should also explore more scientific and innovative methods to supervise and restrict officials' power, and thus, address both the symptoms and root causes.

It should be noted that such supervision and restriction of power should be realized through joint efforts from the Party, the National People's Congress, government, political consultative bodies, non-CPC parties, judicial organs, the media and the people.

Only by doing so, can CPC ensure the operations of power in full transparency.

(Xinhua News Agency April 19, 2012)