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Anti-corruption
10th NPC & CPPCC, 2007> Anti-corruption
UPDATED: January 18, 2007 NO.4 JAN.25, 2007
Clean Sweep
According to the CPI released by the Berlin-based Transparency International, China's score jumped from 2.16 in 1995 to 3.3 in 2006, showing the biggest improvement among the world's countries
By FENG JIANHUA
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The Seventh Plenary Session of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Chinese Communist Party's top disciplinary watchdog, held in Beijing on January 8 drew special attention in the country as it set up a plan for 2007 based on reviewing the anti-corruption work in 2006, which witnessed several cases of corruption by major government officials.

Last September, a report by the official Xinhua News Agency shocked the nation: Chen Liangyu, Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), was sacked for his involvement in a social security fund scandal. Chen is the third-highest-ranking official to have been brought down in the last 20 years in China.

The scandal is still under investigation. According to the preliminary results, however, the case involved over 50 officials in the political and business communities, including the former head of the National Bureau of Statistics, who had only been in office for seven months. While disclosing no details, Gan Yisheng, the spokesman of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said the Chen case is more serious than estimated at the beginning.

Another 10 provincial and ministerial-level officials were stripped of their positions under the anti-corruption drive around the time of the Chen case. Among them, Wang Shouye, former Deputy Commander of the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), was sentenced to life in prison for embezzlement, becoming the highest-ranking officer in the PLA to be convicted of a crime.

"Cracking down on these major corruption cases in 2006 demonstrates our Party's solid resolution to strengthen discipline and combat corruption," said Gan, who emphasized that corrupt officials will be dealt with severely regardless of the position they hold.

President Hu Jintao also appeared at the January plenary session, calling for a sustained fight against corruption.

Wu Guanzheng, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and also Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, has taken a particularly tough attitude toward corruption. He said in a previous meeting that China will maintain high pressure on corruption and will lead corrupt officials to a dead political life thorough economic confiscation and an irreversible remorse.

These measures signal that China's anti-corruption work may move in a new direction or achieve a bigger breakthrough.

"The intensifying anti-corruption punch reflects the fact that the top administration is coming to an awareness of the crisis and has reached a consensus on combating corruption," Wang Guixiu, a professor in the CPC's Central Party School, told Beijing Review.

Corruption increase

According to the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released by the Berlin-based organization Transparency International, China's score jumped from 2.16 in 1995 to 3.3 in 2006, showing the biggest improvement among the world's countries. The range is from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt).

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