punishment of a number of high-level officials. Liu Tienan, former deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top macroeconomic agency and one of the wealthiest branches of the government, was investigated after a journalist disclosed allegations of embezzlement on Weibo, China’ leading microblog platform. In early 2013, Yi Junqing, head of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, was removed after a woman who claimed to be his mistress posted a 120,000-word diary documenting her 17 sexual encounters with him. In another case, Yang Dacai, former head of Shaanxi provincial work safety administration, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for taking bribes. His corruption was exposed after netizens posted a photograph of him smiling at the scene of a fatal road accident, followed by a viral series of photos showing him wearing various luxury watches. The fact that these cases were exposed by private citizens acting under their own initiative has put the government on the defensive, embarrassing officials and making the CCDI in particular appear not fit for purpose. With its own answer to Weibo, the CCDI is hoping to steal some of its thunder. By providing an online platform to allow for a certain degree of Party-approved online whistleblowing, an option seen as far preferable to leaving China’s hyperactive social media loose, the CCDI is seeking to minimize embarrassment caused to the Party and the government by the routine exposure of official misconduct by ordinary members of the public. To increase the platform’s scope, Cui Shaopeng, the CCDI’s secretary general, said in an online interview that the CCDI will open an official microblog account as well as a Wechat profile “when the situation is ripe.”
Transparency
The recent measures taken by the CCDI, while par for the course in Europe and America, are quite unusual in China. The CCDI is one of the most mysterious of the Chinese government’s famously opaque organs of state. Besides its existence and its leaders, the public knows little about it. “Established when the Communist Party was still an underground party, the CCDI has maintained its mysterious working style, which makes it more like a secret agency,” Li NEWSCHINA I March 2014
Yongzhong, vice-director of the China Discipline Inspection and Supervision Institute told NewsChina. Li said that when he was recruited by the CCDI in the 1990s, he could not even find his office as the building was not marked by any sign to indicate its purpose. On its new website, the CCDI has revealed what it claims to be its institutional structure to the public for the first time. To make this platform more credible, the CCDI has also made efforts to increase “interaction” with the public. 15 CCDI officials participated in carefully vetted online question and answer sessions in the website’s forums in the first two months after its launch. The agency and its local branches in various cities have even launched “open days” to allow experts and ordinary citizens to visit. If its own pronouncements are to be believed, the new website is only the first step in the CCDI’s plan to overhaul how the Party regulates the behavior of its members. According to keynote documents released after the Party’s Third Plenum held in November 2013, the CCDI will send supervisory teams into all central Party and government agencies. In the meantime, rotating inspection mechanisms will be established at both central and provincial level to “cover all local governments and State-owned enterprises.” The CCDI is expected to obtain the power to nominate and appoint local disciplinary officials from provincial Party committees to prevent local officials from turning a blind eye to the misdemeanors of their peers. On December 25, 2013, the Party released its five-year plan on “the establishment of a comprehensive system of preventing and punishing corruption,” which promised to “promote the institutional and procedural establishment.” Analysts believe that China’s new leadership is aiming to concentrate anti-corruption powers within the hands of the CCDI through both vertical and horizontal integration. Most importantly, the message has clearly been sent that the CCDI can no longer operate entirely in the shadows.
‘Double Designations’
According to Professor Jiang Ming’an from Peking University, a senior consultant of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP), China’s top prosecuting agency charged with
determining which cases go to trial, the SPP is coordinating with the CCDI to streamline their working procedures and establish an integrated procedure for investigating fallen officials, which would minimize the use of the controversial practice of shuanggui. Literally meaning “double designations,” shuanggui is the covert and confidential interrogation of suspect cadres at an undisclosed location, out of sight of regular law enforcement or legal representatives. The practice has long been under criticism. It deprives fallen officials of legal rights, and several deaths have occurred during interrogations. However, many ordinary citizens are more concerned that its secretive nature allows officials to escape punishment. Anti-graft experts see the government’s discomfort with openness as the primary reason for the general public perception of all anticorruption drives as smoke and mirrors. As the authorities often announce that an official has fallen under investigation weeks or even months after the same official has been detained, backroom dealings and bargaining are, for observers, a foregone conclusion. According to Professor Jiang, in the future, investigations into officials will have to be conducted by the procuratorate and in accordance with legal procedures, with the shuanggui system confined only to “extremely complicated cases.” Starting late 2013, the CCDI announced the fall of more than 20 senior officials via its website. Most of these were handed over to law enforcement, rather than inner-Party agencies. The exceptions were four ministerial-level officials, including Li Dongsheng, vice-minister of the Ministry of Public Security, and Yang Gang, deputy director of the committee for economic affairs at the nation’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee, who were reported to be “under the Party’s investigation for suspected serious law and discipline violations.” According to Professor Ma Huaide, these recent moves, though limited in scope, mark a new phase in the current anti-corruption campaign. “It shows that the Party has started to take a strategic and systematic approach towards curbing corruption,” he continued. “This thinking will underline the country’s anti-corruption efforts in the next five years.”
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