Q: In recent years, China has repeatedly stressed the importance of checking corruption. However, many of those involved in corruption cases that have been investigated are leading government officials and ruling party members. As the party in power, how will the CPC tighten its supervision over its members and government officials? What will it do to institutionalize the anti-corruption campaign and bring it under a legal framework?

A: This is exactly what the CPC is most concerned about. As China proceeds with its reform and opening-up policy, it must be admitted that some signs of corruption have appeared in the CPC due to changes in the external environment and flaws that occurred in the restructuring process. Leading government officials and ruling party members constitute a large number of those involved in corruption cases that have been investigated in recent years. This speaks to the fact that the longer the Party is in office, the more difficult it is to forestall corruption. The CPC's governance will be adversely affected unless this paradox is properly addressed.

Regimes come and go. The rise and fall of feudal dynasties were only too natural in the history of China and other countries. Since the 1980s, this historical cycle has been affecting ruling communist parties in various countries. Some parties that had been in power for decades were driven out of office. Some of them declined and fell. Behind these failures are essentially internal party problems, in particular, the corruption of the party leaders.

As corrupt practice jars with its nature and purpose, the CPC has no choice but to fight relentlessly against corruption. Countering this grave threat to the rule of the CPC has always been one of the most pressing concerns of the Chinese people. To that end, a series of polices have been in place ever since the 1980s. Despite the progress that has been made in building a clean and honest Party and reining in corruption, corrupt officials keep cropping up due to the persistence of the conditions that breed corruption in some areas. This reminds us of the prime reason for corruption in certain regions and organizations—inefficiency in power supervision. Stringent mechanisms are required to tighten supervision within the Party, thereby eradicating corruption.

Over the past 10 years or so, the CPC has been constantly exploring ways of tightening inner-Party supervision in an effort to remove the dirt that generates flaws. Inner-Party supervision mechanisms such as "democratic life meetings," "performance and honesty reporting," "inspections," "conversation," and "admonition" have been established.

According to the Regulations on Internal Supervision of the CPC, democratic life meetings are occasions where leading Party officials at various levels discuss the existing problems and conduct self-criticism. Performance and honesty reporting means that the leading officials of CPC committees at different levels should report their work to a prescribed audience once or twice a year. Under the inspection mechanism, CPC officials at the central or provincial level are dispatched on inspection trips to the lower-level CPC committees to learn how things work there. The conversation mechanism requires the officials in charge of a CPC committee and its disciplinary and organizational departments to talk with major officials of the committee's subordinate organs on a sporadic basis, to know how they are getting on. Admonition is the warning given to officials who have shown a worrying tendency.

Based on these mechanisms, the Regulations on Internal Supervision of the CPC were released in December 2003, representing the first initiative made by the CPC to institutionalize inner-Party supervision. It has set forth the rules for CPC members, leading officials in particular, to subject themselves to supervision from within the Party, outside the Party and from all Chinese people.

In addition, renewing its efforts to curb corruption through effective mechanisms, the CPC issued a series of regulations and guidelines on Party discipline, inspection of high-ranking local Party and government officials, operation of CPC discipline inspection organizations and the building of a comprehensive anti-corruption system consistent with China's market economy. These initiatives have ushered in a new era in the development of the anti-corruption regime.

Stricter discipline needs to be instituted before good governance of the country can be realized. As a party with a history of 84 years and in power for 56 years, the CPC is expected to carry out strong inner-Party supervision and to exercise stringent self-discipline. Curbing corruption is, as always, a matter of life and death for the CPC.