Fighting against extravagance
- By Yin Pumin
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E-mail Beijing Review, March 5, 2014
Determination
According to figures released by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the Party's top anti-graft body, a total of 30,420 Party officials and government functionaries were punished for violating anti-extravagance rules in 2013. The violations included using government cars for personal purposes, abusing public funds for travel or entertainment, and holding extravagant weddings or other ceremonies.
In the latest move to cut off the various "grey benefits" available to some officials, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, China's cabinet, issued a circular on December 29 last year, banning the purchase of cigarettes with public funds.
In a Xinhua News Agency report on the ban, it was revealed that an official in Hequ County, north China's Shanxi Province, spent more than 60,000 yuan ($9,920) in public funds to buy over 150 cartons of cigarettes to give officials who participated in a meeting.
"The high smoking rate among government officials has something to do with corruption because many of the cigarettes they get have been offered as gifts," said Yang Gonghuan, a professor at Peking Union Medical College.
The smoking ban is one of the follow-up measures to regulations issued by the central authorities in late November last year to standardize fund management and ban Party and government extravagance.
The regulations, which contain 65 items in 12 sections, outline the proper management of funds in various fields, including official travels, receptions, meetings, as well as government vehicles and buildings.
They are meant to guide Party and government departments to practice frugality and reject extravagance, according to a statement issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council.
In the wake of the November regulations, rules on official receptions and officials' funerals were also issued in December 2013.
The regulations on official receptions list 38 banned practices and impose a stringent cap on the expenses for reception banquets. It is stipulated that a hosting unit can hold only one dinner for visitors if it is necessary for their work. At most, three workers at the concerned hosting unit are allowed to participate in the dinner if the number of visitors is fewer than 10. Expensive dishes and those cooked with protected wild animals are prohibited at such dinners, as are cigarettes and fine liquors.
Expenses for reception events must be included and listed separately in annual budgets of government departments so that they can be scrutinized, according to the document.
In light of the regulations on funerals, officials are asked to set examples by keeping them simple and frugal. They are also forbidden from taking advantage of the occasion to collect condolence money.
The reasoning behind the requirements is that funerals are increasingly a platform for some officials to show off wealth and connections, with the degree of opulence and the number of mourners symbolizing the "achievements" of the dead, and setting a benchmark for competition among the living.
"The regulations provide a clear basis for stopping corrupt customs among officials, an example that can be followed by the public," said Xu Yuebin, a professor at the School of Social Development and Public Policy of Beijing Normal University. He believes that the regulations will help prevent corruption among officials and cut the use of natural resources such as land and wood.
Wu Hui, an associate professor of governance at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said that the bans by the central authorities on a wide range of issues such as large-scale government-funded TV galas, luxurious official buildings and vehicles, as well as expensive gifts during festivals, are effective in closing loopholes that corrupt officials could take advantage of.
On January 15, a communiqué issued after the Third Plenary Session of the (CCDI) pledged name-and-shame measures for officials if they were caught violating relevant regulations and bans on spending public money on expensive dinners, gifts and tours, visiting private clubs, as well as accepting money or gifts in any form from their subordinates and other interested parties.
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