Shake-up at anti-graft agencies 'not enough'
Analysts say Beijing must do more than send its men to head local watchdogs
Beijing's attempt to fight rampant official corruption by moving out heads of local graft watchdogs and appointing its own men to these agencies is hardly sufficient, if not ineffective, according to analysts.
The high-profile appointments of central government-linked officials to head the commissions for discipline inspection - the Communist Party's anti-corruption agencies - in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and Chongqing are widely seen as political gestures to display Beijing's determination to repair its tainted political image.
Analysts believe they are also important steps for the central government to reform the party graft watchdog by building direct leadership over its local branches.
Provincial commissions for discipline inspection are prone to involvement in local corruption rings as their chiefs are usually provincial party vice-secretaries appointed by provincial party committees. The impartiality of these local graft watchdogs is also seriously undermined because their salaries are paid by local governments.
Analysts say that by appointing central government officials to head the anti-graft commissions in the four municipalities and swapping chiefs among other provincial-level commissions, Beijing is trying to sever the ties between these agencies and local governments.
Zhu Lijia, a public administration professor at the National School of Administration - a training school for mid- and senior-level cadres - said Beijing would soon incorporate the payrolls for provincial and city-level commissions into the central government budget.
He believed Beijing could strengthen control over the bodies and help to reduce nepotism by financing these commissions directly from its own coffers.
Wang Minggao , head of a state-sponsored research group on fighting corruption, said that merely sending officials to head the graft watchdogs would not be enough to break local corruption rings.
'It is not enough to just rely on individuals to fight corruption. We need to build a good system,' Mr Wang said. 'Going by past experience and experiences from abroad, shuffling chiefs [among different localities] is better than not shuffling them, but this alone is not enough.'
Professor Zhu also said it would take time to see if the reshuffles helped to curb corruption.
But veteran local China watcher Johnny Lau Yui-siu, doubted the measures would work.
'Currently there are provincial party secretaries and there are designated officials to fight corruption. Does it work at all?' he asked.
'The problem with China is not how you design a system but how you implement the policies. They send an individual to a province and think he can change the situation. It is not much use.'
Mr Lau said Beijing had always mistakenly believed it could solve problems by adopting a top-down approach and launching a party or central government campaign, but this usually made little difference.
