No sign of anti-corruption law as CPPCC convenes

The Communist Party's top disciplinary body has yet to put a draft of the mainland's first anti-corruption law on its agenda, a top anti-graft official said this week, despite frequent pledges to accelerate the process.

Experts say a key reason for the delay is concerns over the party being subjected to outside scrutiny.

"The drafting of the anti-corruption law has not started," Gan Yisheng, the recently retired former deputy chief of the party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said last week. In a meeting on the sidelines of the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference on Tuesday, he urged the party to learn from foreign countries in formulating anti-corruption laws.

"We have been using party discipline to regulate officials, but in the future we should try to regulate them based on laws," he told fellow party members. "When we learn from foreign countries, we should be aware of not rote learning from them, but to always base the lessons we learn on the reality in China."

The party takes the lead in punishing corrupt officials on the mainland, but governments often hand down penalties in the form of demotions or through other minor administrative means.

Gan's remarks follow a speech last month by Wang Qishan , the commission's new head, who said top discipline officials were accelerating the drafting of a national anti-corruption law.

The authorities said conditions for such legislation were "ripe" eight years ago, with speculation at the time pointing to it being enacted by 2010.