China corruption watchdog to target health, education and the financial sector in 2019
- ‘Interest groups’ and grass-roots government will be in the spotlight
- Party aims to eliminate bureaucratic tendencies and perfunctory officials
China’s anti-corruption crackdown will this year focus on education, medical care, environmental protection and other major areas of concern to the public.
The Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on Sunday that this year’s campaign would focus on areas related to “the people’s livelihood” and would “let the masses have a greater sense of achievement, greater happiness and greater security”.
The anti-corruption watchdog said it would also focus on graft and other criminal behaviour among grass-roots governments, and tackle instances of bribery, abuse of power, negligence and malpractice in the financial sector.
It said it would also aim to prevent “interest groups” from corrupting top officials.
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As well as tackling direct corruption, China would also seek to eliminate bureaucratic tendencies in government and “rectify” those officials guilty of behaving in a “perfunctory” manner when carrying out tasks, it said.
Fighting corruption has been a major priority during President Xi Jinping’s administration. He said last month that, while the party had won an “overwhelming victory” against graft, deep-seated corruption still needed to be weeded out.
China will also aim to participate more in international anti-corruption governance to pursue suspects who have fled abroad.
China brought 441 “corrupt fugitives” back to the country from August to December last year, the official China Daily said on Monday.
“These efforts aim to finally make officials not dare to, be unable to and have no desire to commit any illegal act,” the newspaper said in an editorial.
China punished around 621,000 people for corruption last year, including 51 at the ministerial or provincial level or higher, the newspaper said.
