China’s top corruption watchdog puts belt and road projects, rural strategy in the cross hairs

CCDI to deepen campaign targeting ‘unhealthy practices and corruption’ in rural revitalisation and seek better integrity in belt and road projects
In this year’s work report, graft buster also says it will focus on political security and improve supervision of the regions and across departments

China’s Communist Party

William Zheng

Published: 5:00pm, 26 Feb 2024

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Fighting corruption related to the Belt and Road Initiative and China’s rural revitalisation strategy will be among the priorities for the country’s top graft buster this year.

That is according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection’s work report for 2024, which was released in full by state news agency Xinhua on Sunday – two months after it was delivered by CCDI chief Li Xi during a plenary session.

The report said the CCDI would this year coordinate crackdowns both at home and overseas. It said the graft buster would deepen a campaign targeting “unhealthy practices and corruption” in rural revitalisation, and seek better integrity in belt and road projects.

The global, trillion-dollar trade and infrastructure programme and the rural revitalisation strategy are both signature policies of President Xi Jinping.

It comes after Li in November said China was committed to a “clean Silk Road” when he met his Vietnamese counterpart Tran Cam Tu in Beijing. The belt and road scheme is sometimes referred to as the “New Silk Road”, and the pledge to keep it free of bribery and corruption was seen as a response to concerns from the West about the integrity of the projects.

Tran Cam Tu (left), who heads Vietnam’s anti-corruption body, meets his Chinese counterpart Li Xi in Beijing in November. Photo: Xinhua

The rural revitalisation strategy follows on from Xi’s poverty alleviation campaign, after Beijing declared victory in the battle to end extreme poverty in 2020. It aims to make farming more efficient, and for rural areas to be more liveable and their residents better off. To do this, Beijing has poured billions of yuan into building infrastructure to improve market access to agriculture and public services, and to fix problems such as pollution.

The CCDI ordered a crackdown on problems related to rural revitalisation projects a year ago, after reports of regional officials using fake projects to pocket funding from Beijing, and some carrying out superficial work to try to get the projects past inspectors.

In this year’s work report, the graft buster also said it would focus on political security and “show no mercy to those who form political gangs, cliques and interest groups” within the ruling Communist Party.

That accusation has previously been made against senior officials including former deputy security chief Sun Lijun and former justice minister Fu Zhenghua, both of whom were jailed for life in high-profile corruption cases.

The CCDI also vowed to improve supervision of the regions and across departments to ensure commands from the party’s top leadership are closely followed.

“[We must] strengthen political supervision surrounding the major policies of the party and the important instructions of General Secretary Xi Jinping,” the work report said.

Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said the CCDI commitment to supervise every aspect of governance in China as well as overseas projects suggests that Xi sees anti-corruption efforts and party discipline as key to his political legacy.

“But it remains to be seen what Beijing will do to better supervise the belt and road projects,” he said.