China Seeks to Tackle Corruption From Roots: Official

China has steered anti-corruption campaign from mainly bringing about temporary solution onto the orbit of seeking both temporary and permanent cure, said Cao Qingze Friday.

Cao, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection who is also a deputy to the current session of the National People's Congress in the national capital, said that China has made over-all arrangements for the anti-corruption struggle this year, with emphasis on power, money and personnel.

The country will step up reforms of the government power of approval, fiscal system and personnel system in a bid to leave no spaces for corruptionists to hide.

The central leadership is firm in its stand to fight corruption, he noted, saying that the disciplinary inspection commission alone handles more than 100,000 cases annually and last year, it uncovered cases involving 22 provincial level officials.

The death sentence handed down to Hu Changqing, a former provincial governor, and Cheng Kejie, a former NPC vice chairman, has had a good effect of warning, he said.

In recent years, the central leadership has adopted a series of measures to curb corruption, including forcing the army, armed police, and political and law-enforcement departments to withdraw from business activities; disconnecting Party organizations and governments at different levels with enterprises they owned; separating administrative receipts and expenditures; introducing a responsibility system for building Party-style at Party committees of different levels, Cao noted.

Over the past few years, a series of anti-corruption measures have been adopted to educate Party members and public servants, while carrying out structural reforms to prevent corruption at the roots, the lawmaker and Party discipline official recalled.

In some provinces and cities, the approval of development projects are now done according to market law, in order to ensure openness, justice and fairness. Regarding the nomination of officials, an oversight system has been set up to curb malpractice.

Identifying causes of corruption as feudalistic influence, corrosion by capitalist style of life, and structural loopholes, Cao said that a country in a transitional period is more vulnerable to corruption and China is no exception.

China will continue and persist in carrying out the anti- corruption throughout the whole period of the 10th five-year plan (2001-2005).

(Xinhua 03/10/2001)