Supervisory bodies to boost rule of law

The fact that Yang Xiaodu, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and minister of supervision, said on Monday that the planned national supervisory commission (NSC) will not be a powerful watchdog without restraints confirms the new supervisory body will be under the leadership of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and responsible to and supervised by the National People's Congress now that it has been proposed to be written into the Constitution.

In fact, legislation of the national supervision law and the due election of the chief of the NSC at the ongoing first session of the 13th National People's Congress, China's top legislature, will weave a broad supervisory network covering all public power holders and add weight to the anti-corruption campaign. The process which is already underway will lead China into a new era where the anti-graft drive will be fully based on law.

Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC in late 2012, the efforts to promote stricter self-governance, use the intra-Party political ecology to the optimum level and improve the self-purification capability have become a focus of the Party's work. Tighter measures and improved cohesion have helped the Party to make unprecedented achievements in the fight against corruption.

The 19th Party Congress in October 2017 decided to deepen the supervisory system reform and set up supervisory commissions at the provincial, city and county levels. Based on the road map set by the CPC Central Committee, supervisory commissions at various levels have already been established nationwide.

Against the backdrop of effective Party self-governance along with the tough challenges lying ahead, deepening the supervisory system reform and establishing the supervisory commissions nationwide have become a priority for further strengthening Party self-governance and taking the anti-graft campaign to a new historical starting point. The reason: stricter intra-Party supervision and people's supervision are desperately needed to ensure, in the long term, that officials are unable or don't want to indulge in corruption.

New commission can use resources more efficiently

Compared with intra-Party supervision, which has been strengthened to an unprecedented degree at all levels over the past five years, self-supervision on a nationwide level faces obstacles such as a narrow scope of supervision, decentralized supervisory agencies and insufficient means of supervision, which call for the establishment of a better supervisory system. This will strengthen both the Party's self-supervision and supervision over the State, and meet all the requirements of intra-Party supervision and people's supervision.

By deepening the supervisory system reform, the authorities aim to tighten supervision of both Party discipline committees and the State supervisory apparatus, in order to build an effective problem-finding and error-correcting mechanism, ensure Party and State supervision are extended to all staff in the public sector, and make the supervision mechanisms more institutionalized and standardized so that power can be put in the cage of rules.

Thanks to its long-term explorations and practices, the CPC has established a set of clear and functioning intra-Party supervision systems, offering tangible rules and regulations for the Party's self-management and self-governance. When it comes to China's extant supervisory system, within the government there exist administrative supervision and audit systems, apart from supervision of the people's congresses, judicial organs and the public. Even within the procuratorates, there are special departments entrusted to fight corruption, breach of duty and duty-related crimes.

However, such anti-corruption resources are dispersed across many departments and thus cannot fully play their due roles.

The establishment of the NSC will integrate various kinds of resources, and construct a centralized, unified, authoritative and efficient anti-corruption law enforcement system, which will help form a strict and law-based supervisory system and promote the modernization of China's governance system and governance capability.

The deepening of the supervisory system reform, aimed at setting up centralized and unified national supervisory machineries will considerably help restrain the use (and thus minimize the abuse) of power, and enhance China's capability to tackle disruptive forces against the anti-corruption campaign.

The transformation of administrative supervision and procuratorial investigation powers into national supervision power will break the barrier between administrative and procuratorial departments, and organically combine the investigations against administrative law violation and duty-related crimes.