Maintaining integrity a challenge for CPC

BEIJING - Successive graft cases involving high-ranking officials show that the Communist Party of China (CPC) faces an arduous task in ensuring the honesty and upright character of its members in the long term.

The latest case involves former railways minister, Liu Zhijun, who was given a death penalty with a two-year reprieve on Monday. He is the highest official to be punished for corrupt behavior since the Party's leadership transition in November last year.

Those on the list of officials suspected of violating the law and Party discipline include five vice ministerial-level persons in both central and provincial authorities, not to mention more lower-ranking officials.

As the country's ruling party, the CPC is now leading China to complete the building of a well-off society and to achieve a rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The war against corruption plays a decisive role in this regard.

Corruption is like a malignant tumor in society. It can lead to the extinction of the Party and the state. As long ago as the founding of the Party, CPC leaders have acknowledged the severity of the issue.

In the process of reform and opening up, the importance the Party has attached to anti-corruption has allowed the country's economic and social construction to achieve great progress and the state to maintain stability.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, said at a meeting in January the mainstream of Party cadres are good, but some fields are prone to corruption. Anti-corruption work faces a severe situation and the people are not satisfied with it.

Xi gave several examples in Chinese history of dynasties perishing due to corruption and extravagance, warning officials off digging their own graves.

Now the anti-corruption fist is more tightly clenched after the Party launched a "mass-line" campaign in June to boost ties between CPC members and the masses.

Xi said in June that the campaign will be a "thorough cleanup" of undesirable work styles such as formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance among officials.

Li Junru, former vice president of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said last month that honesty and uprightness are the basic requirements of the mass line, and a serious issue for the Party to address.

The reasons behind some officials' inability to win the masses' support are not only inadequate capabilities or inappropriate measures, but also their low moralities, corrupt work and life styles that disgust the public, Li added.

Many corrupt officials have kept concubines, indulged in extravagant lifestyles and sought huge amounts of money by abusing power given by the public. They have put more and more distance between themselves and ordinary people, and enjoyed their exclusive and privileged status.

Only with integrity can officials and the Party win public support. Therefore, Party members' moral values should also be included in the Party's construction and the education content of the mass line campaign.

The building of a clean Party and government will be a long, complicated and arduous mission for the CPC. With more public supervision and transparency of official information, it can be achieved in a more durable and systematic way.