Sino-US cooperation can help anti-graft drive

Another important implementation mechanism of this Convention is the Conference of the State Parties to the Convention stipulated by Article 63, and established to improve the capacity of and cooperation between State Parties to achieve the objectives set forth in this Convention and to promote and review its implementation.

In the first Conference of the State Parties to the Convention, the contracting states discussed the issue of return of assets. Every party realized the international anti-corruption cooperation based on the Convention is complicated. It is very difficult to chase and return assets illegally transferred to foreign countries, which many a time results in frictions among states. The Conference cites the example of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to illustrate how to overcome this special difficulty.

To propel global cooperation against corruption, the UN has launched several conferences and passed several resolutions. The latest resolution is the UN A/RES/69/199 Resolution passed by the UN General Assembly on Dec 18, 2014. The resolution stresses that "those who engage in corrupt practices, whether natural or legal persons, consistent with domestic law and the requirements of the Convention, should be held accountable and prosecuted by their domestic authorities, and that all appropriate efforts should be made to conduct a financial investigation into assets illegally acquired by them and to recover such assets through domestic confiscation proceedings, international cooperation for purposes of confiscation or appropriate direct recovery measures".

The resolution also says: "State parties to the Convention shall give timely consideration to mutual legal assistance requests relating to the identification, freezing, tracing and/or recovery of proceeds of corruption and to respond effectively to requests".

These are the broad areas in which China and the US can cooperate to combat corruption.

It's high time, therefore, that China and the US increased the number and widened the scope of dialogues to combat corruption on the global level, and deepened their cooperation mechanism in accordance with the Convention, because these would be to their mutual benefit

The author is a professor of law at Renmin University of China.