Consolidating the Party by tighter control of members

The free app of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, is available in Apple's App Store and in various Android stores, as well as on the commission's website. The app makes it easier for anyone to submit tipoffs about suspected corruption. [Photo/China Daily]

As the governing party, how to make its members not just abide by the law but also discipline themselves with higher standards has never been more urgent for the Communist Party of China.

That explains why the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting on Monday and adopted the Party rules on self-discipline and the rules on disciplinary penalties for members who violate the Party discipline.

According to Xinhua News Agency the amended rules will be much more specific and will have a negative list detailing what Party members cannot do. The rules on self-discipline are the ceiling for behavior and the rules on disciplinary penalties are the bottom line, together they form the bars of the cage around power.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC, has said that the current anti-corruption campaign is a matter of life and death to the Party. The same is true of the rules for the behavior of more than 87 million Party members.

As required by the Party's Constitution, a Party member must, first of all, be a good citizen, but they should at all times behave in an exemplary manner.

Yet, all corrupt officials regard the ranks and positions they hold not as a constraint that should have prevented them from indulging in any indecent behavior or illegal activity, but as a tool for rent seeking. Such immoral behavior as keeping mistresses or illegal acts of embezzling public funds or trading power for personal gains have actually degraded them.

Had the Party rules served their purpose as preventive checks to stop problematic members from going astray, many of the corrupt officials would not have met their downfall.

Wang Qishan, secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee's political bureau, once said that the anti-graft campaign was just dealing with the symptoms of corruption, but the fight would win enough time to address the root cause of corruption.

The new rules for Party members' self-discipline will consolidate the Party by making its members adhere to stricter standards than legal requirements. And the rules for disciplinary penalties will definitely serve as a reminder that problematic members should earnestly rectify their mistakes before they disown themselves from the Party as corrupt elements.