Political discipline was a key concern of the old disciplinary ordinance, but it always referred to serious political misbehaviors. The revised ordinance extends the range of political discipline to the more comprehensive concept of "political rules".
Top leader Xi Jinping has expounded the Party's political rules, which includes four major factors. One, the Party constitution is the regulation and rule that the entire Party has to abide by. Two, the Party's disciplinary rules and regulations are inflexible. Three, the entire rank and file of the Party has to follow the country's law. And four, the Party's good tradition and work evolved in its long-term practice should be adhered to.
In other words, political rule is stricter and more comprehensive compared with political discipline, which is binding on all Party members. Plus, many new types of misbehaviors evident over the past decade have been included in the revised ordinance. For instance, "going against the Party organization's inspection", as laid down in article 57, and "violation of the 'personal affairs report' system", which article 67 highlights, have been included in the new ordinance.
In the anti-corruption disciplinary rule, the range of issues of behaviors related to conflict of interests and those conducted to make illegal profits are much wider than before. Some new forms of illegal incomes, such as trade between power and power in article 81 and trade between power and sex in article 103, have been added to the new ordinance.
Moreover, the new ordinance has raised the level of penalty for some misbehaviors. For example, the period that Party members cannot get promotion for committing an offense has been extended from one year to one and a half years.
In a nutshell, the new disciplinary ordinance has established higher and stricter standards for Party members, laying a solid foundation for "strictly ruling the Party in an all-round way".
The author is director of the Clean Governance Research Center in Beihang University.
I’ve lived in China for quite a considerable time including my graduate school years, travelled and worked in a few cities and still choose my destination taking into consideration the density of smog or PM2.5 particulate matter in the region.
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