Swatting grassroots flies

Premier Li Keqiang presides over a State Council meeting on the anti-corruption campaign, Jan 6, 2017. [Photo by ZHANG DUO / XINHUA]

Over the past few years, the inspection work carried out by the top authorities has covered almost all central Party and government departments and provincial-level organs.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection recently announced on its official website that a similar inspection system has been or will be set up in 335 prefecture-level cities and 2,220 counties nationwide to offer grassroots people a channel to report officials' malpractices.

Since the authorities began their unprecedented crackdown on corruption a few years ago, people have been anticipating it would help purify the political ecology at the grassroots level. Although senior corrupt officials, the so-called tigers, have been brought down, one after another, the pervasive corruption and abuse of power at the grassroots level have caused public grievances as they have not been effectively checked.

Extending the anti-corruption battle to lower level Party and government organs is directly related to whether ordinary people can enjoy a "sense of gain". At the grassroots level, people usually take more interest in one or two corrupt local officials, or flies as they are known, being punished rather than the downfall of a high-ranking corrupt official. So, the authorities can only fully win public trust by tackling grassroots corruption.

Being fully aware of this, the authorities have intensified their crackdown on low-ranking corrupt officials in recent years, while still holding high the anti-corruption sword to strike against high-ranking officials. In 2016, more than 394,000 officials below the township level were punished, an increase of 24 percent from the previous year, of whom 74,000 were Party and administrative officials at the village level, most of whom were involved in the appropriation of funds for poverty alleviation, demolition or land acquisition compensation or other special funds.

It is hoped that extending the inspection work to the grassroots level will further clear away grassroots corruption, purify the grassroots political ecology and enhance people's sense of gain.

--GUANGMING DAILY