Party officials ordered to reveal family assets

Chinese officials will soon be required to disclose assets and investments held by their family members, in addition to their own, under new rules announced at the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s most important plenary of the year.

Xinhua News Agency reported that high-ranking members of the Chinese government will be ordered to disclose all housing and business dealings, and the jobs held by their spouses and children. This was announced by the government’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection at the end of the Fourth Plenary Session held in Beijing.
The commission renewed its commitment to punish people who sell or buy an official post, and those who try to rig election results. It will also renew efforts to investigate abuses of power, corruption and bribery, complaints about dereliction of duty, and official misconduct.

The move is aimed to “beef up self-discipline and strengthen the management of officials whose spouses and children have emigrated abroad,” the report said.
Among the measures the commission has taken in stamping out graft include the monitoring, since July 2004, of job and college applications made by party officials and their relatives, the report said. Between July 2003 and last December, more than 880,000 officials were punished for misconduct, the commission revealed.

There was also a call for disciplinary inspection and supervisory bodies in the government to improve oversight, and communist party cadres were reminded they must present an image that is respectable and approachable, the report said.

At the end of the Chinese government’s fourth plenum, officials also acknowledged that were problems within the party that “seriously damage [its] flesh and blood bond with the people and seriously affect the solidity of [its] ruling status,” according to the report.

The party’s Central Committee also pledged that it would “resolutely fight corruption” during the four-day plenum.