BEIJING: Pledges for more transparency by top Chinese Communist officials made
following high-profile graft cases have been met with scepticism that corrupt
leaders can come clean over their assets.
Wang Yang, the top Communist
official in the southern province of Guangdong, and Yu Zhengsheng, the party
boss of Shanghai, both said on Friday that Chinese officials would begin
releasing details of their assets in the future.
"I believe that Chinese
officials will gradually make assets public in line with central
regulations," Wang, seen by many observers to have reformist leanings,
said during a Congress meeting in answering a foreign reporter's question.
Yu, meanwhile, said separately
that Shanghai would "gradually move towards a system for making
(officials') assets public," according to the state-run People's Daily.
But neither official provided any
road map forward for improving transparency in a country that has no laws that
clearly require government officials to make their assets or salaries public, a
situation critics say is ripe for abuse.
The issue of official corruption
has shot to the top of the national agenda as Communist Party delegates meet to
anoint a new crop of top leaders for the coming decade.
China's ruling Communists have
been scandalised for years by persistent reports of corrupt officials living
lavish lifestyles and keeping multiple mistresses, and complaints that their
iron grip on power prevents accountability.
But the issue has sharpened in
the run-up to the congress in Beijing after a traumatic year for the party
marked by embarrassing revelations of top-level corruption and power abuse.
President Hu Jintao, in a speech
opening the congress in Beijing on Thursday warned starkly that corruption
"could prove fatal to the party" and even cause its
"collapse".
Among the recent shocks, the New
York Times reported last month that the family of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao
owned assets worth US$2.7 billion.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg news
agency estimated the family of Xi Jinping -- who is almost certain to be
appointed head of the party during the congress, and named president next year
-- had assets worth $376 million.
Authorities have sought to
suppress the reports in China.
Several local governments have
pledged to disclose official's assets in recent years, but these schemes were
abandoned after running into "difficulties", the state-run China
Youth Daily reported recently.
"The disclosure of assets is
opposed by corrupt officials," Peking University law professor Jiang
Mingan was quoted telling the paper, adding that top leaders fear revelations
of large assets held by officials could further stoke anger.
State media reports have said
government departments have refused hundreds of private requests from citizens
to disclose details of official salaries.
Wang and Yu are under intense
scrutiny during the congress, as both are considered contenders for promotion
to the top echelons of power in Beijing.
But their remarks prompted
cynical comments from users of Weibo, the wildly popular Twitter-like Chinese
micro-blogging service whose users have helped expose some cases of corruption
among local-level officials.
"Talk is easy," one
user wrote of Yu's comments.
"His public statements fool
the masses, but in private he'll work to prevent disclosure," wrote
another.
In the most sensational and
damaging corruption case in years, Bo Xilai, a regional party boss in
southwestern China and former rising star, was toppled this year in an affair
involving a murder conviction for his wife.
Bo will soon face trial on
allegations of corruption and power abuse.
Other cases of egregious
corruption arise regularly.
In one, an official in the
southern Chinese city of Guangzhou was placed under investigation last month
after Internet users posted pictures of some of his 23 houses.
The public resonance of the issue
was made clear when Zhang Tiancheng, an official in southern China's Hunan
province, was hailed as a hero for using Weibo to post details of his family
income and assets in late October.
Among other details, Zhang listed
his approximately 3,000 Yuan (US$480) monthly wage, his love of reading,
fishing and "attractive women".
"He is truly a servant of
the people," one Weibo user responded in a typical reply. "I wish he
could be a role model for the rest."
- AFP/xq
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