Central discipline watchdog strengthens accountability mechanism to facilitate poverty alleviation

In the meantime, the supervision and accountability measures have been strengthened across the country.

From January 2014 to March 2015, the disciplinary watchdog in Guizhou Province investigated 4,342 cases concerning the people’s livelihood, accounting for 59.32% of all investigations in the province. It disciplined and punished 3,542 Party members, accounting for 47.09% of all disciplinary cases. The total amount involved in these cases was 672 million yuan.

In 2015, Gansu Province focused on corruption in targeted poverty alleviation, land expropriation and circulation, agricultural subsidies, basic living allowances management and so on, and investigated 998 cases, while it punished and disciplined 1,794 people and sent 170 people to judicial organs of the government.

The central discipline watchdog has opened a number of channels for tip-offs and public supervision and received fruitful results.

On August 17, 2015, a villager from Lianhuan Town, Zhenfeng County, Qianxinan Buyei and the Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou Province called the prefecture Party secretary hotline.

The villager was asked to pay a 3,000 yuan kickback from a village official when applying to contract some land to plant fruits. He asked if such a request was legal. Soon after the phone call, the village official was disciplined.

Meanwhile, the watchdog has strengthened the supervision force by connecting different levels of authorities.

Since 2014, Guizhou has set up 1,489 watchdog groups from counties, townships and residential neighborhoods to supervise livelihood projects. By March 2016, the province has discovered 39,051 issues, accounting for 54.25% of all issues detected.

The public has also become more involved in the campaign as policy and fund transparency has increased.

In June of 2014, Yulin City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region set up a fund supervision platform overseeing projects concerning the people’s livelihoods. The platform collected detailed information of the amounts of funds, distributed individual funds, and the beneficiaries’ personal information. It conducted real-time monitoring, collected tip-offs and launched inspection actions.

In July 2016, China began implementing the CPC Accountability Regulations, another powerful weapon that holds officials accountable for poor leadership. It targets leaders of Party committees and discipline inspection committees at various levels, and holds them responsible for serious consequences caused by negligence or poor performance. The accountability rules crystalize the CPC constitution and continue to tighten the cage of regulations to run the Party strictly.