China's new anti-graft inspections turn towards HK and Macau Affairs Office

China's next round of anti-corruption inspections, which will run over the next few months, will focus on the Party leaderships of 32 state and Party organs, the nation’s top anti-corruption watchdog - the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said Wednesday.

Inspection teams will be dispatched to the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, and the top political advisory body, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the CCDI said in a statement.

They will also visit the Foreign Ministry; the Ministry of Public Security; the Ministry of Finance; the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development; the National Audit Office; as well as State Council organs in charge of legislative affairs and work related to Hong Kong and Macao, and overseas Chinese.

The South China Morning Post commented that the Communist party and central government officials in Hong Kong and Macau are about to feel the heat of Beijing’s unprecedented ongoing anti-corruption drive since it was announced.

According to the South China Morning Post, the anti-graft watchdog says inspection teams will be sent to the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, as well as the National People Congress’ agencies including the Basic Law committees for Hong Kong and Macau, and 29 other ministerial-level party and government organs.

Unveiling the plan yesterday CCDI head Wang Qishan said anti-graft inspections were one of the most effective methods of curbing rampant corruption.

“Inspections are an important way to carry out internal-party supervision,” he said. Inspectors must stay in step with President Xi Jinping and “examine whether the party’s guidelines and policies have been truthfully enforced in a bid to resolutely safeguard the party’s central leadership”, Wang said.

The round of inspections that includes Hong Kong and Macau is the 10th since Xi took office in late 2012. The aim is to cover all party and central government organs as well as all the provinces and state-owned enterprises, the CCDI said.

Inspectors will also be sent to the ministries of foreign affairs, finance, and public security. They will also revisit Tianjin, Jiangxi, Henan and Hubei provinces, which were scrutinised in previous rounds of inspection.

Although the party has routinely sent out inspection teams in the past, this round of audits has made international headlines after Xi kicked off a ruthless campaign against corruption, which he admitted had severely undermined the credibility of the party’s rule.

Dozens of senior government officials and state enterprises executives have been snared as a result of such procedures.

The latest stage of Xi’s crackdown comes just weeks after a mainland official in charge of the internal control of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office was found to have breached discipline himself by treating friends to a meal at a hotel on business expenses.

That warning came three months after the internal control body assigned an official to the Hong Kong office to oversee its discipline inspection work.

Hong Kong-based China watcher, Johnny Lau Yui-siu said: “It signals that the central government is serious about cracking down on corruption, and no department is spared. In the past, they might not highlight the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office or the Basic Law Committee in their propaganda. But that does not mean the two departments were corruption-free.”

Xinhua reported that Party organizations, such as the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, and a central leading group for the prevention and handling of cults, will also be scrutinized.

In addition, this round of inspections will include a reexamination of Tianjin Municipality and the provinces of Jiangxi, Henan and Hubei, all of which have been inspected in previous rounds.

At a meeting Wednesday on the new inspections, Wang Qishan, head of the CCDI, highlighted the role the inspections play in intra-Party supervision.

Inspectors should conform with the CPC Central Committee "in both thoughts and actions," and focus on party building, anti-corruption work and policy implementation .

They should also inspire institutional innovation to improve the Party, he said.

(APD/SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST)