Government and Policy

Party officials brought to account by new rule

By Zhao Yinan (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-24 07:19

Beijing adopts regulation meant to hold decision makers responsible

BEIJING - Beijing officials will be held accountable for erroneous decision making and inept leadership by a new regulation meant to improve the supervision of the Communist Party of China and the government.

Both Party and administrative officials in Beijing will be forced to resign or to submit to punishments if the government offices they oversee fail to perform their duties, according to a temporary regulation released by the General Office of the city's government.

This marks the first time a local government in China has held Party officials accountable for decision making.

Some provincial governments, for their part, have passed similar rules, but those have only applied to administrative officials.

The temporary regulation in Beijing is seen as being needed largely because Party officials in China often have more influence over policy decisions than administrative officials do.

The city's rule stipulates that both Party and administrative officials will be held accountable for making bad decisions, falling down in their duties, failing to properly deal with mass disturbances and making similar types of mistakes.

The stipulation is a sign of progress in the supervision of Party officials. Such a policy has not been included in previous regulations, either those adopted for the entire country or for a specific region, an unnamed official from Beijing Party discipline inspection commission told Beijing Daily.

The official said Beijing's regulation imposes far stricter punishments on officials who neglect their duties.

For instance, China's national regulation stipulates that officials who have resigned over a violation of discipline can still be appointed to another post in the government. Beijing's regulation, in contrast, does not include a similar opportunity for redemption.

"Instead, we have added another provision, which says officials who have failed in their duties should be placed on probation for three to six months," the official said.

Moreover, officials who are under a cloud must wait for more than a year after their resignations before they can occupy posts that are in the same administrative level as they had formerly been in. And they cannot be promoted for at least two years.

Zhu Lijia, a public administration expert at the Chinese Academy of Governance, told China Daily that Beijing's regulation is reasonable because an official's powers should not exceed his responsibilities.

"Party officials who fail to perform their duties should be punished, since they usually have a greater say in important decisions," he said.

Zhu said he questions whether officials who resign in disgrace should be allowed to continue working for the government in the future.

"Almost all of the officials can be appointed to a similar post in a different place in the country, and this makes the public start to doubt the effectiveness of the whole accountability system," he said.

One example of these difficulties can be found in the case of Liu Daqun, a former chief of the agriculture department in North China's Hebei province, who was punished for his part in a tainted-milk scandal that occurred in 2008. Despite his implication, Liu was elected mayor of Xingtai city, a city in Hebei province, the following year.

In the 2008 scandal, toxic milk powder killed at least six infants and sickened 300,000 children in China.

China Daily