Plan to cage corruption

The CPC's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has issued its second five-year plan targeting corruption.

According to the work plan, supervision of official power will be enhanced, and a punishment system will be established by the end of 2017, to stop officials taking bribes.

The plan also promises to eliminate the four undesirable work habits of Party and government officials; formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance.

Inspection teams will become routine in the anti-corruption campaign. "By using these teams, the central authorities will be able to pinpoint problems in local governments," said Zhu.

Party leader Xi Jinping has stated that power should be caged by institutions, and that the five-year anti-graft program is meant to build such a cage.

Fighting corruption on the Internet

The party has also launched a fierce online anti-corruption campaign. The Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and Ministry of Supervision have jointly launched an official website http://www.12388.gov.cn/ to improve communication with the public.

The website is designed to collect tip-offs about corruption cases, and publish up to date information about important meetings, campaigns and corruption investigations.

The anti-corruption watchdog vowed that all reports logged on its website would be protected by the law, and it will deal with revenge attacks harshly.

The Internet has become a new and necessary layer to China's battle against graft, experts said.

"Corruption tip-offs online are a new form of supervision, and they can be faster and wider-ranging than traditional media supervision," said Tang Xujun, deputy director of the Institute of Journalism and Communication at the academy.

The number of internet users in China reached 564 million at the end of 2012, and there were 300 million registered users of the mobile text application Weixin, or WeChat.

Professionalizing the whistle-blowing process

The online anti-corruption tip-offs website recently unveiled its comments and complaints process. The public will be able to report suspected graft to the authorities by phone, mail, by visiting the office or by leaving an online message.

All of the complaints will be loaded into an online processing system. Officials will then read the materials and decide how to handle the issue.

The guideline also emphasized that the central commission will verify the authenticity of the information, warn the government agencies concerned, and then investigate the case or appoint a local sub-branch to do so. Regardless of what action is taken, the statement requires that the results of the investigation be conveyed to the informant once the case is closed.

"In the past, there was no way of knowing whether a tip-off had been accepted," said Jiang Ming'an, a professor in law at Peking University, "The advantage of the official tip-off channel. It is professional and subject to supervision."

Ren Jianming, director of the Clean Governance Research and Education Center at Beihang University in Beijing, said that the detailed instructions will standardize the whistle-blowing process and avoid unverified information from the public being published.

"It provides an official channel for whistle-blowers while putting an end to rumors that could be used to slander or blackmail a targeted official," Ren said.