China’s top graft-buster on Thursday said it would continue to turn up the heat on corruption as part of broader efforts to create a better business environment, warning that “no one is untouchable”.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection remarks came two days after it said that the number of officials facing disciplinary action was up more than 50 per cent in the first quarter from the same time last year.
The CCDI made the remarks in a commentary in its official newspaper, China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News.
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“The thinking that the anti-corruption campaign will affect economic development and dampen cadres’ enthusiasm is wrong and harmful,” the commentary said, pushing back against voices that have called for an easing in the campaign so that officials have more room for economy-boosting policies.
“Fairness and justice are crucial conditions for the healthy development of the economy and society, and corruption is the greatest injustice,” it said.
“Resolutely punishing corruption is a powerful measure to create a market-oriented, law-based and internationalised business environment and to maintain and promote social fairness and justice.”
The commentary also acknowledged that China’s fight against corruption remained “grim and complex”, and that the task of eradicating the conditions that breed corruption was “arduous and onerous”.
But it vowed to pursue every corruption case regardless of who would be implicated in the investigation.
“Now in China, no one is untouchable. There is no ‘golden seal of immunity’, no ‘iron-hat prince’, no so-called safe zones, and no forbidden areas that cannot be investigated,” the commentary said. “This has become a common consensus of the whole party and the people.”
On Tuesday, the CCDI announced that more than 185,000 officials were punished in the first three months of this year – a substantial increase of 53 per cent from the same period in 2024.
More officials were put under investigation, too. The CCDI said a total of 220,000 anti-corruption investigations had been launched in the quarter, up nearly 50 per cent over the same period last year.
“The detailed data once again sends a strong signal that the fight against corruption will not stop and we will not give an inch,” the commentary said.
At the top of the hierarchy, 14 provincial and ministerial-level officials faced disciplinary action in the first quarter – two more than the same period last year.
But most of the increase in cases involved the rank and file, with some 24,000 “ordinary cadres” at the entry level of Chinese officialdom punished – a 50 per cent increase from a year ago.
The CCDI said it also took disciplinary action against 130,000 rural officials and workers at state-owned companies, marking a 60 per cent rise from the first quarter of 2024.
The CCDI statement on Tuesday said this showed the deepening efforts to stamp out corruption and misconduct that directly affects people’s lives. In January, the CCDI made specific mention of tackling “grass-roots corruption” during its plenum, vowing to zero in on graft below county level for the next two years.
In a work plan issued in 2023, the Central Anti-Corruption Coordination Group also ordered an expansion of efforts to fight graft at the grass-roots level, including removing “village tyrants” and “district bullies” who it said were sources of instability.
On Tuesday, the CCDI also announced the formal arrest of Li Gang, the disciplinary chief sent by the graft-buster to the Central Organisation Department – the ruling Communist Party’s top personnel office – after more than nine months of investigation.
Li, with a vice-ministerial title, is the highest-ranking disciplinary official to be detained and investigated for corruption in the past two years.
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