Beijing has publicised three cases of local governments falsifying achievements to boost their records, which involved manipulating revenue data, misusing special-purpose government bonds and concealing off-balance-sheet debt.
Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported on Sunday that a central working group and the Communist Party’s top anti-corruption watchdog had announced cases highlighting typical misconduct in official duties and performance evaluations.
The announcement came from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and a working group responsible for an education campaign on the “correct view of political performance”, and put a spotlight on cases from the provinces of Gansu and Zhejiang, as well as Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
It said that Nanning, the regional capital of Guangxi, had falsely inflated its revenue for the 2024 financial year by 2.83 billion yuan (US$416.5 million). The city achieved this by assigning values ranging from 840,000 yuan to 500 million yuan to 15 plots of land that had originally been allocated to three state-owned enterprises for free.
These companies subsequently paid so-called land allocation fees to the local finance department, which recorded the funds as government revenue and then returned them to the companies under the guise of land expropriation compensation. One plot of land was used as many as 18 times in a series of transactions.
In another case, officials in the Xincheng district of Jiuquan, Gansu province were accused of labelling a landscape project as flood control and water pollution control infrastructure to fraudulently obtain 55.95 million yuan in ultra-long-term special treasury bonds issued in 2024.
These bonds were earmarked for major national strategies and bolstering security in key areas. Of these funds, 38.16 million yuan was used to build landscaped islands, viewing platforms and other facilities that failed to achieve the project’s goals and obstructed flood discharge after completion, according to the announcement.
“[Some governments] treated ultra-long-term special treasury bonds as ‘Tang Monk’s flesh’, fraudulently investing funds in ineffective and inefficient projects, which hinders the implementation of the Communist Party Central Committee’s major strategic goals,” the announcement said.
The Chinese idiom “Tang Monk’s flesh” comes from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West and is used to describe something extremely precious or coveted. In the book, demons and monsters believed that eating the flesh of the main character, a monk named Tang Sanzang, would grant them immortality.
In the final case, the Xiaoshan district of Hangzhou, Zhejiang allegedly used two local government financing instruments to raise funds for road, demolition and environmental projects by forging contracts and inflating asset valuations.
The announcement said this arrangement had created a large amount of hidden local government debt, including 738 million yuan added after the national debt cut-off date was set in March 2023.
The notice accused the local government of falsely reporting that the two financing institutions had repaid all such debts and ceased financing activities.
It did not name specific officials or disclose the penalties associated with the three cases.
Earlier this month, the CCDI announced five typical cases of wrongdoing in governance. The five officials have been expelled from the party and are facing criminal prosecution.
The three newly announced cases are the clearest examples to date of the behaviours targeted by a party-wide education campaign that began in February and will conclude at the end of next month.
“This fully exposes the extremely unclear understanding in some localities and units regarding establishing and practising a ‘correct’ view of governance performance, and the serious deviation in their performance appraisal criteria,” the announcement stated.
The campaign focuses on leaders at the county level and above, requiring officials to identify and correct behaviours that deviate from the governance and development model championed by Beijing. Officials have also been instructed to tailor assessments to local conditions, rather than using uniform criteria across regions and industries.
The campaign came at a crucial time on China’s political calendar, as a transfer of power is under way at the local and provincial levels.
Preparations have begun for the party’s national congress next year, a five-yearly event that will determine the party’s top leadership, including the new line-up of the Politburo and the Central Committee. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
