CPC launches inspections to find loopholes

Latest round of efforts to focus on whether officials are fulfilling duties

The Communist Party of China has launched a new round of inspections to spot key problems and loopholes in law-based governance in eight regions.

According to a statement made public on Wednesday by the Office of the Commission for Overall Law-based Governance of the CPC Central Committee, the inspection will focus on leading officials’ work to promote the rule of law and on the construction of lawbased governments.

The statement said eight supervision teams had been sent to Shanghai, the provinces of Heilong jiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hainan and Qinghai, and the Inner Mongolia and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous regions.

The inspections will focus on evaluating whether key Party and government officials have executed the rule of law and are fulfilling their roles in building law-based governance, it said.

The teams will learn about local situations through various means including listening to reports, interviewing individuals and conducting questionnaires and undercover investigations. Lawyers and journalists have been invited to join the inspections, the statement said.

Headed by General Secretary Xi Jinping, the commission was established in 2018. It aims to study and settle major issues concerning law-based governance and establish a system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics.

While meeting with senior officials on Wednesday, Wan Chun, head of the supervision team in Heilong jiang and a senior official of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, said team members will go to the grassroots level and look for problems in law-based governance, local media reported on Wednesday evening.

Wan said the inspection aims to help local Party committees and governments push forward lawbased governance and better collaborate on building a society based on the rule of law.

Supervision teams from the office inspected eight other provinces last year. Although positive results had been achieved in lawbased governance, there was still a gap between people’s expectations and job execution by provincial Party committees and governments, the office said in a statement released in April.

The office also said in April that it had given feedback regarding problems found during last year’s inspections and had urged local authorities to draft plans to solve the issues mentioned and ensure they were dealt with within three months.

Details of the issues and loopholes the teams found in law-based governance have not been published.