Anti-corruption agency backs Xi
China is set to give President Xi Jinping a powerful new weapon as he prepares to rule indefinitely—a Communist Party-led anti-corruption agency to police not only the party’s cadres, but also doctors, teachers, entertainers and other state employees.
The move is part of a sweeping government reorganization to boost the authority of the party headed by Xi, who has firmly established himself as China’s most formidable leader since Mao Zedong.
On Sunday, China’s rubber-stamp legislature scrapped a two-term limit on the presidency, paving the way for Xi to rule for as long as he wants. That has dismayed critics who fear a return to one-man rule and the destruction of modest measures in place since 1982 to constrain power in China.
The National People’s Congress on Tuesday began a third and final reading of a draft supervision law that would extend the newly formed anti-graft body’s authority, led by the party, over vast numbers of workers in the public sector.
Chinese University of Hong Kong law professor Ryan Mitchell said expanding the scope of the anti-graft agency’s powers to include government workers may have been “calculated as a way to intimidate the bureaucracy into more closely following the party line.”
The law would merge the party’s anti-graft watchdog body with one overseeing the civil service to form a new National Supervision Commission, defined as a political body independent of the Cabinet, courts and prosecutors, raising fears of political abuse.
The body will have the right to detain suspects for up to six months without seeking a judge’s permission. Authorities must inform the suspect’s family and work unit of their detention within 24 hours, except in cases where evidence might be destroyed or the investigation otherwise impeded, according to a text of the draft law.
Other details, such as where suspects will be held, who will be responsible for their welfare and what form of legal representation they will be permitted, have not been announced.
A chief flaw of the new commission is that it will operate outside standard legal procedures ensuring due process, said Mitchell and other experts, including Hong Daode, a professor of criminal law at Beijing’s China University of Political Science and Law.
“There should never be two different sets of procedures when handling criminal cases,” Hong said.
The bill will establish supervisory commissions at various levels down to the counties. They will have the power to scrutinize government employees, as well as people working in state-owned companies and research institutes, schools, hospitals, sporting bodies and elsewhere. In Beijing alone, a pilot program instituted last year quadrupled the numbers under scrutiny to almost 1 million.
The commission also replaces the party’s previous procedure for investigating corruption suspects known as “shuanggui,” whose opaque nature led to frequent allegations or torture, forced confessions and other abuses. /