262,600 officials punished in crackdown on extravagance

China’s campaign against extravagance and undesirable work styles among officials has seen about 262,600 officials punished in the past five years, the top discipline inspection agency said yesterday.

As of October, discipline inspection agencies nationwide had investigated about 193,200 cases involving violation of the Party frugality code, the Communist Party of China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement.

The code was issued on December 4, 2012.

Twenty-nine of the cases involved senior officials, the statement said. The campaign targets the practice of spending public funds on gifts, banquets and holidays. The number of such cases has reduced annually, the CCDI said.

From December 2012 to October 2017, about 45,500 cases were exposed, 68.6 percent of which occurred in 2013 and 2014, and 3.5 percent this year.

Officials were also investigated for hosting extravagant wedding ceremonies and funerals, and frequenting expensive nightclubs.

Many leading officials were held accountable for failing to discipline their subordinates. From 2015 to August 2017, more than 18,240 officials were punished for such oversight.

The campaign benefited from the participation of citizens who supervised officials and sent tip-offs of misconduct through websites, mobile apps and WeChat accounts set up by discipline inspection agencies.

However, the CCDI said that the campaign still faced difficulties. A number of officials are repeat offenders, while others have just more cunningly disguised their misconduct.

The practice of “formalism” and “bureaucratism” remain among the most severe.

The implementation of the code is vital for “whether or not the Party will alienate itself from the masses, govern the country for long and well fulfill its mission,” the statement said.

On Sunday, the top anti-graft body released 16 animated gifs — a common type of image file found on most computer systems and websites — on the eight-point frugality code to mark the fifth anniversary of the code’s release.

The gifs aim to explain the code to the public in a way catering to popular taste, and close the distance between the people and the authority, CCDI said.