December 4, 2024
CHONGQING – Corruption cases against village and town officials in China have soared in 2024, as a graft crackdown deepens in the world’s second-largest economy.
The number of cases against the directors of village committees, which run China’s smallest administrative areas, grew year on year by 31,000 – or 67.4 per cent – to 77,000 in the first nine months of 2024, according to official figures.
There were also a lot more graft cases involving township officials, which grew by 24,000 – or 36.9 per cent – to 89,000 between January and September, compared with the same period in 2023.
For the first nine months of 2024, China logged 642,000 corruption cases, higher than the 626,000 for the whole of 2023. The increase is seen at all five levels of the country’s administrative areas, which also include county, prefecture and province.
But it is the scourge of corruption in villages, in particular, that has worried China’s anti-corruption czar Li Xi, a member of the country’s apex Politburo Standing Committee.
In a speech on Nov 20, he urged officials to engage more deeply with grassroots members and to encourage the public to keep an eye on how public funds are spent by local officials.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has made fighting corruption his signature public policy since he took office in 2012.
Analysts told The Straits Times that the spike in graft cases comes amid tighter inspections, which have become a way for officials to show that their work is in line with Mr Xi’s priorities.
“It is the easiest way to show the boss that you are doing your job,” said Associate Professor Alfred Wu of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
“But the fact that there was such a high increase this year also shows that there’s a lot more work to be done in cracking down on corruption,” added Prof Wu, who studies public governance in Greater China.
In 2023, China scored 42 out of 100 – down three points from 2022 – and was ranked 76th out of 180 countries and regions on a Global Corruption Barometer by global non-profit Transparency International, which aims to promote government transparency across the world.
But China’s latest score of 42 is an improvement by three points from its score in 2012.
Fraudulent claims and embezzlement were the most common forms of corruption in villages in China, according to an analysis by Hunan University of 567 graft cases between 2015 and 2020 made public by the central authorities.
An inspection committee in eastern Shandong province revealed in April this year that one of its former village party secretaries had embezzled 109,000 yuan (S$20,110) in farming subsidies and made false insurance claims between March 2021 and October 2023.
In another case, a director of a village committee in north-western Shanxi province fraudulently used the names of his relatives to apply for funds meant for poverty alleviation. He embezzled more than 200,000 yuan between 2014 and 2024.
Experts have told local media that corruption in villages in China has been hard to root out due to weak oversight, a lack of staff trained in accounting and opaque financial disclosures.
Officials in towns and villages have also reportedly colluded to obtain public funds by fraud.
Experts have urged stricter requirements for financial disclosures, independent supervision of town and village finances and better mechanisms to prevent conflict of interests.
For example, the post of village secretary, the highest-ranking Communist Party member in China’s smallest administrative areas, often comes with broad discretion in deciding how to allocate public funds.
China’s recent economic uncertainty may have also contributed to the higher corruption cases this year.
Professor Victor Shih, director of the 21st Century China Centre at the University of California San Diego, said that “many party cadres might have been forced into corruption” due to widespread arrears in the smaller, local governments.
Local governments had previously relied on land sales as a source of funding but have been hard hit by Beijing’s crackdown on property developers that began in earnest in 2020. This has reportedly affected local governments’ funding for public projects and payment of wages to government employees.