Strengthen rural "three assets" management to prevent and curb petty official corruption

In recent years, as the state has continuously increased its investment in rural areas, various agricultural benefit projects have increased year by year. These projects have been established in villages, improving villagers' production and living conditions, broadening channels for agricultural development, strengthening the rural "body," and helping farmers become prosperous, while enhancing future momentum. However, during visits to rural areas, the author found that in some villages, construction fund revenues and expenditures were not disclosed transparently, project implementation management was chaotic, construction units seriously overestimated and inflated costs, and projects failed to achieve expected results, triggering complaints from the public. Some village officials were subjected to Party discipline and administrative disciplinary action for violating discipline and regulations. "Petty official corruption" has become an important factor affecting rural social stability.

After visits and analysis, the author believes that although the central government has continuously intensified efforts to address petty official corruption, the phenomenon of corruption among rural cadres remains difficult to eliminate. The main reason is that with the mutation of rural villagers' self-governance, it has become difficult for the public to supervise village officials, and township-level supervision is not effective enough. At the same time, because Party discipline, administrative discipline, and laws have supervision loopholes at the level of constraining rural cadres, petty official corruption in some places is out of control. Its specific manifestations are: First, "petty official corruption" is highly concealed and gray, hovering between legal and illegal, making supervision relatively difficult. Second, the multi-headed supervision system results in weak supervisory force against "petty official corruption." Third, there is a lack of relevant legal and institutional support. Village officials are not civil servants; they are not bound by administrative regulations, while the Organic Law on Villagers' Committees is sometimes difficult to ensure is implemented, thus to a certain extent making village officials "ungoverned by any of the three" cadres.

In the future, with the continued advancement of new rural construction and new urbanization, a large amount of state fiscal funds will flow into rural areas. Nowadays, directly demanding bribes, directly misappropriating collective property, and directly harming farmers' interests are already rare, but the technical sophistication of "petty official corruption" is getting higher and higher. Some village officials use lawful discretionary power to seek benefits for themselves. Many policy implementations grant grassroots cadres discretionary space, which provides convenience for some petty official corruption. Some village officials use information asymmetry between superiors and subordinates and market-oriented operational methods to seek benefits for themselves. At present, although many places have procedural requirements such as public bidding, sometimes they still cannot control the behavior of grassroots cadres who are both officials and businesspeople.

In this regard, the author suggests: First, Party committees and governments at the township level should strengthen the management of rural "three assets," and all projects meeting prescribed standards should be included in public resource trading centers for open bidding. Second, strengthen the supervision and management of "village accounts managed by townships." At the same time, townships should establish internal audit institutions, strengthen audit supervision over village-level finances, actively promote economic responsibility audits during the term of office of village-level principal leaders and handover procedures upon departure, and improve corresponding accountability and responsibility-tracing mechanisms. In addition, township economic management and audit departments should strengthen information sharing and review checks, strictly control rural collective revenues and expenditures, and eliminate duplicate applications and multi-channel applications. After project completion, special acceptance inspections should be organized, and fund disbursement should be executed with reference to relevant measures for the management of special funds. In governing "petty official corruption," it is necessary to further break the pattern of grassroots interest communities and narrow the space for interest exchange between the township and village levels. The key is to reposition the functions of communities and village officials. Village affairs and government affairs should be clearly divided, and the government affairs work of village officials should be reduced. Only in this way can the space for collusion between township and village cadres be cut off. Cutting off the gray interest chain at the grassroots level will enable the problem of corruption among rural cadres to be effectively addressed at its root.