How much longer can rural corruption be left unchecked?

As the rural economy continues to develop, the scale of rural collective funds, assets and resources also keeps growing, but for a long time the management of the rural “three assets” in many places has been non-standard and imperfect, gradually becoming an area where corruption at the grassroots level occurs frequently. (Xinhua Net, October 28)

Since the 18th National Congress, under the guidance of the central principle of “catching flies and tigers together,” the fight against corruption has produced abundant results. Beyond the traditional corruption of leading officials at all levels, the major problem of rural corruption in our country has also been exposed.

Village officials hold small offices, but for the villagers their power is great. Who has the final say on who receives the minimum living allowance? Who decides who gets state subsidies? Who signs off on village land development…. Small officials with great power give village officials unlimited possibilities for corruption. In the ‘urban village’ redevelopment in Taiyuan, tens of millions were spent just to buy a village chief post; in Guangdong, the deceased parents of a village official were still receiving the minimum living allowance… the corruption of village officials seeps in everywhere.

⟦NL> Why do village officials dare to be so “arrogant”? First, the management of the “three assets” is chaotic: in some villages the accountant and cashier roles are not separated, and the accounts, money and power are all controlled by the village Party secretary alone; in some villages collective assets often flow to people connected to village officials, and ordinary villagers do not know, do not ask, and cannot ask; in some villages collective resources become the village officials' own resources, and how much there is, where it is, and who is using it are all a muddled account. Second, supervision is weak: oversight from above is too distant, oversight at the same level is too soft, and oversight from below is too weak, so village officials have already become “local emperors.“ Third, auditing is too weak. Whether it is the application of minimum living allowance households or the distribution of state subsidies, who, and how often, has carefully looked into the village officials and verified the actual situation? Higher-level departments rarely make the trip, and the cost of verification is too high, amounting to almost “zero” effective auditing, so how is that different from formalism?

However, as the lowest-level representatives of the “state,” village officials have the most contact with ordinary people, and their every word and action profoundly affects how ordinary people view the state. If the corruption of village officials is not changed, how can we talk about changing ordinary people's view that Chinese corruption has already penetrated to the bone? Therefore, the corruption of village officials absolutely must not be left unchecked.

During the mass line education and practice campaign, many places across the country carried out concentrated rectification of the management problems of the rural “three assets,” and the management of the “three assets” is now moving onto a track of effective supervision. However, some areas still have the existing practice of implementing documents with documents and dealing with inspections perfunctorily. Here, the author believes the key is still to confine power in the ‘cage’ of institutions, and to draw on good experience, such as the rural property rights trading management system of Shaoxing, which brings major changes in rural collective “three assets” into the town-level rural property rights trading service center for transactions, and to start from the central government to formulate a unified management system; only then can the corruption of village officials be effectively stopped.