Expansion of pilot program could curb abuse of real estate market for graft
China is ready for the adoption of an official residence system, under which the government will provide housing for senior officials during their terms in line with the country's ongoing anti-graft drive, according to a report released Monday.
According to a 3-month survey conducted by a research team from the China Society of Administrative Reform (CSAR), about 74 percent of over 500 respondents - most of whom are Party or government officials - agreed that the time is ripe to implement a system to house senior officials, and that the major obstacles come from vested interests and senior leaders, news site chinanews.com reported Monday.
The report released by CSAR, an academic society under the Chinese Academy of Governance (CAG), advised that the system be implemented as part of the country's campaign to rectify four undesirable work styles: formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance.
"It is time to adopt the system because trials of the system in certain provinces are underway, international practices are mature and, most importantly, we have seen the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) resolution [to implement the system]," Wang Yukai, a professor at the CAG and deputy editor-in-chief of the report, told the Global Times.
Under the system, the central government will provide a residence for each senior official and his or her immediate family, and the residence will be reallocated to another official after the original occupant leaves office, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
A trial system providing residences for senior officials such as mayors, heads of public security bureaus and discipline inspection commissions - offices that require their incumbents to not be local residents - has already been implemented in some regions and has made much progress, Wang said, adding that this pilot program could serve as a model for the wider introduction of a housing system.
In a suggestion submitted to Chinese lawmakers in 2013, Wang wrote that the system should be open both to State-level leaders, such as the country's president and premier, and to local Party and government chiefs and heads of courts and procuratorates.
Wang previously told the Beijing Times that in several instances before a trial housing provision system was implemented, officials bought several houses for much less than market price and then sold them for huge profits, tainting their offices with corruption and causing the loss of State property, as those houses were built by local governments.
International practice often requires officials to disclose their assets when such a system is implemented in order to bolster supervision by the public, Zhuang Deshui, a deputy director of the Research Center for Government Integrity-Building at Peking University, told the Global Times.
China stressed the establishment of an official residence provision system to curb potential corruption in a 2013 decision on how to comprehensively deepen reforms approved at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, Xinhua reported.
