Xinhua News Agency:
Someone called intra-Party supervision a self-conducted surgeries which is very difficult to go through. Therefore, my question is: Are the intra-Party regulations able to truly solve the conundrum? Thank you.
Xiao Pei:
The history of CPC has more than once proved the adage of Mr. Deng Xiaoping, who believed that our Party has huge self-remediation power every time we are troubled with mistakes that lead us in the wrong direction. Why? It is not because the CPC makes no mistakes but because we are never afraid to reckon our mistakes. When we are aware of them, we immediately correct them.
Among the overall supervision systems established to rule the Party and the country, intra-Party supervision has been prioritized among others, because when the intra-Party system loses its power, the other supervisions will undoubtedly become invalid. But we should not only rely on intra-Party supervision, but also on the scrutiny of our people so that we can combine the two different systems to ward off historical cycles. At the same time, intra-Party supervision should join in the multiple overseeing systems, including the democratic, social and individual supervisions as well as the monitoring and reporting of public opinions, in order to maintain the self-cleanliness, improvement, renovation and progress. Thank you.
Prensa Latina:
The Chinese government has carried out a campaign against top-level grafts and all kinds of crimes, including against the high-ranking officials who have violated the appropriate public use of resources and funds to alleviate poverty and fight environmental pollution. My question is: Will the government establish new initiatives concerning this issue? And I also noticed that since there are lots of officials in high ranks accused of corruptions, are the measures to correct them bringing them again to society once they complete their sentences or are the charges just punitive? Thank you.
Luo Dongchuan:
The punishment for the embezzlement of funds to alleviate poverty or improve environmental conditions has always been the highlight of the disciplinary inspections. In 2016, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) made plans to send reports on the embezzlement of poverty-alleviating funds in various forms to designated departments. The focus is on the misuse of relief supplies, pocketing poverty-alleviating funds, making preferential offers to family members and friends, and faking poverty reports to ask for financial support. We'll severely punish the community-level officials charged of dereliction, inaction and misconducts. In 2016, we imposed penalties on more than 390,000 Party members and community-level officials. In the past four years since the 18th CPC National Congress, we have punished 1.14 million community-level officials.
For your second question, I need to point out that the ultimate goal of our stringent punishments of the Party members is to clean governance while educating, warning and intimidating corrupt officials so as to educate all Party cadres. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party cadres who received punishments have been required to reckon and correct their blunders with the help of education, management and supervisions. Once they finish their sentences, the Party cadres can be offered educational and job opportunities stipulated by relevant legal provisions and policies to help them return to society as upright people who respect the law.