Local municipal leaders should be the first to disclose details of personal assets, shouted Wu Xiang, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Guangzhou, during the group’s meeting on Jan 2, reported the Guangzhou Daily.
“If we were to push for a system for disclosing the personal assets of public officials, you guys should do it first,” shouted Wu, during the open mike period when members of the local CPPCC can speak freely.
Wu was calling out the municipal party secretary, the mayor, and the local discipline inspection commission secretary to come clean with their personal wealth.
The CPPCC is a consultative body whose members deliberate on issues and provide opinions for the China’s highest political organ, the National People’s Congress.
“The resistance from different levels of officials have stalled such a mechanism from being pushed forward. If the top leaders were to take the lead, it would send a powerful message,” said Wu.
No Transparency
Contrary to the United States, where public officials are required by law to disclose their personal assets, China does not have such a law in place. Every now and then, ever since Han Deyun, a lawyer and a representative from Sichuan Province, first brought the issue up at the National CPPCC in 2006, talk about disclosure comes up again,.
On Jan. 3, an opinion article published by Peng Pai, a new-state-funded online media outlet, provided two explanations for failure to implant a system of any kind for disclosing officials’ wealth after all these years.
On the one hand, the Chinese Communist Party’s national development strategy could be thrown into a chaos, the article said, if people become outraged by the sheer increase in corruption cases as a result of making public the wealth of public officials. This could affect “social stability,” according to Peng Pai.
On the other hand, the failure to disclose assets enables corruption. Without disclosure, people can easily move their assets. China does not have in place a financial system that requires real names, a personal credit system, effective monitoring of cash and money laundering, gift taxes or inheritance taxes, the article said.
