China’s anti-corruption campaign has intensified at the grassroots level, with 77,000 current or former village party branch secretaries and village committee chiefs investigated for corruption between January and September 2024. This marks a significant increase of over 30,000 cases compared to the same period last year, according to official reports from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
In total, Chinese disciplinary authorities investigated 642,000 corruption cases during this nine-month period. The investigations spanned all levels of government, from 58 high-ranking provincial officials to thousands of local administrators. The crackdown has been particularly notable at the village level, where the number of cases in the first three quarters of 2024 has already exceeded the full-year total of 61,000 cases in 2023.
Common corruption practices among village officials include accepting kickbacks from local construction projects and fraudulently obtaining rural compensation funds. With China having more than 600,000 administrative villages, the scale of the corruption has sparked public debate. On social media, many netizens suggest that while the number of investigated officials is already substantial, it likely represents only a fraction of actual corruption cases, with many instances going unreported. The persistent revelation of corruption cases has led to public cynicism, with some commenting that the system is “rotten from top to bottom.”
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), October 28, 2024
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202410280309.aspx