Little sign of overwork in China's anti-graft body
BEIJING (AFP) — There's no sign outside this compound in an old section of Beijing that behind its high walls lies the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party's internal disciplinary body.
The low-key setting masks what has become one of the country's most feared organs, the epicentre of a battle against the official corruption that is one of the country's hottest political issues.
China opened the gates of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection to foreign reporters for the first time on Thursday, in the latest move to highlight the government's anti-corruption stance ahead of a key political gathering next month.
Officials took journalists around the 15-story shiny glass and steel headquarters, hidden behind 15-foot-high (five-meter-high) walls.
The tour included a stop in the serene gardens under a 350-year-old tree which, according to Chinese legend, encourages fairness.
"The tree reminds all of us here to be impartial in our work," said Chi Yaoyun, deputy director general of the Commission's General Office.
Chi attributed the tour to the government's willingness to be more open, but in keeping with the ruling Communist Party's all-consuming secrecy, that openness went only so far.
After stringent security checks, journalists were denied permission to take photographs or recordings within the building.
Case workers greeted the visitors politely from behind spotless desks unburdened by the files and documents that would indicate corruption is a growing problem.
"We do not get all the cases at once. They come in steadily and we handle them quickly," Liu Zhenbao, an official in charge of case reviews, cheerfully told reporters.
The body's case-inspection department seemed nearly deserted. The explanation: staff are all out in the field investigating cases.
And officials repeatedly pleaded that "time is short, it is time to move on" when pressed with sensitive questions about the nexus of corruption and politics in China.
The secrecy reflects the political sensitivity of the commission, widely feared as a shadow judiciary because it decides which party corruption cases are turned over to the nation's judicial authorities.
This raises the spectre of possible political influence on criminal graft cases in China, where party power supersedes that of the national government.
The commission's work has come increasingly under the spotlight as President Hu Jintao prepares to cement his control by moving allies into leadership positions during the five-yearly CCP Congress set for next month.
Graft has risen to epidemic levels in rapidly developing China and Hu has made fighting it a key priority in a battle that has taken on overt political dimensions.
The highest-profile recent victim, former Shanghai party boss Chen Liangyu, is an ally of former president Jiang Zemin, whose influence Hu is working to eradicate.
But Chi firmly denied that politics has ever influenced the work of the commission, established in 1979 to replace an earlier body abused by Mao Zedong and his supporters.
Nor was Thursday's rare tour linked to the upcoming Congress, he said.
"This is a reflection of our openness and the development of democracy in China," Chi said, before reporters were hurried onto a waiting bus.
