Causes of Corruption in China’s Rural Areas in the New Period and Countermeasures

Anti-corruption Research Center, Railway Policy College, Zhengzhou 450053, China

1 Introduction

In recent years, China has been attaching importance to the work of agriculture, farmers, and rural areas. Various policies for supporting agriculture and benefiting the farmers have been widely implemented in rural areas. Rural economic and social undertakings have developed rapidly. However, the number of cases of cadre violations is increasing year by year, which has seriously weakened the fighting power of rural authorities, made the relationship between the party and the masses become estranged, and directly influenced the rural social stability. The village cadres do not belong to the staff member of the state, and the village-level institutions belong to the villagers’ self-government organizations. These leave many gaps and loopholes in the supervision of village cadres and village-level institutions. The situation of fighting corruption and promoting clean government is very urgent in the rural areas. Therefore, rural areas must combine the actual conditions to further promote the construction of the party’s work style, clean government, and anti-corruption work, so as to guarantee the construction of a new socialist countryside.

2 Analysis on causes for serious situation of corruption in rural areas of China

2.1RuralcadresabusetheirpowerandthereisnoeffectivesupervisionandregulationmechanismIn accordance with the current rural grass-roots leadership system, village party committees should work in compliance with the party’s constitution and play a core leading role in the leadership, support and guarantee villagers to carry out self-government activities, directly and exercise democratic power. Village committees should manage the collectively owned land and properties, and respect the autonomy of collective economic organizations to independently conduct economic activities in accordance with the laws and regulations. However, in many rural areas, the village committees and party committees are not clear about the respective powers. Some village heads or secretaries implement the rule by the voice of one man alone. In some places, village cadres are weak in legal awareness, some villages do not have the party branch secretaries, leading to village heads ignoring laws and regulations and changing or terminating the contracts at will. In land contract, they use powers for personal gains, favor friends and relatives, run wild in rural areas, make decisions on many major matters without conducting democratic consultation. As a result, villager autonomy just remains at the theoretical level, and no implementation in practice.

2.2Villagecadreslacktheideologicalandpoliticalqualities

Some village cadres in rural areas have low ideological and moral standards, low political literacy, they cannot resist the temptation of pecuniary benefits, their sense of public servants is weak and their ideology of serving the people wholeheartedly is weak, especially under the influence of unhealthy societies, and some private desires are inflated. They believe that if their power is not used, it will expire, their psychology of gaining extra advantage is increasing day by day. In their daily lives, power is their creed. In consequence, in the key period, they will deviate from the advanced nature of rural party cadres, depart from the principles of the party and national laws and regulations, and embark on the road of breaking laws and committing crime.

2.3Thevillage-levelfinancialmanagementmechanismhasabigloopholeThe village-level financial system is not perfect, and a complete set of financial revenues and expenditures approval and management procedures have not been established and implemented; although the township integrated management system has been implemented, the villages still have separate accounts to manage their own "private savings". As a result, there is a big loophole for village cadres to exploit. The division of labor among village cadres is not clear. The village branch secretary and village head sign the approval separately, leading to chaotic financial management. In some areas, village accountant and cashier are not set separately, but undertaken by the same person. Even worse, village accountant, village head and party branch secretary have certain affiliation, leading to money and accounting books not separately made and lacking effective regulation. Financial management is not standardized. Some workers engaged in financial work do not understand the accounting business. "They did not adhere to the principle, and just listened to the order of village branch secretary and village head, which brings an opportunity for village officials to commit crimes"[1].

2.4VarioussupervisionmechanismsandlegalsystemsarenotsoundThe main reasons for the imperfection of the supervision mechanism are as follows: (i) the individual village cadres, by virtue of their clan and sectarian forces, dominate their villages, causing the villagers to not dare to supervise them. (ii) The village affairs are not open to the public, and the "disclosure boards" are just putting on an act or just a formality. (iii) The Party organizations at all levels did not play their due supervisory role. If some village party committees use power for personal gains, other village committee members are well aware of each other. However, due to their affection, they are concerned about their reluctance, they dare not expose it, or they collude with each other. With joint crimes, the villagers’ representatives did not know the financial resources and could not locate the problem. They did not form a strong monitoring mechanism and found it inconvenient. Supervision at the township level was often the work on the surface and lacked in-depth investigation. (iv) The mass supervision and public opinion supervision lack specific approaches and just remain at the surface and form. Because of weak legal awareness and legal knowledge of farmers and the masses, they do not understand which cadres conduct is illegal or disciplinary. Even though their interests are violated, they will not dare to sue officials, grass-roots cadres just take advantage of these weaknesses of the masses and commit various crimes without fear. (v) There is a gap in the construction of the legal system concerning the corruption of rural grassroots crimes, which leads to corruption opportunities for corrupt cadres.

2.5ThecrimecostofcorruptionistoolowCost is the price paid for accomplishing something or achieving a certain purpose. This term is originally a common term in economics, and now is very popular in crime corruption. Of course, most corrupt people are not economists. They do not understand the cost of crime corruption, but they are actually committing crime. Many village officials believe that even if there is an incident, they are not afraid, the worse situation is telling the truth, they will receive a lighter sentence, and after they are released from prison, they will be still good citizens. Let alone the chance of being caught is small. This is connected with their ideological and political qualities. Many shrewd village cadres will make prediction about their actions, and decide whether to do after balancing the advantages and disadvantages, sometimes they will take the risk if the benefit is huge[2].

3 Countermeasures for the management of rural corruption in China

3.1ReinforcingthesupervisionofruralgrassrootsauthoritiesandimprovingthesupervisionandmanagementmechanismIt is recommended to strengthen the villagers’ ability to prepare and guard the power of the village cadres and the collective properties. (i) Villagers should set up the concept of guarding against power and taking active measures to strictly monitor the operation of power, because people with power will not stop until they meet the boundary or limit. Therefore, only through preventing the abuse of power can corruption be prevented. If the villagers find that the village cadres go beyond their power or authorities, it is required to take immediate actions to minimize their own losses. (ii) It is recommended to improve the supervision within the party, further improve the supervision and management system of the grass-roots party organizations, make the basic-level party organizations work under the supervision of the masses, and try to establish a village affairs supervision committee parallel with the village Party committees and villager committees. Villagers’ representatives are elected directly and exercise the power to supervise village affairs independently.

3.2FurtherstrengtheningandimprovingtheruralfinancialmanagementsystemIt is recommended to strengthen financial management, in particular, to strengthen the management of various sources of income in rural areas, curb the crime from the source, put the supervision in place, and do not do belated action. (i) It is recommended to conduct regular or irregular inspections, for example, conduct sudden inspection of village-level financial affairs, make unified management of financial account, to realize the objective of being taken from the people and used by the people. (ii) It is recommended to establish a reasonable system of individual income distribution for rural cadres and increase the salary of "village officials". For example, the annual income of "village officials" can be linked to the annual income of the village and linked to their contributions. (iii) It is recommended to implement the accountant appointment system, the accounting work of villages is undertaken by the personnel from township agricultural economic station, implementing periodic liquidation. Such system can prevent the illegal expenditure, reduce banquet at public expenses, and change the financial chaos at the village level. Besides, it is also necessary to implement a financial management system that separates revenue from expenditures, convene villagers’ conferences from time to time, and disclose income and expenditure to the villagers so as to prevent village cadres from misappropriating funds and embezzling public property.

3.3StrengtheningeducationforgrassrootscadresandthemassesHow to improve the ideological and political quality of grass-roots cadres and villagers is a question to be studied. (i) It is recommended to strengthen the education of ideological and political, legal, honest, and party-oriented purposes of rural cadres, strengthen the self-restraint capacity building of village cadres, improve their overall leadership capabilities, and ensure the stability of rural cadres, to set up a correct outlook on life, world outlook and values, to make rural cadres become the link between the party and the masses and also leaders leading the masses to get rich. (ii) It is recommended to make full use of the cases of rural office crimes that have already been investigated and do a good job of warning education. The procuratorate should sort out the cases affecting the stability of rural areas, infringing upon rights of farmers and damaging farmers, and select typical cases to make warning education in rural areas. (iii) It is recommended to establish a good training mechanism, provide centralized training for village cadres, and provide on-the-job education for them, to make them really become the representatives of the party and government at the grass-roots level, have the idea of serving the people wholeheartedly and truly use the power for the people.

3.4ActivelycreatingconditionsforoptimizingtheinternalandexternalenvironmentRelated departments at all levels should care more about rural grass-roots cadres in the economy and in their daily lives, work hard to solve some practical problems and difficulties for them, create more convenient conditions for them to live and study, and provide appropriate subsidies to cadres in poor villages, and award those cadres recognized by the masses and outstanding achievements, establish and improve the old-age insurance system for village cadres to resolve their worries. In the work, the leading departments and cadres should set an example, take the lead in setting the standard, correct the style of the party and the government, work arduously, be honest performing official duties, and fight resolutely with corruption and criminal behavior, and play an exemplary role.

3.5ReinforcingthecrackdownstoincreasethecrimecostofcorruptionThe procuratorial organs should focus on investigating and punishing corruption and bribery crimes. They must work closely with local disciplinary inspection and supervision organs to form a concerted effort to effectively reinforce the crackdown. They must not be lenient and can not tolerate any corruption. If necessary, they can consider the "system of punishing those who are related to those who have committed corruption" and further increase the crime cost of their corruption. Although the crackdown is a punishment after the crime, the object of application is a corrupt person who already commits a crime. On the surface, there is no direct relationship with the prevention of corruption. However, it is believed that crackdown is one of the most effective measures for preventing and controlling corruption. Its functions are manifested in two aspects. On the one hand, through cracking down on corrupt criminals, it is expected to extend the information on corruption punishment to the whole world, to bring about a psychological effect on the majority of rural grass-roots cadres and other citizens, and admonish those cadres who want to commit corruption and make them desist from committing corruption. On the other hand, it is recommended to educate and inspire the people, make the people believe the law, strengthen the consciousness and awareness of the legal system, and raise the awareness of observing the law, so as to consciously dare to fight against the corrupt people to safeguard their rights and interests. With the continuous development of the rule of law in China, the legal concept of the villagers is enhancing and will form a strong social force to prevent and control corruption.

[1] AI DQ.Thinking on rural grassroots anti-corruption work[R]. Jilin: Liuhe County People’s Procuratorate, 2016-8-12.(in Chinese).

[2] The Municipal Commission of Discipline Inspection of Chishui City.A brief analysis of the current rural anti-corruption campaign focus and requirements[EB/OL]. https://wenku.baidu.com/view/a817d4bb f121dd36a32d8232.html,2011-11-7.(in Chinese).

[3] A Disciplinary Inspection Committee of Dalete Town in Bole City.A brief analysis of the establishment and implementation of rural corruption prevention and control mechanism[N].Bortala Daily (Chinese),2008-8-14.(in Chinese).