State-owned enterprises have set off another anti-corruption storm
Author: Jiawei
Published in the 2023th issue of China Newsweek magazine on April 4, 10
Recently, state-owned enterprises have once again set off an anti-corruption storm.
On March 3, the National Inspection Work Conference and the first round of inspection mobilization and deployment meeting of the 27th Central Committee were held, and it was determined that the party groups of 30 medium-managed enterprises, including China National Nuclear Corporation Limited, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation Limited, and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Limited, were scheduled to carry out regular inspections; Carried out inspections of the party committees of five medium-managed financial enterprises, including China Investment Corporation and China Development Bank.
Not long ago, Li Xi, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, went to Hubei for the first time to conduct research. When conducting an investigation on Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd. and China Three Gorges Group Co., Ltd., he pointed out that it is necessary to deeply promote the construction of party style and clean government in state-owned enterprises, promote state-owned enterprises to become stronger, better and bigger, and better serve the national strategy.
Several experts said in an interview with China Newsweek that one of the biggest challenges and tasks facing discipline inspection and supervision organs at present is to provide strong supervision and guarantee for economic and social development. Due to the political and economic importance of state-owned enterprises, they have become the focus of this round of anti-corruption.
The anti-corruption of state-owned enterprises is timely
On March 3, Xu Heyi, former party secretary and chairman of BAIC Motor Group Co., Ltd., was officially announced that he was undergoing disciplinary review and supervision investigation, becoming the latest official to fall from the ranks of this round of state-owned enterprise anti-corruption.
Since March, according to the information published on the website of the State Supervision Commission of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, several state-owned enterprise officials have been investigated, including Liu Liange, former secretary of the party committee and chairman of the Bank of China, 3 people from the state-owned bank, as well as Huang Wei, deputy general manager of China Railway Nanning Bureau Group Co., Ltd., Guo Zhiping, former secretary of the party committee and deputy captain of the 8th Nuclear Industry Brigade of CNNC, Yao Jiangtao, former chief economist of the aviation industry, and Chen Fusheng, former director of the Huazhong Optoelectronic Technology Research Institute of China Shipbuilding Group. Chen Junhao, senior deputy general manager of PetroChina Refining and Chemical and New Materials Branch, and others.
This round of vigorous anti-corruption by state-owned enterprises was deployed as early as January this year.
In January this year, at the Second Plenary Session of the 1th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that the situation in the fight against corruption remains grim and complicated. The work report of the Second Plenary Session of the <>th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection stressed the need to deepen and rectify corruption in finance, state-owned enterprises, political and legal areas where power is concentrated, capital-intensive, resource-rich and grain purchase and sales, and provided a "road map" and "construction drawing" for the discipline inspection and supervision organs of state-owned central enterprises to carry out the anti-corruption struggle in depth.
Since then, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission has published several articles, emphasizing the need to deepen industry-based and systemic corruption governance. The article "Resolutely Winning the Protracted Battle against Corruption" published on February 2 has a total of more than 23,3500 words, and mentions central enterprises eight times. External analysts believe that this article has released a clear signal to strengthen the supervision of central enterprises.
The article points out that it is necessary to resolutely investigate and deal with corruption that intersects political and economic issues, resolutely prevent leading cadres from becoming spokespersons and agents of interest groups and powerful groups, and resolutely prevent political and business collusion and capital infiltration into the political field from destroying the political ecology and economic development environment.
The importance of anti-corruption in state-owned enterprises is greatly related to their special nature. China Discipline Inspection and Supervision Daily published "An Analysis of Corruption and Anti-Corruption in State-Owned Enterprises", which analyzed, "State-owned enterprises are neither completely public organizations nor purely private organizations, they are somewhere in between." World Bank research shows that corruption occurs at the intersection of the public and private sectors. Obviously, the dual organizational nature of state-owned enterprises is more likely to meet the basic conditions for corruption to occur. ”
"If SOEs use their ties with the government to seek a competitive priority, they are very likely to ensure their high profit levels through market monopolies, price differentials, government subsidies, etc." This can be understood as a policy resource in the field of monopoly. And such resources can easily lead to the departmentalization of national interests and the individualization of sectoral interests, and become a breeding ground for corruption. "It was pointed out above.
The Zhejiang Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision also issued a document pointing out that state-owned enterprises deal directly with "money", and capital intensity, resource enrichment, and asset concentration are the most distinctive characteristics of state-owned enterprises. This also means that the leaders of state-owned enterprises are more often and directly tempted by various material interests, and "where there is more money, the road will be slippery."
For example, in the bidding process of engineering projects, there are a series of integrity risk behaviors such as fake bidding, bid accompaniment, bid rigging, and collusion. Not only that, the restructuring and restructuring of state-owned enterprises, project investment, property rights transactions, capital operation, material procurement, financial management, overseas investment and operation are all weak links with prominent integrity risks. In addition, state-owned enterprises have independent legal personality, commercial secrets in operation should not be all disclosed, and corporate profits and losses are also the norm in the market, which makes the corruption of state-owned enterprises have a certain degree of concealment.
And the damage caused by corruption in state-owned enterprises is great. According to the article "Dialysis of Corruption and Anti-Corruption in State-owned Enterprises", corruption in state-owned enterprises not only undermines the market order in terms of price, trade, and investment, but more seriously, it damages social fairness and erodes the credibility and prestige of the public sector in society.
At the Fourth Plenary Session of the 2020th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection held in January 1, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed the need to strengthen the anti-corruption of state-owned enterprises, strengthen the management of national resources and state-owned assets, and investigate and deal with corruption hidden in local debt risks. According to the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission, at least 2020 leaders of state-owned enterprises were notified in the first half of 40 alone.
As for the anti-corruption of state-owned enterprises that have reached a high tide this year, Mao Zhaohui, director of the Anti-Corruption and Integrity Policy Research Center at Chinese Minmin University, told China Newsweek, "Due to the decline in the domestic economy and the loss of a large number of enterprises, the biggest challenge and task facing discipline inspection organs is to provide strong supervision and guarantee for economic and social development." He pointed out that the focus of political supervision has been adjusted, and the previous focus was on maintaining political security and eliminating hidden political dangers, but now "safeguard supervision" has become the main line of discipline inspection work.
Wei Changdong, executive director of the China Association for the Study of Integrity and Legal System and director of the Center for Integrity and Rule of Law at the Law Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, also said in an interview with China Newsweek that this round of anti-corruption in state-owned enterprises is an inherent requirement for deepening corruption governance, "From the meso level, there have been many serious and exceptionally serious corruption cases in state-owned enterprises in recent years, which has exposed that the corruption prevention mechanism and control mechanism need to be further deepened, improved and improved."
Therefore, this round of anti-corruption is different from previous rounds. In particular, with the deepening of anti-corruption work in recent years, the central government has continuously optimized and improved anti-corruption policies, from the early "treating both the symptoms and the root cause" to the later increasingly emphasizing the root cause of the problem, that is, highlighting prevention, thereby implementing the guiding requirements of Xi Jinping Thought on the rule of law on "improving the preventive legal system". Zhao Chi, a director of the China Society of Criminology and a professor at Changzhou University's Shi Liang Law School, told China Newsweek that the round of anti-corruption by state-owned enterprises continues in this context.
Zhao Chi mentioned corporate compliance reforms promoted by the Supreme People's Procuratorate. Since 2020, the Supreme People's Procuratorate has explored pilot compliance reform for enterprises involved in the case. He analyzed that from the perspective of development trends, in the first three years of the pilot reform of enterprise compliance, it was mainly aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises and small and micro enterprises, and then it will be extended to state-owned enterprises, large enterprises and multinational enterprises, "State-owned enterprise anti-corruption and state-owned enterprise compliance are important aspects of enterprise anti-corruption and enterprise compliance." SOEs should play an exemplary, exemplary and leading role in corporate anti-corruption and corporate compliance."
He believes that it is timely to grasp the anti-corruption of state-owned enterprises, and it will also be an important anti-corruption direction in the future. On the one hand, this is the demand for high-quality development. As the main force of the national economy, state-owned enterprises should play more responsibilities in high-quality economic development. Enterprise anti-corruption is an important aspect of corporate governance, which requires enterprises to assume more responsibility for anti-corruption and act steadily and far-reaching.
On the other hand, he believes that China is now speeding up the process of opening up to the outside world, and state-owned enterprises should abide by internationally accepted anti-corruption and corporate compliance rules if they want to participate more in global competition and open up international and domestic dual circulation.
Anti-corruption in the energy sector has attracted attention
In this round of anti-corruption of state-owned enterprises, anti-corruption in the energy sector has attracted great attention.
On March 3, the website of the State Supervision Commission of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced that six leaders of central enterprises had been investigated, five of whom were from central energy enterprises and concentrated in power and grid systems. They are Xia Zhong, former member of the party group and deputy general manager of, Xu Zhiqing, former secretary of the party committee and chairman of Guoneng Langxinming Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd., Kehuan Group, Xu Zhiqing, former deputy general manager of China Datang Power Fuel Co., Ltd., Sheng Xiaoming, former general manager of China Datang Beijing Datang Fuel Co., Ltd., and Qu Hui, deputy director of the Planning Department of the State Grid UHV Business Department.
Among these central enterprises, Datang Group, State Power Investment Group and National Energy Group are China's major central power enterprises, and State Grid is China's largest power grid company. The officials under investigation have some common characteristics, that is, they are all in the core departments and positions of the company, and they have the right to manage and dispose of enterprise resources, assets and funds.
This is the second collective fall of energy officials this year. Previously, from January 1 to February 31, Wang Hongming, director of the Liaoning Provincial Energy Bureau, Lan Yiwen, deputy general manager of Jinneng Holding Coal Group Co., Ltd., Zhang Changjun, chief economist of Sichuan Energy Investment Group Co., Ltd., and Li Dong, former member of the party group and deputy general manager of the National Energy Investment Group Co., Ltd., have been investigated by the organization.
In fact, in the past several anti-corruption campaigns of state-owned enterprises, energy anti-corruption has been the focus. According to public information, among the central management cadres of central enterprises who fell after the 40th National Congress, the energy sector ranked first, accounting for more than <>% of the number of leaders of the entire fallen central enterprises.
Zhuang Deshui, deputy director of the Research Center for Building a Clean Government at Peking University, pointed out to China Newsweek that the energy sector is a key national investment field, and it is also a capital-intensive industry, with a large amount of investment, often tens of billions of yuan. The occurrence of corruption in the energy sector will not only damage the authority of the Party and government decision-making, reduce the effectiveness and implementation of energy policies, but even interfere with the macro-management of the energy industry by the central government, and affect the country's economic security and stability.
The website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission has pointed out that party-member leading cadres in the energy department hold heavy power in policy formulation, project approval, industry supervision and other aspects, and are easy targets for unscrupulous businessmen.
The article also pointed out that the relatively centralized energy approval right and the monopoly operation right of state-owned enterprises in the energy field can easily become the object of public relations of enterprises or individuals who want to enter or get involved in the energy industry, resulting in the energy sector becoming the hardest hit area of power rent-seeking.
In addition, there are loopholes in the management and supervision mechanisms, the operation of approval powers is not transparent, and there is a lack of effective internal and external supervision mechanisms. And it is precisely because of these loopholes that the two or more power subjects that check and balance each other are prone to collusion and illegal cooperation, forming a nest of cases.
A review of the relevant cases reported on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission shows that energy corruption is mainly concentrated in resources, construction, engineering and other links, manifested in the form of relying on enterprises to eat enterprises, rent-seeking, related party transactions, internal and external collusion, etc.
For example, Han Xingsan, former member of the Party Committee and deputy general manager of CNOOC Refining and Chemical Co., Ltd., "sought benefits for others in terms of material supply, equipment procurement, cargo transportation, payment for goods, and enterprise operation"; Wang Jinhua, former party secretary and chairman of China Coal Science and Industry Group Co., Ltd., took bribes related to coal mining and sales, including providing assistance to a company in undertaking coal mining business; Hao Xiaochen, former party secretary and chairman of Shaanxi Gas Group Co., Ltd., "relied on enterprises to eat enterprises, abused power, engaged in power-for-money transactions, and used the state's monopoly resources to seize huge profits".
In addition, the particularly large amount of crime is also a major feature of energy corruption. Yun Citizen, former general manager of China Huadian Group, received a total of more than 4.6866 million yuan in property, ranking first in the amount of energy embezzlement and a huge corruption in the energy field. Yu Tieyi, former deputy general manager of the material supply branch of Heilongjiang Longmei Mining Holding Group, and Wei Pengyuan, former deputy director of the Coal Department of the National Energy Administration, also involved more than 3 million yuan.
At a time when China's emphasis on energy security is increasing, energy anti-corruption is extremely important. Mao Zhaohui told China Newsweek that after the 19th National Congress, in order to maintain the high-pressure situation of anti-corruption, the investigation and handling of cases showed the characteristics of combining "regional rotation" and "precise dynamics", highlighting key areas and cleaning up industrial and systemic corruption with large risks and hidden dangers. According to this standard, the energy sector is undoubtedly a top priority, "Over the years, we have failed to carry out a comprehensive and systematic rectification of corruption in the energy sector, and the recent exposure of corruption cases in the energy sector is only a signal, and the subsequent anti-corruption efforts may continue to increase."
China Newsweek, Issue 2023, 13
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