CPC Official Appointments Increasingly Democratic

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, December 08, 2002

CPC Official Appointments Increasingly Democratic

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Shi Qingshuang, a person with no party affiliation, was a deputy magistrate of a mountainous county two months ago. Now he has become deputy director of the Hebei Provincial Administration of Justice.

"Open competition provided me the opportunity (to get my post now)," said Shi, son of a peasant without connections to any high officials.

The Communist Party of China (CPC) is the ruling party with some 66 million members. Many official posts in governments at all levels are held by CPC members.

The newly-elected General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Hu Jintao said, "The basic orientation for the reform of our cadre personnel system is the expansion of democracy in our work."

Shi, 37, was selected to fill one of the 37 provincial administration posts from more than 1,000 applicants on the basis of qualifying exams given earlier this year.

According to the official appointment procedures, a candidate for promotion is selected by the CPC committee at a certain level and reported to the CPC committee at higher level for scrutiny and approval.

Due to various reasons, the procedures were not been followed strictly in some places, which gave rise to corruption.

In an effort to curb corruption in official appointments, Party organizations in eastern coastal areas where economic development has been faster than the rest of the country began to introduce the system of selecting officials through open examination on a trial basis in the 1980s. The practice was adopted later in other regions.

The CPC Central Committee promulgated the Statutes on the Selections and Appointments of Officials in July this year, making open selection mandatory in the appointment of officials.

In fact, since 2000, more than 20,000 officials throughout China have been openly selected. One of them was Zhao Lifen, currently a female deputy director of the education bureau of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province's capital.

"I never thought that I could beat out those from official families," said Zhao, "since I had no such connections."

The CPC Committee of Shandong Province, home to more than 90 million people, has also enacted new regulations giving more Party members a say in official appointments.

The appointments of city- or county-level officials in Shandongare now in the hands of the 63-member provincial CPC committee, while formerly they were decided by the 15-member provincial CPC standing committee.

The casting of secret ballots has also been adopted to replace decision on discussion among the committee members.

The provincial organization authorities in Shandong are also demanding that all candidates undergo a public pre-screening before assuming their posts.

All the measures are conducive to increasing transparency in appointing officials, which delegates to the just-concluded 16th CPC National Congress say will lead to wider participation of Party members in the selection and supervision of the process of assigning official posts and in the end further enhance the role of the CPC as a ruling party.

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