Research On The Civil Property Declaration And Disclosure System In China

For various countries around the world, effective prevention and punishment against corruption of government officials in order to keep the government clean, fair, and transparent has always been difficult. Such corruption tends to severely undermine credibility of, and trust of the people in, the government. If allowed to last without effective counter measures, not only rightful interests of the general public would suffer, but also legitimacy of the government to rule would be placed in doubt. Looking back in history, it is easy to find cases of government change-over, or even of destruction of a whole country, due to corruption. In view of its importance, since antiquity, various governments tried a variety of legal measures and systems to prevent and fight off corruption. After the two world wars, the constitutional system of democracy and rule of law has gradually been widely adopted in countries around the world, and the process to introduce rule of law in political matters has gained momentum. Development of modern politics and build-up of a government with integrity has become a prime target for countries, and correspondingly, crack-down on corruption has become a key focus of their attention. As early as in 1766, Sweden in Northern Europe became the first country to implement systematically the requirement on government officials to declare their assets. In 1883, UK promulgated the first law on the matter of asset declaration by civil servants, "Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act". In 1978, US parliament passed "Ethics in Government Act", which sets the system whereby government officials and their family, over the course of their employment with the government, are required to declare their assets. And afterwards, other countries as Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Russia etc. also followed suit and built similar asset declaration systems for government officials. According to statistics, by far over 100 countries around the world have such systems in place. In 2003, UN 58th General Assembly passed "United Nations Convention against Corruption", which took effect on 14th of December in 2005. China is one of the countries that ratified the Convention.Empirical evidence shows that a system that requires government officials to declare their assets can be very effective in corruption prevention and punishment. Since the establishment of the people's government in China till somewhere after the Reform and Opening-up to the outside world, in the light of historical lessons on the rise and fall of governments in the past, Chinese government exercised strict measures to fight against corruption, which included campaigns as the 3-against-s and 5-against-s etc., and proved to be great deterrent to corruptive behaviors. But from the beginning of Reform and Opening-up on, though the government did not relent its efforts on the matter, what must be pointed out objectively is the fact that severity of corruption by government official has been worsening and the many counter measures adopted by the government have not been producing the expected result. A deep-level cause for corruption by government officials is that such misdeeds as abuse of power or rent seeking have not been effectively checked and also contributing to the worsening situation is a weak and under-developed anti-corruption legal system that can hardly escape the blame. Currently there is no denial to the severity of the situation and genuine abhorrence of the general public showed to the issue. The legal system that requires government officials to declare their assets has proved to work well in other countries and if similar measures can be adopted in China and effectively implemented, surely it would bring about some difference to the result of China's efforts in corruption prevention and punishment. For this purpose, this paper tries to compare the different success stories, on the matter of asset declaration by officials, of different countries that practice the rule of law, and to propose a few ideas as to how similar measures can be developed in China, in the hope of making a little contribution to the efforts of Chinese government for better integrity and transparency. This paper is divided into four parts, of which, the first part gives an overview of the legal system that requires civil servants to declare their assets, and probes issues existing within current practices adopted by Chinese government on the matter of asset declaration; the second part argues for the necessity and feasibility of implementing such a legal system in China; the third part reviews the history of such system being developed and implemented in various countries, and what lessons can be drawn from their experience; and the fourth part proposes, for the development of such a system in China, a few suggestions about such matters as who shall declare, what shall be declared, how it may be done, what authorities shall receive and review the declaration, what documents shall be submitted, how far shall be the extent of transparency, and what legal liability shall incur in case of violation.