China takes steps to ensure people benefits from good governance

HANGZHOU: The spokesperson of provincial ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) declared Thursday that "Our policy is to address both the symptom and root causes of corruption, to balance punishment and prevention with emphasis on the latter and cultivate an anti-graft regime".

Addressing a press conference here attended both domestic and foreign media, the CPC spokesman for Zhejiang Discipline and Inspection Commission Ding Shiming said that the anti-corruption education campaign is targeted mainly at the CPC cadres, who will learn Clean Governance Code as the primary part of fight against malpractices.

In this regard, he pointed out that an awareness campaign has already been launched through 2558 clean governance organizations and 4501 individuals.

"Meanwhile, as a precautionary measure, we set up education centers and hold seminars for party cadres to learn about disciplines, regulations and laws", said Ding.

Zhejiang, Ding said is one of the earliest province to start build a clean-governance culture and to extend clean-governance education not only to government agencies but also to communities, businesses, schools, villages and households.

In this connection, he said that so far 21 provincial-level clean governance culture and education centres have been established with 360 demonstration bases.

The efforts to ensure clean governance is also highlighted through awareness campaign on media including radio and television programmes as well as website articles.

The campaign is aimed at to create an atmosphere in the society of honoring the upright officials and despising the corrupt, he noted.

Zhejiang province is situated in the southern win of Yangtze River Delta region on the southeast coast of China.

The province covers a land area of 101,180 sq km and a sea area of 260,000 sq.km. It has 11 municipalities and 90 counties with a population of 54.32 million.

Zhejiang province is one of the cradles for ancient Chinese civilization. Traces of human activities unearthed date back to 100,000 years ago, and over 1000 sites of Neolithic relics have been discovered.

Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province is known as paradise on earth with "West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou, China", recently enlisted on UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Zhejiang economy and society have registered a rapid and healthy growth, marked by vigorous growth in the private sector, vibrant markets and close economic interaction with foreign countries.

Statistics show Zhejiang's private sector now contributes more than 70% of the total provincial output. More than 6 million Zhejiang businessmen ae investing or running business outside the province and 1.5 million have operations in foreign countries.

The total turnover of markets in Zhejiang hastopped in China for 20 consecutive years while 90 of the Fortune Global 500 companies have established operations in Zhejiang. The province also boasts the largest number of overseas business agencies.

In 2010, the provincial GDP was 2.7 trillion RMB, and the per capita GDP was 52,059 RMB.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011