County to scrutinize officials' love lives

The love lives of officials of an East China county will be scrutinized as part of a new set of rules that require them to meet "morality standards".

Not only will extramarital affairs possibly ruin their careers, the local government will also scrutinize officials' relations with their parents, children and neighbors.

The new morality standards have been imposed on 96 local government and Communist Party of China (CPC) officials in Shuyang county, Jiangsu province.

Their records of marital fidelity, filial piety, parenting and good neighborliness will be included in their biannual performance assessments.

Personal morality would be assessed through interviews, home visits, investigations and public submissions, said Wang Xiaodong, head of Shuyang's CPC organization department.

Officials should set moral examples and a failure to do so could disrepute the whole government, said Shuyang Party chief Jiang Jianming,.




Jiang said the new rules were a result of immoralities in the past. He cited an online report about an official who repeatedly sent vulgar text messages to his female colleagues.

Other local administrations, such as Xinle city, in North China's Hebei province, already include marital relations in officials' performance assessments.

Integrity is not just a matter of work performance, but also personal bearing, Zhao Hongbo, official of Xinle's CPC organization department, told the People's Daily in April.

CPC top discipline authorities have been drawing a direct link between personal morality and corruption.

In more than 95 percent of major corruption cases handled by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the convicted officials were found to have extramarital lovers, Guangzhou Daily quoted former CCDI official Qi Peiwen as saying in 2009.

"I think such regulations are necessary," said Tian Xianfeng, Shuyang's police chief. "If we can find signs of corruption through routine checks, we can deal with it as early as possible."

The new rules have become a matter of public debate.

They are unrealistic with little practical value, said He Bing, a professor at the China University of Political Science and Law.

"Officials in foreign countries also face consequences, such as resignation or impeachment, of moral blunders. But how can love affairs be disclosed in a routine check?" He argued.

Tian Xiangbo, a researcher at the Hunan University's Research Center for Clean Governance, disagreed: "The limits of officials' privacy should not be the same as that of ordinary people. Officials are obliged to disclose some of their personal affairs for the sake of public interest."

Tian also called for discretion regarding marriage problems, as marital failure was not necessarily an indicator of professional competence.

A revised regulation, issued by State Council and CPC Central Committee on July 11, required Chinese officials to report some of their personal information such as marital relations and personal assets as well as those of their families, in a move to curb corruption and increase transparency.

However, the new regulation did not make clear how detailed the marital relation reports should be, an anti-graft official in Beijing told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

China Daily - Xinhua