Law's application, not debate, is the key

What is even trickier or absurd is that the question excludes the possibility that the CPC can establish the rule of law because it is the ruling party. This then leads to the question, which party can; is there a political party more representative than the CPC in China? No one can say there is, I bet.

It is not hard to see that such a false argument is absurd, and the discussion about it is not conducive to sweeping away the major obstacles in the way of furthering the reforms to China's sustainable economic development and social progress.

Then what are the obstacles? And why is the rule of law needed to overcome them?

The money a department leader with the National Development and Reform Commission illegally gained by abuse of power amounted to 200 million yuan ($32.58 million). And a local water works leader collected more than 100 million yuan through abuse of power. These officials who turn the power that should be used to serve the people into a tool for obtaining personal gain and their rampant abuse of power in defiance of the law are the obstacles.

That more than 50 minister-level or even higher-ranking government or Party officials and thousands of lower levels ones have been either investigated or indicted in less than two years sends an explicit message that the top authorities know pretty well that unconstitutional governance, characterized by rampant corruption by government officials, constitutes a major obstacle to the competence of the CPC as the ruling party and the country's sustainable economic development and social progress.

Governing according to the law and governing according to the Constitution that have been proposed by the ruling Party as the theme for its national plenary session suggests that the top leadership identifies the source of the rampant abuse of power by officials. Making officials not dare to, not desire to, and not have the conditions for abuse of the power in their hands, which has been proposed as the goal to be obtained through fighting against corruption by means of the rule of law, proves that the leadership of the ruling Party not only knows where the illness is. It has also found the right medicine and therapy to cure it.

The rule of law with Chinese characteristics is the right remedy and therapy.

So what is relevant currently should be the discussion about how the medicine and therapy should be applied to not only eliminate the corrupt elements but also at the same time clean up the soil to make it impossible for new corrupt elements to breed.

This is not much a theoretical issue as a technical one that requires both courage and excellent institutional arrangements in the application of the rule of law.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily. zhuyuan@chinadaily.com.cn

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