Ma Wen Spoke at the National Videophone Conference on the Special Task of Prohibiting Overseas Travel on Public Funds: Improving the Systems, Fulfilling Responsibilities and Strengthening Supervision to Ensure Prominent Progress of the Special Task

The National Videophone Conference on the Special Task of Prohibiting Overseas Travel on Public Funds was held on January 5, 2009. At the conference, related departments reported the implementation of the special task in 2008 and deployed the work of 2009. Ma Wen, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Minister of Supervision and Director of National Bureau of Corruption Prevention (NBCP) addressed the conference, stressing that measures should be taken to further improve systems, fulfill responsibilities and strengthen supervision so as to ensure prominent progress and fundamentally reverse the trend of rampant overseas travel on public funds.

Statistics show that from mid-May of 2008 to the end of November, more than 1,100 batch of scheduled overseas traveling groups on public funds, consisting of nearly 7,000 people, were cancelled. Meanwhile, more than 550 batches of regulation-breaking overseas traveling groups, involving nearly 4,000 people were banned. From May to November, 2008, a total of 830,000 people went abroad on public affairs passports, down 18.9 percent compared with the same period last year.

Ma full affirmed the special Task of restraining overseas travel on public funds in the previous period. She pointed out that members of the inter-ministerial joint conference such as Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Finance functioned actively and cooperated with each other closely, doing a lot of work in improving systems and strengthening supervision. The special task progresses smoothly and the problem of overseas travel on public funds is preliminary restrained, arousing positive approval from all walks of life.

Ma stressed that efforts should be made to further improve the cognition and intensify the activeness while doing the task of restraining overseas travel on public funds. Key areas should be highlighted and various regulations should be implemented strictly to deepen the special task of restraining overseas travel on public funds.

Various regions and departments should abide by the regulations related to going abroad on public affairs strictly. Specially, they should audit the budgets of overseas travel for public affairs according to related regulations so as to strictly restrain such phenomenon financially. Efforts should be made to increase the punishment of those regulation violators.

The key of the task is to deal with the practices of untruthfully reporting go-abroad mission, obtaining approval by cheating related department through purchasing invitations, staying abroad longer than scheduled without authorization and increasing the number of visiting countries and regions without approval so as to fundamentally resolve the problems.

Measures should be taken to further improve the administrative system of going abroad on public affairs and establish the clear, effective and collaborative administration system of going abroad in the first half of 2009 so as to provide law and regulation basis for the work. Leading cadres of various levels should clarify their responsibilities and take the lead in abiding by regulations and systems of foreign affairs so as to set examples by strict self discipline.

Ma pointed out that the special task of restraining overseas travel on public funds needs strong supports of policy and has a wide coverage, which needs joint efforts from various regions and departments. Departments of foreign affairs and finance of various levels should make strict checks during the process of examining the missions and budgets of go-abroad applications on public funds, and should firmly ban those application that are not in line with regulations.

Foreign affairs departments should strengthen supervision and administration upon their affiliated service centers of foreign affairs. Tourism administrative departments of various levels should also intensify supervision and administration upon travel agencies and severely crack down on regulation-violating activities of travel agencies inventing false agendas and purchasing invitations for overseas travel groups on public funds.

Discipline inspection and supervision departments should strengthen supervision and inspection on the activities of overseas travel of public affairs, severely deal with regulation and law-violating cases and punish those responsible.

Li Jianhua, Deputy Head of Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee presided over the conference. Qu Wanxiang, Member of the Standing Committee of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC, Vice Minister of Supervision and Deputy Head of NBCP briefed on the progress of the special task of restraining overseas travel on public funds and the cases of discipline-breaking overseas travel on public funds investigated in various regional departments.

Lv Guozeng, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Li Yong, Vice Minister of Finance and Dong Dasheng, Deputy Auditor General of National Audit Office gave speeches. Li Jinjun, Vice Minister of International Department of CPC Central Committee and Sun Zhaohua, Deputy General Director of State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs participated in the conference.