Regulating Market Intermediaries Throughout Guangdong Province

In recent years, extensive work on the prevention and control of corruption related to market intermediaries has been carried out across Guangdong Province. Consequently, a series of laws, including Regulations for Trade Associations in Guangdong Province, have been promulgated; an improved self-disciplinary and anti-grant system has been established; and achievements in curbing commercial bribery from the very source have been made. To fulfill anti-corruption requirements from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, a televised meeting has been held recently across the province, making future plans to prevent and combat corruption related to market intermediaries, and defining obligations and goals in this regard.

We will fulfill five tasks, targeted at resolving factors that tend to induce corruption. First, streamline a supervision process. We should press ahead with severing improper ties between government departments and market intermediaries, ensuring that no personnel in government agencies or their affiliated units should act as consultants or have part-time jobs in market intermediaries, that no market intermediaries should be attached to government departments or their affiliated units, and that government departments should separate their businesses, expenses and work places from those of market intermediaries.

Government departments or their staff members should never designate businesses for market intermediaries or interfere in their work; never in any form occupy or borrow intermediaries assets, and never invest in intermediaries or provide funding to them. Government departments or their affiliated units and intermediaries should never borrow or rent each other s work sites.

Second, standardize the management of intermediaries and regulate their market access. Government departments should regularly check the registered intermediaries, conduct a rigorous annual review of them, and intensify a review of their qualifications, so as to prevent enterprises and individuals from obtaining registration through fraud and deception.

Administrative sanctions on intermediaries granted by various departments of different trades will all report regularly to the same-level administrative departments for industry and commerce. Third, strictly investigate and punish intermediaries that operate in violation of regulations or laws. We should rigorously investigate and punish acts that violate laws or regulations, including collusion between government officials and business people, price swindling, the provision of false information, illegal bidding activities, and malign competition.

We should strengthen the investigation and punishment of commercial bribery, and expose such major and typical cases through news media. Fourth, deeply promote intermediaries self-discipline. We should conduct a wide range of law-knowledge training and occupational education, cultivate some renowned intermediaries, and foster a batch of intermediaries featuring standardized and honest operation, and fair competition.

Fifth, vigorously strengthen the construction of a credit rating system for intermediaries. We should establish basic files of credit on intermediaries, integrate credit resources, as well as set up and improve a credit rating platform for intermediaries, forming a good environment for credit.

We should focus on the following four aspects. First, streamline systems and mechanisms. We should give priority to resolving issues such as disorderly competition as well as the separation of the functions of government from those of enterprises. We must sever illegal ties between market intermediaries and government departments, preventing corruption at the source from systems or mechanisms.

Second, we should strengthen institutional construction, striving to streamline a supervision process. We should formulate institutional measures and management methods for intermediaries in terms of market access and exit as well as business operations, and further regulate government supervision and intermediaries operations.

Third, attach importance to foster and guide intermediaries, with the focus on their self-discipline. We should guide trade associations for intermediaries to formulate their own regulations for professional ethics, self-discipline, self-development and fair competition. Fourth, prioritize the construction of integrity on the principle of honesty and justice.

We should foster a fair and orderly market environment via open tendering and bidding as well as media announcement. We will explore a mechanism for encouraging honest intermediaries and punishing dishonest ones, so as to intensify the management of credit for intermediaries and promote business operations on the basis of honesty.

In the next two years, we must make efforts to standardize intermediaries of seven categories and to prevent and combat corruption in this regard. These seven categories include auditing and accounting agencies, tendering and bidding agencies for construction projects, consulting agencies for project pricing, real estate agencies, agencies for assessing real estate prices, employment agencies, and agencies for enterprise registration.

We will prioritize the work in the following three aspects. First, we should continue our efforts on the basis of severing illegal ties between intermediaries and government departments, and in the next year strive to cut their ties in terms of personnel, money and materials. Second, we must improve a self-discipline mechanism to formulate and promulgate Management Methods for Market Intermediaries in Guangdong Province as soon as possible, establish and improve a mechanism for intermediaries professional practice on the principles of self-discipline and honesty, and comprehensively set up and improve regulations and agreements for intermediaries.

We should establish rigorous systems for market access and exit, and promote an orderly competition. We should strengthen the construction of credit, establishing a unified, perfect credit rating platform. Third, we should severely punish corruption induced by intermediaries, with the focus on commercial bribery.

We should rigorously investigate cases featuring the collusion between government officials and businesspeople, as well as commercial bribery, all resulting from the phenomena such as pricing fraud, fake certification, illegal bidding activities, malign competition, and arbitrary collection of fees.

We should investigate off-the-books accounts set up by trade guidance departments, and departmental interests obtained by these departments through the transfer of administrative management rights. This campaign should be carried out in five steps: assigning personnel and making plans, conducting investigations, carrying out self-check and self-correction, taking collective actions for implementation of regulatory measures, and summarizing experiences of inspection.

Authorities of the seven trades will act upon the province s overall plans, examining the aspects concerning intermediaries qualifications, market access, annual reviews, case investigation and punishment, and supervision of credit, thus establishing and improving a supervision system over intermediaries.