Focusing on supervision of power use and corruption prevention, the regulation underlines these officials' responsibility in promoting transparency when exercising their power and stresses mutual supervision among officials who respectively exercise the power of decision-making, enforcement and supervision.
The audit will be made during an official's tenure to solve any problems that exist. Results of the audit will be recorded in an official's file and it will be an important factor in performance assessments, promotions or removal, and rewards or punishments. In addition, different punishments were specified for the collective leading organizations and individual leaders.
China introduced the first such regulation in 1999, but it only included measures to audit financial records of county-level and below Party and government officials. The audit target was extended to provincial governors and ministers in 2000 on a trial basis and to heads of provincial government departments in 2005.
The newly-release regulation adds more articles detailing the supervisory instructions and liabilities. For example, during the audit of provincial governors and ministers, their implementation of economic policies, handling of income and expenses, key fund management and project construction will be examined.
More importantly, the audit can be carried out frequently, so illegal activities can be cleared up before they spread.
As an important move of the CPC to battle corruption, Chinese auditors have conducted the audit of economic accountability nationwide these years. They have uncovered more than 68.4 billion yuan ($10.2 billion) in illegal use of funds during nationwide audits of some 410,000 Party and government officials and leaders of State-owned enterprises since 1998.
All these efforts have made great contribution in increase the awareness of leading officials to full their responsibilities according to law, improve the mechanism of management and supervision for officials, and promote the building of prevention and punishment system against corruption.
