Philandering communist-party officials in China’s eastern city of Nanjing will have to confess their extramarital affairs in a bid to stop corruption, according to a new regulation published on Friday.
The regulation stems from concerns about declining morality among party ranks, but also fears that illicit affairs and corruption are inextricably linked, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Ninety-five percent of China’s convicted officials caught sticking their fingers in government coffers had mistresses, it said, citing psychologists.
The report said that in China’s prospering southern cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Zhuhai, of 102 corruption cases recently investigated, all of the officials were having affairs.
Nanjing’s regulation also gives the municipality the right to intervene on behalf of cadres’ families if the party believes family members are being negatively affected, the report said.
“Requiring officials to report their marital situation will help put them under public supervision,” said Zhuo Zeyuan, a professor at the Party School of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee.
However, not everyone is keen on Nanjing’s morality-policing plan.
“The measure violates a citizen’s privacy rights and China’s marriage law, which allows everyone the freedom to marry and divorce,” said Mo Jihong, a researcher at the Institute of Law Science under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
He added that the regulation is preposterous since no officials in their right mind will volunteer information about their extra-marital love lives.
The Chinese government has stepped up efforts to fight corruption over the past year, although — given the massive number of annual graft cases in China — the success of the crackdown remains to be seen. — AFP