New anti-graft body to strengthen oversight

"As a unified anti-graft agency under the Party's leadership, the supervisory commission system is an institutional invention incorporating China's reality and international practice," Ma said. "It pools supervisory powers that used to be divided, and forms a centralized, unified and efficient State supervision system."

Gao Bo, a senior official with the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said that when all the supervision commissions are in place, every public servant will come under effective surveillance. He added that such an extensive network "expands inspection to all public servants, leaves no loopholes and serves as a powerful deterrent against corruption".

Pilot reforms

Although the legal and institutional building of the new system is ongoing nationally, pilots at local levels have achieved notable progress.

Since November, pilot reforms of the supervisory system in Beijing and the provinces of Shanxi and Zhejiang have been expanded nationwide.

Moreover, directors of provincial-level supervisory commissions were elected at the recently concluded annual legislative sessions of provincial-level people's congresses.

New commissions place civil servants, police officers, the prosecuting authorities and the courts, executives at State-owned enterprises and senior members of staff at public institutions and organizations under a single supervisory network.

In Beijing, the number of officials under supervision rose from 210,000 before the reform to 997,000 by December, according to Zhang Shuofu, head of the city's supervisory commission.

Meanwhile, Ren Jianhua, head of the Shanxi Provincial Supervisory Commission, said the northern province has seen a 67.5 percent rise in the number of officials under effective supervision, and only about 18 percent of them are not CPC members.

The reform provides more institutional advantages by unifying the Party and State supervisory systems.

Under the pilot reform, about 770 officials who worked for anti-corruption departments at the Beijing Municipal Procuratorate have been transferred to the municipal supervisory commission. Instead of adding a new unit to the commission, the officials were assigned to a number of units to work with disciplinary inspectors.

"They were assigned to different posts according to their skills. We hope their experience in the judicial agencies can complement the advantages of Party disciplinary inspectors," said Liu Yongqiang, a senior official with the Beijing Municipal Supervisory Commission.

Zhejiang has also achieved great progress in curbing corruption.

"Under the reform, we've established a unified and authoritative anti-graft command-and-decision-making system, which will enable us to centralize resources and greatly improve work efficiency," said Liu Jianchao, head of the Zhejiang Provincial Supervisory Commission.

According to Liu Jianchao, under the new commissions, by December, the number of officials and public servants under supervision rose from 383,000 to 700,000. Between January and October, inspectors in Zhejiang received more than 500 tips related to graft, a rise of 77 percent from the same period in 2016.

New detention system

The reform not only gives graft-busters more powers, but also regulates that power. The draft supervision law introduces a new detention system designed to replace shuanggui, an intra-Party disciplinary practice exercised by CPC disciplinary officials in which members under investigation must make themselves available for questioning at a set time and place.

Clear protocols have been introduced to better protect the personal and property rights of those under investigation, including a three-month limit on detention, which can be doubled under special circumstances, and a detainee's family must be notified within 24 hours.

"We're very cautious when using this power," said Liu Yongqiang of the Beijing Municipal Supervisory Commission, adding that strict procedures relating to detention have been established. In several cases, district supervisory commissions in Beijing have tried to complete investigations without detaining suspects.

Liu Jianchao, from the Zhejiang Provincial Supervisory Commission, said detention is considered the most important and powerful investigative measure under the supervision law.

By the end of last month, supervision officers in Zhejiang had detained 266 suspects, most of whom had been transferred to prosecuting departments to be charged.

Liu said the mechanism will be further improved, and coordination and cooperation with judicial authorities, such as prosecuting departments, will be enhanced to ensure that those charged face trial promptly.