At present, conflicts of interest are common in all fields of our country and have become an important source of corruption. Relevant departments should improve and perfect the mechanism to prevent conflicts of interest as soon as possible, because this is an important pillar of the national clean government system and directly affects the overall effectiveness of clean government construction. Over the past 30 years of reform and opening up, China's social and economic development has changed greatly, and many social contradictions have emerged, among which the conflict of interests is a direct manifestation. At present, there are three major conflicts of interest in our society, namely, conflicts of interest between employers and employees, conflicts of interest in social distribution, and conflicts of interest between the government and the public.
Among the three major conflicts of interest, the conflict of interest between labor and capital is the biggest conflict of interest in our society. In the era of planned economy, this problem is not obvious. With the development of market economy, this problem is becoming more and more prominent.
In terms of the conflict of interests in social distribution, with the widening gap between the rich and the poor in society, the phenomenon of' hating the rich' is becoming more and more serious, and the social class opposition caused by it cannot be ignored. What deserves special attention is the conflict of interests between the government and the people, because the essence behind this conflict of interests is the conflict of interests between the government and the people, which directly damages the ruling foundation of the party. Such as violent land acquisition, demolition, and so on. At present, China officials' conflicts of interest can be divided into three types: transactional conflicts of interest, influential conflicts of interest and circular conflicts of interest.
Transactional conflict of interest means that officials take advantage of their positions to directly collect private interests from stakeholders. This kind of situation is more common, for example, some officials have the right to manage and approve the real estate industry and buy houses from real estate developers at ultra-low prices; Officials who have the right to manage and approve the development of mineral resources have invested in coal mines,' performance stocks', and so on.
Among all kinds of conflicts of interest, influential conflicts of interest usually show that officials use the influence of public power to directly or indirectly realize their own, relatives or stakeholders' private interests, such as dealing with kinship, self-dealing, influencing transactions, nepotism and so on.
Compared with other conflicts of interest, "circular" conflicts of interest are more subtle-some officials have dual roles of public and private, and in the process of performing public affairs, they use public power to seek personal gain for themselves, their relatives or stakeholders. There are typical forms such as starting your own company, working part-time and working in an enterprise after retirement.
At present, the public's distrust of some personnel appointment and dismissal, government procurement, project bidding and administrative examination and approval matters stems from the conflict of interests of decision-making officials in policy decision-making. Conflicts of interest do great harm to the government's integrity, and the key point is that this behavior weakens the public's basic trust in officials. In reality, even if officials do not gain personal gain, as long as conflicts of interest obviously exist, the public has reason to question the objectivity of officials in the decision-making process and administrative process. Preventing conflicts of interest is regarded by most countries as a forward-looking strategy to effectively prevent corruption. In recent years, China has also promulgated dozens of laws and policies aimed at conflicts of interest. Among them, the decision on prohibiting party and government organs and cadres from running enterprises through business was issued in1984; 1997 "regulations for leading cadres to report personal important matters"; In 2007, "Several Provisions on Prohibiting the Use of the Convenience of Duty to Seek Unfair Interests" was promulgated; 1998 notice on issues related to the decoupling of central party and government organs from economic entities and enterprises directly under management; In 2009, the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) passed the Seventh Amendment to the Criminal Law of People's Republic of China (PRC), which clarified the punishment for accepting bribes by close relatives of state employees and those who left their posts.
However, although there were dozens of such laws and policies in the past, they were only inner-party laws and administrative regulations. In these laws and policies, although there is no explicit expression such as "preventing conflicts of interest", many contents are aimed at preventing conflicts of interest and preventing and controlling corruption from the source.
On September 18, 2009, the "Decision of the Central Committee on Strengthening and Improving Party Building under the New Situation" adopted by the Fourth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly stated: "In accordance with the requirements of accelerating the formation of a unified, open, competitive and orderly modern market system, we will promote relevant reforms, establish and improve the system of preventing conflicts of interest, and improve the allocation of public resources and the transaction of public assets. This is the first time that the central document uses a brand-new concept of "conflict of interest".
2010 on February 25 and 26, 2009, a report meeting on the inspection of the construction of a system for punishing and preventing corruption was held in Beijing. He Yong, secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, also stressed at the meeting that "it is necessary to establish and improve a system to prevent conflicts of interest and minimize and avoid rent-seeking opportunities in public resource allocation, public asset transactions, and public product production."
Relevant successful experience
Canada, the United States, Britain and other developed countries have enacted laws to manage conflicts of interest. Mainly on the official property declaration, asset disposal, avoidance, gifts, employment after leaving office, economic investment activities and other matters that are easy to cause conflicts of interest, strict and detailed regulations have been made. For example, the Government of Canada promulgated the Charter of Conflicts of Interest and formulated the Code of Conduct on Conflicts of Interest and Post-employment of Public Officials for current and retired public officials. The conflict of interest law in the United States is criminal law, which stipulates the corresponding fines and fixed-term imprisonment. Britain has established a "declaration of interests" system for senior officials, requiring officials to explain whether the matters to be decided are related to personal interests before participating in decision-making.
On June 65438+1October 65438+April, 2009, China and the United States held a seminar in Beijing with the theme of "Integrity Guidelines-Preventing Conflicts of Interest". The Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and He Guoqiang pointed out when meeting with the delegates that "establishing a mechanism to prevent conflicts of interest is an important topic put forward by the Fourth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee, and China will combine the results of this seminar, absorb useful experiences from other countries, and study and formulate relevant systems".
Some local governments in China have previously tried to prevent conflicts of interest. In July 2009, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province promulgated the Interim Measures for Avoidance of Conflicts of Interest of State Staff in Wenzhou City. As a result, the unfamiliar concept of "conflict of interest" officially entered the sight of local leaders.
20 10 in February, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province issued a system to prevent conflicts of interest. According to reports, Hangzhou studied this several years ago. For example, the Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection defined Liu Moumou of Shangcheng Wenguang New Bureau as a "direct transaction" conflict of interest; Officials are required to disclose information about family members, spouses and children's employment and business.
However, China's institutional provisions to prevent conflicts of interest are not perfect-these institutional provisions are not only scattered in various norms, regulations and reports, but also targeted at different objects, and it is difficult to unify principles and scales. Many of them are "inaccurate" and have timeliness and limitations. More crucially, most system provisions have no corresponding punitive provisions and lack operability.
Due to various drawbacks, the implementation effect of the system provisions to prevent conflicts of interest is not good. For example, "focusing on prevention" has not been implemented; Dealing with conflicts of interest is not timely and effective; Most officials have vague understanding, the popularization of system propaganda lags behind, and so on. In order to reduce corruption by preventing conflicts of interest, we must make reasonable arrangements in terms of power and interests on the premise of "information symmetry" between officials and people, block the channels for officials to abuse power for personal gain as soon as possible, and strengthen the supervision and handling of conflicts of interest.
We should pay attention to the innovation of official moral education, change the traditional ideological and political education methods, and help officials understand the nature of conflict of interests. It is necessary to take the education of clean government and moral training, personal belief education and peacetime cultivation as important training contents for officials, help them act according to their own beliefs from the heart, prevent ideological deterioration, fundamentally solve various behaviors of officials' rent-seeking system, and effectively solve conflicts of interest and other related issues.
Judging from the actual situation in China, public officials such as the National People's Congress, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the party and government organs, and the judicial organs are the participants in the conflict of interests. When performing official duties, you should avoid people who have an interest in yourself or who have a husband-wife relationship, direct blood relationship, collateral blood relationship within three generations and close in-laws relationship with yourself. Because our country has a tradition of attaching importance to social relations, the scope of supervision and management needs to be expanded, including the relationship between classmates, teachers and students, fellow villagers, comrades-in-arms, and even former colleagues and lovers, which can affect the fair and reasonable execution of official duties.
The official property declaration system is an important measure to prevent and control corruption, which can solve the problem of information asymmetry between officials and people to a certain extent and play an early warning role. But unfortunately, the property declaration system has not yet formed laws and regulations in China, and it is only stipulated through party discipline documents. To this end, the relevant departments should also speed up the legislative process of this system, and the contents of the declaration should include the property status of individuals, spouses and minor children, such as wages, salaries, various subsidies and welfare expenses, stocks, pensions, real estate, bonds, and benefits obtained by individuals through other labor, investment and incentives. The contents of the declaration shall be made public and subject to public supervision.
To improve the system of preventing conflicts of interest, there must be specific implementation measures, which requires strengthening the implementation mechanisms such as supervision mechanism, evaluation mechanism, reward and punishment mechanism and cognitive mechanism. In the whole implementation process, it is necessary to form a strong supervision over conflicts of interest and give a comprehensive and scientific evaluation of officials' clean government and the handling of conflicts of interest. At the same time, the discipline inspection and supervision organs should fully realize the importance of preventing conflicts of interest and strengthen theoretical research and policy exploration in related fields.
From the perspective of anti-corruption, China needs a Law on the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest, which summarizes the same-sex content in the current policies and regulations and introduces the concept of "conflict of interest" in a unified way, which will further improve the systematicness and effectiveness of building a clean government.