Zhong Youping noted that commercial bribery had distorted the rule of fair
competition radically, disabling the law of value and competition discipline to
function normally; it had baffled the normal order of market exchange, degraded
honorable and creditable enterprises into victims, and impeded the healthy
development of market economy, becoming a dangerous enemy of the social laws and
justice.
22 ministries and commissions striking commercial bribery jointly
Numerous cases of naked commercial bribery or those disguised under the legal
name exist in various businesses, from accepting briberies from bidding parties
to doctors taking kickbacks on medicines, from payment of cashes in the name of
"consultation fees" and "lecture fees" to the provision of housing, household
appliances and tours.
Statistics from SAIC show that since 2000, the administrations for industry
and commerce across China have investigated and dealt with over 15,000 cases of
commercial bribery in fields like pharmaceutical purchase and sales, commercial
retail, construction, tourism, etc., involving total case value of RMB 5.75
billion and fines of RMB 910 million. Simply in the year 2005, over 2,400 cases
of commercial bribery were investigated and dealt with accordingly, involving
total case value of over RMB 900 million and fines of over RMB 190 million.
Take such industries as telecommunications and finance as examples. On the
surface, such industries are comparatively highly marketized; but they are
actually possessed with the feature of inherent monopoly that a few people
control the power, thus forming the suitable soil for commercial bribery very
naturally. While in those fields like construction and medical treatment, large
sums of kickbacks become prevalent as there are too many nonstandard powers
existing in the process of the reform of market economy system.
In this action of anti-commercial bribery, 22 ministries and commissions do
not fight separately on their own but coordinate mutually and launch attacks in
all directions, thus working together from various angles to solve such a hidden
sore that has been puzzling the healthy development of the economy and society
for a long time.
The Ministry of Land and Resources has determined the following three
categories of cases as the focus to be investigated and dealt with this year:
public servants intervening and getting involved into the transfer of land use
right and mining right for their individual benefits; colluding with others to
make false information in evaluation resulted in large amount of losses of
state-owned assets; accepting bribery in project outsourcing and discriminating
fair competition. We should curb commercial bribery in the field of land and
resources so as to consolidate achievements in the implementation of the system
that invites public bidding and transfer of land use right, consummate the
system of paid use of land, regulate the methods for the transfer of mining
rights and prospecting rights, and regulate market order and administrative
rights.
SAIC has deployed specific measures for the whole system to harness
commercial bribery: to further consummate the system of "economic residence"
management so as to implement a dual supervision system by registration
departments at or above the county level and the right branches of SAIC over
various market entities; to continue to drive energetically the construction of
the credit system for enterprises: constructing and consummating enterprise
credit archives concerning whether or not an enterprise has conducted unfair
competition and commercial bribery, making full use of the incentive mechanism,
warning mechanism and selection mechanism, and guiding operators to promote
self-discipline mechanism; to strictly crack down the production and sales of
counterfeits and inferior goods as well as illegal operations.
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