Spotlight on corruption in grassroots

A documentary on anti-corruption that aired on Sunday has ignited heated discussions on Chinese social media, with its first episode spotlighting grassroots corruption cases affecting people's livelihoods.

The documentary was jointly produced by the Publicity Department of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the National Commission of Supervision and China Media Group.

According to the documentary, since the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2022, 768,000 cases of misconduct and corruption "affecting people's immediate interests" have been investigated. These investigations resulted in disciplinary actions against 628,000 individuals and the transfer of 20,000 to prosecutorial authorities.

The first episode revealed corruption cases involving grassroots officials that directly impacted people's livelihoods, including housing, food and transportation.

One highlighted case involved Zhou Xiaojian, a grassroots housing security official in Dongan county in Yongzhou, Hunan province. Zhou, who managed local housing maintenance funds, was sentenced to 11.5 years in prison for embezzling and misappropriating over 11 million yuan ($1.5 million) of these funds.

According to the documentary, Zhou incurred massive debts from speculative lending in 2015, prompting him to embezzle and misappropriate housing maintenance funds.

Local homebuyers were required to pay their housing maintenance funds to the agency he managed. Normally, the agency would issue a special receipt upon receiving payment. However, he replaced these with alternative proofs or handwritten notes, allowing him to siphon off funds.

Zhou later commissioned highly realistic fake receipts to further deceive homebuyers. He even printed his personal payment QR code and placed it at the payment counter during his shifts, directing payments meant for the government into his personal account.

In 2023, the Dongan county anti-corruption watchdog noticed discrepancies between issued receipts and financial records during routine inspections, prompting an investigation.

The investigation revealed that Zhou had embezzled over 9.93 million yuan and misappropriated more than 1.72 million yuan of housing maintenance funds, issuing over 3,000 fake receipts in the process. The local watchdog, in collaboration with relevant departments, identified residents who received fake receipts and issued them official receipts.

In addition to his prison sentence, Zhou was fined 1 million yuan. Furthermore, 11 grassroots officials were held accountable for inadequate supervision and negligence.

The documentary also revealed another case related to housing in Yongzhou.

Last year, the Yongzhou municipal government launched a special campaign targeting the fair distribution of local affordable housing.

Zhao Yanyun, former director of the investment promotion and cooperation bureau of a local industrial park, was responsible for managing and distributing public rental housing in the park.

The park had over 1,800 public rental housing units, each about 50 square meters, that were available only to workers in the park without local property ownership.

However, the campaign revealed that 12 units were occupied by Zhao's relatives and friends, and violations were found in eight of those units.

According to the documentary, after the park announced its public rental housing policy, Zhao encouraged her relatives and friends to work in the park and used her position to allocate housing to them. In subsequent years, some of Zhao's relatives and friends left the park for other jobs or purchased properties in the city, making them ineligible for public rental housing.

Despite this, they continued to occupy the units, with some even transferring the units to other relatives and friends. Zhao was aware of the situation but did not urge them to vacate the units.

Zhao has since been punished legally, and her relatives have vacated the eight improperly occupied units, which have been reassigned to eligible residents.

Since the launch of Yongzhou's special campaign, as of October 2024, the city has reclaimed 930 public rental units due to illegal subletting and leasing, recovering 27.8 million yuan in overdue rent.