New Delhi, July 31 (IANS): India, whose Commonwealth Games projects have been hit by graft charges, has much to learn from the "corruption-free" Beijing Olympics, with a visiting functionary of the Communist Party of China's oversight commission on Friday giving tips about their successful organization.
"After the Beijing Olympics ended, we, as well as the government auditing firm, had done a review of all the contracts. No corruption was detected," said Liu Mingbo, spokesperson for the party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CDIC), who is leading an 11-member delegation to India.
Answering a query on whether he had any advice for India's Commonwealth Games organisers, Liu said that China had set up an overview system for awarding contracts after it won the bid for the Olympics. "The CPC and central government had predicted that a large amount of money would be used for the projects. So, we set up a special supervisory committee, which was chaired by the vice secretary of CDIC," he said.
Talking about China's lessons from organizing the Olympics, Liu said: "It is necessary to first set up a supervisory organization, create a very effective monitoring mechanism to check the flow of funds and for marketing, and thirdly identify the priorities."
Earlier, Liu gave a detailed presentation on the anti-corruption measures taken within the ruling CPC. "I can be very frank that after the reforms and the transformation of China, corruption has emerged as a problem. We never tried to hide the problem," he said.
Liu said that they were five categories of public resources that could become a "hotbed for corruption". He identified these as infrastructure projects, transfer of land use rights, ownership of public sector companies, government procurement and mining resources. "There should be a bigger role of the market in determining the distribution of resources, so we have introduced the bidding process," he said.
On a query on why he was holding a special briefing about CPC's anti-corruption work in India, Liu said, "As I am the head of the delegation and also part of CDIC, I felt that I should talk about my department here".
During their two-day visit, the delegation, made up of CPC members and research fellows at China Centre for Contemporary World Studies, met with members of Indian think tanks to exchange views. They also met with the members of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.
