National Supervisory Commission


National Supervisory Commission of the People's Republic of China is the highest anti-corruption agency of the People's Republic of China, at the same administrative ranking as Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate. Its operations are merged with the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China. The National Supervision Commission was formed at the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in 2018. The Commission includes the director, deputy director, and ordinary members and the director is appointed by the National People's Congress.

Background

The National Supervisory Commission was formed as part of a series of reforms to China's anti-corruption system during the first term of Xi Jinping as General Secretary of the Communist Party. While the Communist Party had institutionalized internal mechanisms for combating corruption in some form since its early days, it was apparent that it was largely ineffective at curbing systemic corruption, and otherwise had no legal basis, as the main organ tasked with combating corruption and malfeasance, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, was a party organ, not a state one.
Prior to Xi's anti-corruption campaign, offenses were often prosecuted at the direction of local party authorities through their control of local Commissions for Discipline Inspection and procuratorial organs. While these authorities theoretically reported to their superior commissions at the next higher level of administration, in addition to answering to the local party leadership, in reality the local CDIs only answered to local party leaders, as they controlled the budgets, personnel, and resources of these organizations. This often led to arbitrary exercise of power and political selectiveness in the targets of corruption efforts.

Formation

In late 2016, Supervisory Commissions began pilot initiatives in Shanxi, Beijing and Zhejiang. Provincial level chiefs of Discipline Inspection began serving concurrently as heads of the local Supervisory Commissions.
The formation of the National Supervisory Commission centralized control of anti-corruption resources to the central authorities and was aimed at curbing local interference in anti-corruption efforts. The former National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Office Against Dereliction of Duty, and the anti-corruption department of the Procuratorate were all folded into a single agency.
In February 2018, an amendment to the constitution was proposed to make national and local supervision commissions official state organs. Local commissions will be appointed by local peoples' congresses at county and higher level and will be accountable to them and to the supervision commission at the higher level.