Fate of all power abusers

Liu Tienan, former vice-minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planner, and also former head of the National Energy Administration, received a life sentence on Wednesday for taking bribes.

The first ministerial level official investigated and expelled from the Party after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which was convened in November 2012, Liu is characteristic of corrupt government officials abusing their powers.

By wielding his power in the two posts, he enabled companies to have projects approved in return for money. The money he took in proved bribes amounted to more than 35.58 million yuan ($5.74 million).

That Liu started to take bribes more than 10 years before he was placed under investigation, after a journalist reported on him online, suggests how loose the supervision has been over the exercise of power by government officials - while he was extracting interest from those who asked him for help, he was promoted from section head to vice-minister.

Five officials with the energy administration and nine from the development and reform commission have been investigated in the wake of his arrest. All have been found to have committed almost the same offenses as Liu.

These high-ranking officials should have set good examples for their counterparts in lower-level governments by strictly sticking to the principles and abiding by all the rules. But instead, they bent the rules and compromised the principles they should have upheld for personal gain.

The losses incurred by their illegal acts are much more than the huge sum of money they took in bribes. Apart from the indirect losses they have caused by having projects endorsed that should otherwise have not been approved, the intangible losses they have caused should include the dirt they have smeared on the reputation of the government and the Party, and the government credibility they have overdrawn on.

Due punishment inflicted on corrupt officials such as Liu Tienan and the apprehension of one bad apple after another in the government has won applause from the public. People do see hope in the top leadership's resolve to crack down on abuses of power.

Such punishment for corrupt officials forms an integral component of an institutional arrangement that will make it harder for power to be abused, which is exactly what the anti-graft campaign is heading for.