Beijing's graft-busters get extra powers to root out sports cheats
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 09 November, 2014, 5:17am
UPDATED : Sunday, 09 November, 2014, 5:17am
SCMP Editorial
A gymnast from the Chinese national gymnastics team trains at the General Administration of Sport of China.
When the mainland's chief graft fighter sends teams of inspectors to the provinces for on-the-spot investigations, it is to be expected they will uncover some outrageous examples. But the report of the probe into the General Administration of Sport, which runs the state sport system, is enough to make you wonder how China ever excels at sport, let alone contests Olympic supremacy with the United States.
Zhang Huawei, leader of the inspection team from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said the problems included opaque and unregulated accreditation of games, athletes and referees, and buying and selling of rankings to become a professional athlete.
Earlier media reports said the GAS had accredited "swimmers" who had never been in the water and hurdlers who were physically unable to compete. Zhang said match-fixing also remained serious in some sports and commercial oversight of games was "chaotic".
He partly blames a top-down management system that allows unqualified officials to screen and train athletes for international competition. GAS director Liu Peng said it had learned a "deep lesson" and promised to follow the inspectors' advice.
The sports scandals have added to a punishing caseload for the anti-graft team in the national prosecutor's office which prosecutes offences investigated by the CCDI under President Xi Jinping's crackdown on official corruption. As a result the central government has approved increased resources, including recruitment of more manpower, for the corruption prosecutors. Hopefully, this will give prosecuting authorities a greater role and lead to more compliance with due process under mainland law than is to be found in the abuse of detention and interrogation powers by the CCDI which, after all, is a party organisation, not a judicial institution.
