Banquet ban alone won't stop dirty deals

The disciplinary watchdog of Northeast China's Jilin province recently issued a notice forbidding State-funded staff to attend inappropriate official banquets, which it clearly defined in detailed articles. Comments:

Who is naive enough to believe that corruption is caused by banquets? Banquets are only a platform for officials to get to know each other, and all their dirty deals are done in secret places elsewhere. Even if banquets are banned, officials that have unsupervised power in hand will still communicate with each other in pursuit of illicit gains. What is needed is shutting power in cage and preventing the abuse of power, so that officials won't have any chances of corruption. In the long run, banquets for officials will naturally perish because dirty deals will no longer be possible.

scol.com.cn, May 18

There used to be many bans on officials attending banquets but none was effectively implemented. A lack of details was the common problem with them. The latest regulation of Jilin makes progress by listing all the details and making it impossible for officials to evade them. Their example is worth following nationwide.

gxnews.com.cn, May 19

Most of the banquets for government officials are paid for with public money instead of private funds. It is a good idea to ban them, but a more efficient way is to set up the modern government accounting system to tightly follow the money, so that officials won't have a chance to misuse it. That's much easier than making detailed articles for a ban.

youth.cn, May 18