After the first round of inspections in 2014, when the Central Inspection Teams gave feedback to 14 regions and units, one problem among the various issues listed was strikingly similar. That problem was corruption in land transfer and engineering construction, especially leading officials abusing power for personal gain by interfering in land transfer and engineering construction.
　　Among the 14 regions and units in this round of inspections, only the Ministry of Science and Technology and COFCO Group did not mention this problem; the other 12 regions and units were all “hit,” and the high proportion is astonishing.
　　This situation warns of hidden concerns beneath China’s booming urbanization, and also shows that some leading officials are not only more brazen in their greed for corruption, but also more unbridled in their corrupt actions.
　　Why is corruption in land transfer and engineering construction so widespread, and why have some leading officials gone so far as to dare to bypass various bidding and tendering systems and directly interfere for profit? There are ultimately two reasons: first, the temptation of interests is too great; second, the boundaries of power are unlimited. The rich profits behind real estate development and infrastructure construction tempt some leading officials who hold heavy power and lack supervision to be blinded by greed, making them a disaster area for bribery, and even causing them to jump willingly into the vortex of interests.
　　China, racing toward modernization and industrialization, cannot do without land consolidation and engineering construction. But if the hand of power reaching for interests has no taboo, then we need to be vigilant: where will such urbanization and urban construction ultimately lead us? If corruption deeply intrudes, urban construction can very easily become a “weapon” for certain collusive interest groups to erode the public interest; people-oriented urban development will be only a slogan, illegal forced demolitions will be unavoidable, and “toppled buildings” and “fragile bridges” will emerge accordingly, ultimately leading urbanization and modernization astray.
　　What requires even more reflection is that China has bidding and tendering systems for land transfer and engineering construction, and the design of these systems looks beautiful, but why is it that we, who have had these systems for many years, still cannot stop the covetousness of the corrupt? Even more, the fairness that the bidding and tendering system can bring is widely regarded as decreasing, and the system is increasingly degenerating into a mere formality.
　　This shows that we have not forcefully implemented the systems, and on many occasions they appear so powerless. More fundamentally, our institutional design lacks a solid and rigorous external oversight force, so that some leading officials can stir up trouble and play with the public interest in the palms of their hands.
　　China’s reform has entered deep waters. Whether it is comprehensively deepening reform or modernizing the national governance system and governance capacity, in the final analysis, all require building an institutional cage for public power.
　　From loudly proclaiming “letting the market play a decisive role in resource allocation” to the government substantially cutting administrative approval authority, from mixed-ownership reform in state-owned enterprise reform to loosening the bonds on private capital and small and medium-sized enterprises, from the work-style building of implementing the “eight-point regulation” to a vigorous anti-corruption storm, in a word——let public power operate openly and in a standardized way.
　　From this perspective, some leading officials interfering in engineering construction and land transfer is precisely a true portrayal of public power operating in an insufficiently standardized way. I believe that with comprehensive and systematic “encirclement, pursuit, interception, and blocking,” we can surely support the good and eliminate the evil, and for the chaos in this field, we can surely treat both the symptoms and the root causes.