By Wang Jie

On August 22, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) was disbanded. Wei Jizhong, a sports expert, has said that the best legacy of the Beijing Olympic Games was the experience in preventing corruption.

I believe the Games have three lessons to teach us about fighting corruption in China.

First, powers in decisionmaking, enforcement and oversight should be separated. Wei said that in order to prevent corruption, the Olympic Committee adhered to a strict principle of the "decision-maker never participating in the negotiations."

In my opinion, this means that decision-maker only makes the decision and doesn't enforce it. In other words, one person doesn't play two roles at the same time.

In fact, this view has been clearly indicated in General-Secretary Hu Jintao's report
to the Chinese Communist Party's 17th National Congress when he declared "power must be exerted in the sunshine," and "we shall establisha sound structure of power and a mechanism for its operation in which decision-making, enforcement and oversight powers check each other and function in coordination."

The Olympics has shown how this might work in practice, and will be a good model for the future.

Second, we should act firmly according to the law. However, Wei rightly says that corruption prevention is not just a legal issue but also an enforcement issue.

Indeed, before 2006, China already had more than 1,200 pieces of law and regulations in preventing corruption while in its early stage, the Party only had "Three Main Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention" – a total of 11 regulations.

However, undoubtedly these hundreds of laws and regulations had less effect now in preventing corruption than those 11 simple points in wartime. Wy was this?

Besides all the other factors, the most crucial one is that people do not act strictly in accordance with the law, and those who break it are not strictly prosecuted.

Some people will intercede by saying "Don't do it next time," while others try to evade the truth with the excuse of "trial and error" in the reforms.

Laws and regulations have not been consistently and fairly enforced. As a result, the dignity of the system has been seriously damaged and offi cial morality has deteriorated. No wonder so much corruption happens.

How did the Beijing Olympic Games effectively prevent corruption? Because they adhered
to the regulations so strictly that even a working meal must be reported.

Third, we should build a solid ideological defense system to resist corruption and prevent degeneration.

From news reports, it is not difficult to see that the Olympic Games is able to effectively prevent corruption because BOCOG experts maintained such a system.

From the very beginning, BOCOG had proposed a "Sunshine Olympics," the principles of which included discussing everything in public and never allowing secret operation, and
that experts did not participate in the early negotiations of any project, nor would they meet or have dinner with participating sponsors. Bidders could not fi nd any chance to corrupt experts.

Therefore, I believe that in order to fi ght against corruption, necessary ideological education is essential and we can't trust the system by itself.

The successful hosting of the clean Olympic Games not only fulfi lled our commitments,but also found some successful experience and practices in anti-corruption, which eserves careful review and reflection in order to promote our anti-corruption work.

The author is an official working in anti-corruption in Huaihua city,Hunan Province