Shi Pengpeng: Digital Discipline Inspection and Supervision: Improving Anti-Corruption Penetration Through Technological Empowerment
The anti-corruption struggle has achieved an overwhelming victory and has been comprehensively consolidated, yet the situation remains grave and complex. At the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "We must grasp the new trends and characteristics of corruption, innovate ways and means, improve the mechanism for implementing anti-corruption responsibilities, discover, accurately identify, and effectively govern various types of corruption in a timely manner, and continuously improve anti-corruption penetrability." From the height of advancing the Party's self-revolution and improving the system for comprehensively and strictly governing the Party, this important discourse clarifies the orientation and requirements for driving transformations in supervision methods and improving anti-corruption penetrability through technological empowerment.
In a situation where traditional and new types of corruption are intertwined, and their concealment and complexity are increasingly enhanced, the traditional supervision model—which relies on manual experience and post-hoc investigations—has become difficult to adapt to the practical needs of advancing the comprehensive and strict governance of the Party in depth. Supported by big data, artificial intelligence, and information platforms, digital discipline inspection and supervision embeds oversight into the entire process of power exercise. It provides the technological force to penetrate the surface manifestations of power exercise, reveal chains of interest distribution, and identify systemic risks. Systematically advancing the construction of digital discipline inspection and supervision—transforming technological advantages into institutional advantages and data resources into governance efficacy—is an inevitable choice in the New Era to improve anti-corruption penetrability, consolidate the results of comprehensively and strictly governing the Party, and promote the modernization of the state governance system and capacity.
The Epochal Significance of Technological Empowerment in Anti-Corruption
As the process of Chinese-path modernization continues to advance, the complexity of state governance, the structural nature of power exercise, and the scale of social resource allocation continue to rise. The objects, arenas, and methods of the anti-corruption struggle have undergone profound changes. On one hand, the exercise of power is increasingly embedded in highly professional, technical, and platform-based institutional systems; administrative approvals, fiscal funds, public resources, and state-owned assets are all allocated and circulated through informatized business platforms. On the other hand, corrupt behaviors exhibit characteristics such as "technical cover-ups," "chain-like operations," and "cross-border lurking," making investigation and punishment increasingly difficult. In this context, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CCDI emphasized "empowering the correction of the Four Winds and anti-corruption through big data and informatization," and the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th CCDI further proposed "focusing on technological empowerment and accelerating the construction of a digital discipline inspection and supervision system." Viewed from the strategic height of improving the system for comprehensively and strictly governing the Party, technological empowerment in anti-corruption is not a simple technical upgrade. It is a major proposition concerning the Party's capacity for self-revolution, the stability of its governing foundation, and the level of modernization of state governance.
Technological empowerment is an inherent requirement for improving the system for comprehensively and strictly governing the Party. Comprehensively and strictly governing the Party requires the construction of a system of Party governance institutions that is complete, scientific, standardized, and effective in operation. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th CCDI required "advancing the comprehensive and strict governance of the Party with higher standards and more concrete measures." Through data aggregation and intelligent analysis of key links in the exercise of power, technological empowerment makes supervision focus more on systematization and front-end prevention and control. It embeds the requirements of the Party's self-supervision into the technical architecture of power exercise, better transforming the "institutional cage" [1] into a digital, executable, and traceable operational mechanism. It is evident that the significance of empowering anti-corruption through technology transcends the technical level of merely improving supervisory efficiency. It reflects the institutional requirement to improve the Party and state supervision systems and strengthen constraints on the exercise of power. This is both an inevitable choice for dealing with the complexity of power exercise and an important foundation for building a long-term anti-corruption mechanism and solidifying the institutional roots of comprehensively and strictly governing the Party.
Technological empowerment is an important fulcrum for enhancing the synergy of the anti-corruption struggle. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Deepen the treatment of both symptoms and root causes [2], apply systemic governance, and continuously expand the depth and breadth of the anti-corruption struggle." Currently, corruption problems exhibit characteristics that are intertwined across fields, levels, and departments; a single entity, means, or clue is no longer sufficient for an effective response. Through data sharing, system interconnection, and model analysis, technological empowerment can break down departmental barriers and "information silos," integrating power exercise information scattered across different fields, levels, and business systems to form a holistic identification of corruption risks. Consequently, anti-corruption work is evolving from the handling of individual case clues to the scanning of power structures, and from passive investigation to the proactive grasping of the laws governing the exercise of power. In this sense, technological empowerment is becoming an important support for pushing the anti-corruption struggle from local governance toward holistic governance, providing a practical path for building a power exercise system with clear powers and responsibilities, transparent operation, and strong supervision.
Technological empowerment drives the integration of power supervision into the overall process of modernizing state governance. The Party's self-supervision not only serves the anti-corruption struggle but is also an important component of the modernization of the state governance system and capacity. Technological empowerment allows power supervision and power exercise to unfold within the same technical and institutional framework, ensuring that anti-corruption is no longer a corrective force external to the governance system, but rather an internal component of the state governance structure. By incorporating the exercise of power into monitorable technical systems, optimizing power supervision with data resources, and strengthening institutional constraints through technological means, power supervision begins to possess an institutional form matching modern governance. This makes the exercise of power more standardized and transparent, institutional execution more rigid and forceful, and governance decision-making more scientific and precise, thereby ensuring that the requirements of comprehensively and strictly governing the Party are implemented institutionally in the process of modernizing the state governance system.
The Internal Mechanism of Improving Anti-Corruption Penetrability
Against the backdrop of the New Era, where comprehensively and strictly governing the Party is advancing in depth and the anti-corruption struggle remains grave and complex, whether supervision can penetrate the surface of power exercise has become a key metric affecting the efficacy of governing corruption. "Anti-corruption penetrability" is an important capability highlighted by these practical requirements. Its essence lies in enabling supervision to penetrate the surface and concealment layers of power exercise to reach the power allocation structure, operational mechanisms, and their inherent institutional risks. The core of enhancing anti-corruption penetrability through technological empowerment is not simply discovering problem clues, but rather the holistic identification and lawful grasping of power exercise structures and their institutional risks, thereby providing foundational support for precision anti-corruption and systemic governance. Specifically, improving anti-corruption penetrability should possess three basic internal requirements: the ability to penetrate structures, see through processes, and reveal mechanisms, driving a leap in capability from individual case supervision to deep-level governance.
First, penetrate power exercise structures to identify the institutional roots of corruption. Many corrupt acts do not manifest directly in illegal forms but are embedded in seemingly compliant power allocations and operational flows, receiving concealed protection through institutionalized and procedural methods. To improve anti-corruption penetrability, one must break through the linear scrutiny of single matters and conduct a systematic analysis of the relationships between different levels, links, and elements based on the overall structure of power exercise. The allocation, flow, and constraint of power must be the core objects of supervision. Through methods such as constructing power maps and digital process modeling, the paths and key nodes of power flow can be revealed, and "gray zones," overlapping functions, and supervisory blind spots in the power exercise process can be identified. This process not only focuses on whether power is exercised compliantly but also scrutinizes the scientific nature of the power allocation itself, thereby locking onto the structural roots of power misconduct and achieving precise identification and holistic grasping of power exercise risks.
Second, penetrate institutional operational processes to discover endogenous risks and hidden dangers. Traditional supervision uses problem clues and individual case investigations as its main levers, playing an important role in punishing explicit corruption. However, when faced with institutional risks, the traditional model is easily constrained by information fragmentation, investigation lags, and the boundaries of human cognition, making it difficult to detect deviations in institutional operation in a timely manner. Technological empowerment, through dynamic collection and real-time monitoring of data from the entire process of institutional execution, enables institutional operations to be presented visually, shifting the supervisory perspective from point-based investigation to process-based transparency. Potential procedural deviations, executive attenuation, and rule-bending can be identified early, moving the risk warning threshold forward in institutional operations. This not only expands the spatial and temporal scope of supervision but also enhances its forward-looking nature, driving the upgrade of supervision from passive response to proactive prevention and control, making supervision a truly embedded governance mechanism that guarantees the effective operation of institutions and prevents the endogenous accumulation of corruption risks.
Finally, penetrate the generative mechanisms of corruption to grasp the laws of problem evolution. Corruption, as a complex social phenomenon, has a specific internal logic and staged characteristics in its occurrence and development. To achieve governance at the source, one must deeply grasp its generative mechanisms and evolutionary laws. Through the comprehensive mining of historical case data and data from supervision, discipline inspection, and law enforcement, technological empowerment can extract common inducements and diffusion patterns of corrupt behavior in different periods and fields. It can thus elevate scattered case experiences into predictable risk models. On this basis, by constructing risk assessment models and setting index systems, corruption risks can be transformed into evaluable and intervenable digital signals. This not only provides a scientific basis for source governance and institutional improvement but also drives the upgrade of supervision from experience-based governance to scientific governance, fundamentally compressing the generative space and evolutionary conditions for corrupt behavior, and ultimately achieving the deep integration of the Party's self-supervision with the state governance system.
Practical Paths for Improving Anti-Corruption Penetrability through Technological Empowerment
Exploring the practical paths of empowering anti-corruption through technology should proceed from the mechanisms of power exercise and the logic of supervision system operation. We must break down information barriers in the exercise of power through data integration, reveal risk points in institutional operation through intelligent analysis, achieve full-process coverage of supervision through process embedding, and guarantee the long-term stability of supervision capabilities through institutional construction. This will enable anti-corruption work to achieve precise constraints and effective supervision over the exercise of power at a higher level.
Harness data resource integration as a foundation to solidify the operational base for penetrative supervision. The more complex the exercise of power and the longer the chain, the more likely supervision is to produce blind spots due to information fragmentation. To enhance anti-corruption penetrability, we must incorporate power exercise data from different departments, levels, and fields into a unified supervisory field through unified data standards, interface specifications, and sharing mechanisms. We should drive the aggregation and integration of key data—such as fiscal funds, administrative approvals, public resource allocation, state-owned asset management, and the performance of officials—in accordance with laws and regulations, building "one network" of power exercise data. Through systematic aggregation and standardized processing of power exercise data, we can achieve the visualization, traceability, and comparability of all elements of power exercise. This will drive supervision from fragmented clues to panoramic scanning, and from local judgments to holistic assessments, thereby identifying the internal correlation between power allocation structures and institutional execution deviations at a higher level, providing solid data support for improving anti-corruption penetrability.
Use correlation analysis as a means to transform invisible risks into identifiable supervisory signals. The key to improving anti-corruption penetrability lies not in simple data piling, but in revealing the complex correlations of power exercise behind the data. To this end, we should build analysis rules and assessment frameworks that reflect the logic of power allocation, operational flows, and interest correlations around the key chains of power exercise and high-risk links. We should conduct cross-comparison and deep mining of elements such as capital flow, project distribution, approval rhythms, and personnel correlations. This transforms potential abnormal patterns and off-track behavioral trends in the exercise of power into identifiable, pre-warnable, and verifiable risk signals, identifying risk points hidden behind institutional operations, achieving precise penetration of power exercise risks, and truly accomplishing early discovery, early warning, and early disposal of corruption risks.
Focus on business integration as the key to driving the deep integration of technological empowerment with supervision, discipline inspection, and law enforcement, effectively transforming penetrative identification into actual disposal capacity. Improving anti-corruption penetrability must ultimately be implemented in the actual operational process of supervision, discipline inspection, and law enforcement. To this end, the results of data analysis and intelligent assessment should be organically integrated into key links such as clue management, supervisory inspection, and review and investigation, making technological empowerment a powerful tool for discovering, assessing, and handling problems. By supporting decision-making with data and assisting judgment with models, we can drive supervision, discipline inspection, and law enforcement away from a primary reliance on empirical judgment toward a systematized, standardized, and precise operational mode, thereby transforming the ability to identify structural risks into actual disposal capacity.
Ensure institutional construction as a guarantee to transform technological advantages into long-term and stable supervisory capabilities. Technological empowerment can only release anti-corruption penetrability continuously and stably if it is incorporated into the institutional track. To this end, we should simultaneously advance institutional construction in terms of data management, analysis rules, and the application of results, clarifying the boundaries of power and responsibility, standardizing operational processes, and consolidating the chain of responsibility. This ensures that technological empowerment always operates on the track of the rule of law and standardization. By embedding technological empowerment into the internal Party supervision system and the operational mechanisms of the state supervision system—and connecting it with power allocation, responsibility systems, and workflows—we can systematically drive the continuous transformation of technological advantages into firmer institutional advantages and governance efficacy. This will provide more solid institutional support for winning the tough, protracted, and total war of the anti-corruption struggle.
(Author: Shi Pengpeng, Vice Dean and Professor of the School of Discipline Inspection and Supervision, China University of Political Science and Law) Source: Guangming Daily (February 27, 2026) Editor: Huihui