Auditing supervision will play an active and significant role in China’s “three critical battles” against potential risk, poverty and pollution, the top auditor said on March 19.

Hu Zejun, head of the National Audit Office, said auditing has the advantage of high expertise, wide coverage and quick response in forestalling and curbing financial risk in a timely manner.

It will be further used to disclose financial risks, including shadow banking, non-performing loans, off-balance sheet business, and “hot money” impacts, and monitor hidden dangers from local government debt, the real estate sector and State-owned assets, she said.

Hu said a top-down auditing supervision system, covering every corner of poverty-stricken areas, will be launched to promote targeted poverty alleviation.

“We will focus on the implementation of poverty alleviation policies, and reveal misdeeds such as misappropriation of funds, abuse or corruption, as well as formalism and falsification,” she said.

According to the NAO, the country punished 970 people involved in violations of use of poverty relief funds, after an audit of the execution of the government’s 2016 central budget and other fiscal revenues and expenditures.

China will also continuously innovate audit methods to push officials at all levels to follow through with environmental protection, and promote the construction of an ecological civilization, she added.

The pilot mechanism of auditing natural resource assets for outgoing leading officials, launched last year, will be gradually promoted nationwide, according to the NAO.