Teaching Comparative

More on the Politics of Anti-Corruption in China

Edward Cody's article in the Washington Post supports the thesis proposed by Wu Zhong at Asia Times Online about structural obstacles to China's anti-corruption campaign. This reporting adds to the picture of the problem, the attempts at reducing corruption, and the difficulties of political and cultural change.

China's Crackdown on Corruption Still Largely Secret

"The Chinese government last week announced the disgrace of another senior Communist Party official accused of corruption. Du Shicheng, it said, was stripped of his posts as deputy party secretary of Shandong province and party secretary of Qingdao city because of a 'serious discipline violation.'

"Nothing was said about what misdeeds Du might have committed, but the announcement stated that his fall from power was 'another sign of the central government's tough stand against corruption.'...

"Du's firing -- the fourth of a major party figure this year -- was another chapter in President Hu Jintao's crackdown on the bribery and embezzlement... But it also illustrated the limits of Hu's anti-corruption drive. Despite repeated vows to weed out corrupt officials, the government's campaign remains a self-cleansing operation by the Communist Party's own bureaucracy, without monitoring by an independent judicial system or a free press...

"In one key step, the Central Discipline Inspection Commission has increased control over its counterparts at the provincial, municipal and county levels. By naming and dispatching investigators from Beijing... Hu has sought to reduce the ability of corrupt local officials to protect one another...

"But some Chinese experts have begun to question whether ... having the party investigate its own, and largely in secret -- can ever rid China of official malfeasance. The discipline commission operates under political supervision, they noted. Until China gets a justice system that has the power to investigate and prosecute in public without political guidance, they said, the party's instinct to preserve its position is likely to overwhelm its desire to reduce corruption...

"An illustration of how the system operates was provided by a recent announcement... that Nuctech, a company headed by Hu Haifeng, the president's son, had won a multimillion-dollar contract to supply Chinese airports with scanning equipment...

"Gossip buzzed about the deal in private, but nobody dared suggest in public that it had the appearance of impropriety because of Nuctech's connections. By the end of the month, however, unofficial corruption monitors were saying somebody high in government had intervened to stop the deal...

"Taiwan's recent experience has provided a telling contrast, the specialists noted. Prosecutors in Taipei, who are outside of political control, have put President Chen Shui-bian's wife on trial for embezzlement and jailed his son-in-law for insider trading, all under intense and detailed scrutiny in the media. Chen, while proclaiming his and his wife's innocence, has reaffirmed the prosecutor's right, even duty, to pursue the case...

"'In China, anti-corruption work is done entirely in a black box,' said Jiao Guobiao, a journalism professor at Peking University who was dismissed for criticizing China's strict censorship.

"'Outsiders never have a chance to learn the whole process,' he added. 'The fundamental reason, I think, is that the activities of those corrupted officials are too dirty and evil. If what they did was completely unveiled in public, the image of Communist Party members would be smeared, and ordinary citizens would be greatly shocked by how large a fortune they amassed and how shameless they were.'...

posted by Ken Wedding @ 11:27 AM