China's rulers rarely wash their dirty linen in public, so the arrest of Politburo member and Shanghai Communist Party boss Chen Liangyu (
Some speculate that the arrest is really part of a power struggle, with Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Whatever the truth behind Chen's fall, and despite the widening corruption probe of other senior government officials, data and evidence recently released by the government and multilateral institutions suggest that the authorities are fighting a losing battle against a rising tide of graft.
For evidence of the rising level of corruption, consider the grim statistics recently released by the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP): more than 42,000 government officials on average were investigated for corruption every year from 2002 until last year, with more than 30,000 per year facing criminal charges.
These startling figures do not include economic crimes outside the public sector. For example, during last year alone, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) unearthed irregularities involving misused funds totaling 767.1 billion yuan (US$93.7 billion).
The CBRC uncovered 1,272 criminal cases and disciplined 6,826 bank employees, including 325 senior managers.
According to Ye Feng, an SPP director-general, "almost every type of financial institution has seen the emergence of criminal cases involving the solicitation of bribes in return for loans."
Despite the government's intermittent anti-corruption campaigns, progress in fighting graft has been slow. On the contrary, as Ye has candidly acknowledged, the number of corruption cases "has continued to rise." Indeed, international standards used to measure corruption show that the authorities may be reaching a stalemate -- or even retreating -- in their fight.
Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index -- the most widely used benchmark to gauge the extent of corruption in various countries -- ranked China 78th out of 158 countries last year, not much improvement over China's 2000 score.
Indeed, among the World Bank's six "Governance Indicators," China's scores on the "Control of Corruption" index have actually slipped in recent years, from -0.20 in 1998 to -0.40 in 2002 and -0.69 last year. And the World Bank ranked China 142nd out of 204 countries in last year's "Control of Corruption" index.
While the economic toll of graft cannot be precisely quantified, indirect evidence suggests that the costs are significant. Multinational executives frequently cite China as their favorite investment destination, but many of them also complain about rampant graft.
Hu Angang (
Not surprisingly, the financial sector suffered the most from corruption, losing 547 billion yuan, or 6.25 percent of GDP. Fraudulent public expenditure cost 2.4 percent of GDP, siphoning off funds amounting to almost 2.1 percent of GDP. Smuggling caused losses of more than 1.1 percent of GDP.
The biggest obstacle to fighting graft in China is the weakness of the judiciary, especially at sub-national levels. Since most government corruption occurs at the county, township and village levels, it usually involves abuses of power by local officials.
However, since these petty bureaucrats' power is almost absolute, they also control the channels for addressing grievances. Indeed, among the World Bank's six "Governance Indicators," China's score on the "Rule of Law" index has also been on a slide in recent years, from -0.28 in 1998 to -0.47 last year, when China ranked 124th out of 208 countries in this category.
With little recourse to legal means, more frustrated victims of graft resort to extra-legal measures such as strikes, demonstrations and sit-ins in order to gain media and public attention. Some even carry their fights to the provincial and central authorities, stoking a sharp rise in the incidents of "public order disturbances" nation-wide. Whereas the Ministry of Public Security reported only 8,700 such disturbances in 1993, by last year the number had jumped ten-fold, to 87,000.
Needless to say, government mishandling of such disturbances, or a decision to repress them with force, would only fuel further social discontent. In fact, the government's success in clamping down on corruption, especially at sub-national levels, will be a litmus test of its legitimacy.
To fail would risk igniting a severe political backlash, including a spontaneous escalation of anti-regime activities.
Friedrich Wu is an adjunct associate professor at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
The Iran war has exposed a fundamental vulnerability in the global energy system. The escalating confrontation between Iran, Israel and the US has begun to shake international energy markets, largely because Iran is disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. This narrow waterway carries roughly one-third of the world’s seaborne oil, making it one of the most strategically sensitive energy corridors in the world. Even the possibility of disruption has triggered sharp volatility in global oil prices. The duration and scope of the conflict remain uncertain, with senior US officials offering contradictory signals about how long military operations might continue.
An article published in the Dec. 12, 1949, edition of the Central Daily News (中央日報) bore a headline with the intimidating phrase: “You Cannot Escape.” The article was about the execution of seven “communist spies,” some say on the basis of forced confessions, at the end of the 713 Penghu Incident. Those were different times, born of political paranoia shortly after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) relocated to Taiwan following defeat in China by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The phrase was a warning by the KMT regime to the local populace not to challenge its power or threaten national unity. The
RSS