China is to step up efforts to recover stolen money taken overseas as part of its crackdown on corruption, state media said, after officials warned of the difficulty of tracking graft suspects and their illicit assets abroad.
Securing ill-gotten wealth from corrupt officials who have fled the country has been part of China’s multiagency “Sky Net” campaign launched in 2014, although authorities have especially touted the return of hundreds of fugitives.
China has been trying to get increased international cooperation to hunt down corrupt officials since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) began a war against graft nearly four years ago.
However, some Western countries have been reluctant to help, not wanting to send people back to a country where rights groups say mistreatment of criminal suspects remains a problem, and also saying China is unwilling to provide proof of their crimes.
In April, Chinese Communist Party Central Commission for Discipline Inspection Deputy Secretary Huang Shuxian (黃樹賢) said that the task was “very difficult.”
“While the previous priority was collecting evidence in overseas manhunts, the recovery of assets acquired illegally in China will be a new anti-corruption initiative in the coming months,” the official English-language China Daily newspaper reported yesterday, citing an unnamed senior public security official.
The official said police would work with China’s central bank to crack down on officials who have transferred billions of yuan in illegal funds to foreign accounts through money laundering or underground banks.
“Several more fugitives will be extradited from Europe and South America in the near future,” the official told the China Daily.
China does not have extradition treaties with the US, Australia or Canada, which state media say are popular destinations for its suspected economic criminals.
Beijing instead has turned to persuasion to get some people back. A man on China’s list of 100 most-wanted corruption suspects abroad voluntarily returned to China from Canada, authorities said in June, without elaborating his motivation to do so.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday said Canada would stick to high standards when deciding whether to return Chinese citizens after the two countries agreed to start talks about an extradition treaty.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese