On Oct. 8, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) announced that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “mass line” education campaign against corruption had basically been completed, that it had achieved its goals as expected and that the accomplishment was magnificent.
This was obviously a lie. No matter how much power Xi amasses, he will never be able to create a comprehensive, nationwide political campaign completely under his control in the way Mao Zedong (毛澤東) could. Even Mao himself admitted in his later years that the Cultural Revolution was a failure. He could at most transform the neighborhood around Zhongnanhai. How, then, could Xi, who is reluctant to push for systemic political reform, be able to stamp out corruption with the help of a political campaign?
A Xi-style anticorruption campaign fools only the likes of people who Lu Xun (魯迅) described as having a “slave mentality,” and it will be treated only as a joke by government officials at all levels.
The only people falling from power because of Xi’s anticorruption campaign have been people who have challenged his authority, such as former Chinese domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang (周永康) and the like and their followers, who chose the wrong side.
Xi’s anticorruption drive is a fig leaf to cover up an ongoing power struggle.
Without an independent judiciary, freedom of the press or a political transformation from a dictatorship toward democracy, Xi will never be able to strike at the root of the CCP’s deadly corruption problem.
Will he be able to throw his sister and brother-in-law, who are both as rich as Croesus, to the wolves? Will he dare touch the intertwined vested interests of the families of late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), former Chinese premier Li Peng (李鵬) and former Chinese presidents Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤)?
As Xi declared the closure of the mass line campaign, news media outlets from around the globe were reporting about the Deng family’s inroads into New York, the heart of US imperialism. Anbang Insurance Group, whose chairman Wu Xiaohui (吳小暉) is the grandson-in-law of Deng, bought a New York landmark hotel, the Waldorf Astoria, for a huge amount of money.
According to the New York Times, Anbang was founded in 2004 as a privately owned property and casualty insurer. Wu married Deng’s granddaughter and has incalculable intangible wealth.
A princeling joins up only with other princelings to make money. Although Wu’s Anbang Insurance Group has been established for just a decade, it has accumulated tremendous assets and built strong connections. Wu’s other companies have partnered with the New Horizon Fund, a private equity investment fund founded by Wen Yunsong (溫雲松), son of former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), and others.
In the past, when Deng designed China’s economic reforms, he used to champion the idea that some people should be allowed to get rich first. However, it would be more accurate to say that he let his family get rich first. That is the only reason that Wu had the means to accomplish the biggest Chinese real-estate transaction in the US — the 47-story Hilton-owned Waldorf Astoria was sold for US$1.95 billion.
If this conspicuous transfer of the Deng family’s riches, acquired from the blood, sweat and tears of Chinese people, is not a case of outright, shocking corruption, then what is?
Wu Xiaohui, Wen Yunsong, Jiang Zemin’s son Jiang Mianheng (江綿恒), Li Peng’s son Li Xiaopeng (李小鵬) and all the other CCP princelings are the true greedy tigers, yet Xi turned a blind eye simply because he is one of them. Once they became New Yorkers, there was nothing Xi could do. Hence, Xi’s anticorruption battle failed miserably at its outset.
As The Economist said: “The campaign is characterized by a Maoist neglect of institutions. It has succeeded in instilling fear among officials, but has done little to deal with the causes of graft: an investigative mechanism that is controlled entirely by the party itself, a secret system of appointments to official positions in which loyalty often trumps honesty and controls on free speech that allow the crooked to silence their critics.”
Yu Jie is an exiled Chinese dissident writer.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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