China’s long and largely unavailing battle with corruption is dotted with notorious officials. Take Heshen (和珅), still a byword for misbehavior. A Qing Dynasty official who seemed unassailable despite his conspicuous greed and soaring wealth.
When the Qianlong (乾隆) emperor died in 1799, the fall of his favorite was as swift as his rise had been remarkable. Heshen was charged and forced to kill himself, and his family’s vast fortune was confiscated. Now his modern-day counterparts are learning his painful lesson: That a change in regime can spell a swift end to the comfortable “status quo.”
In recent decades, top leaders warned that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faced a life-and-death fight to root out courruption — while cadres and their families amassed ever greater assets: luxury properties at home and abroad; sports cars and designer wardrobes; stacks of cash and large stakes in major companies.
Illustration: Yusha
However, since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) took power two years ago, his pledge to bring down both “flies and tigers” — corrupt cadres at all levels — has demonstrated real bite.
Authorities say 100,000 officials have been punished so far. Others seem willing to do anything to avoid investigation; recently, the party launched a nationwide survey of suicides among its 87 million members. While there is concern that some reported cases have been a cover for deaths during grueling internal party interrogations, there have also been graphic tales of cadres attempting suicide as anti-graft teams arrived, hoping to protect their families, not just from disgrace, but from losing their property and positions.
Privately, both officials and businesses warn that day-to-day work is simply grinding to a halt. Officials lack other incentives to act, no longer know how to navigate the paths of power to get things done or are worried that any decision — however legitimate — might attract unwanted attention.
The People’s Daily quoted the Hebei Province party secretary as saying: “I am afraid that too much punishment of senior officials could harm the stability and development of the local economy.”
It is even said that the campaign is playing a part in China’s lower growth figures.
“The slowdown of economic growth, to a certain degree, is related to cadres slacking off,” Unirule Institute of Economics executive director Sheng Hong (盛洪) said.
The sensitivity of anti-corruption officials to such remarks is evident in a commentary posted on their Web site last week. It said that such opinions showed a lack of understanding about the changing pattern of economic development, a failure to comprehend the “grave and complex” situation regarding power abuses or ulterior motives. The assumption has been that eradicating corruption can only mean a swift improvement in the system.
In fact, crackdowns tend to come at a cost, said Dan Hough, an expert on anti-corruption initiatives at the University of Sussex.
“Often it does lead to negative economic and social consequences. You have to take that medicine,” he said. “People freeze. They are not sure what the new rules of the game are... It will take time before a consensus emerges.”
The drive has been more prolonged and far-reaching than anyone anticipated. In September last year, CCP Nanjing secretary Yang Weize (楊衛澤) praised the initiative in the People’s Daily.
“It’s easy to be a good official for a short period, but to remain a good official for a lifetime is much harder,” Yang said.
Apparently he spoke from personal experience. Last month, he was also detained.
The campaign’s scope reflects not just cynicism among the public about endemic corruption, but an understanding of how deep and entrenched government-business ties have become.
“I think the current Chinese leadership realized that the lethal mix of power and money is a grave danger to the legitimacy of the party,” Columbia University Chinese politics expert Lu Xiaobo (呂曉波) said.
Even if Xi’s predecessor, former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), shared that concern, he was a weaker figure who relied on collective leadership.
“He did not, and probably could not, take on the entrenched interests — ie corrupt crony capitalism — head-on,” Lu said.
China watchers previously assumed that an unwritten accord prevented corruption charges against any member or former member of the party’s Politburo Standing Committee. However, Xi has overseen the arrest of former domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang (周永康) on Feb. 9 and Liu Han (劉瀚), a mining billionaire widely reported to have ties with Zhou, was executed for committing multiple murders.
The campaign has swept across the army, claiming even former Central Military Commission vice chairman Xu Caihou (徐才厚) who is now charged with taking “huge amounts of bribes” in exchange for promotions.
It has spread to finance, with the arrest of the president of the Minsheng Bank and the investigation of a Bank of Beijing board member. Spy chief Ma Jian (馬建), was reportedly detained last month.
Not long before, the discipline watchdog began investigating the top sports body; subsequently, a top official there vowed to toughen the fight against corruption in the television and film industry.
The graft-busting body — the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) — has dramatically expanded its power and reach.
“Never has the CCDI, whose job used to be solely related to clean governance, been involved so deeply in the country’s overall administration,” senior fellow Willy Lam (林和立) wrote in a piece for the Jamestown Foundation. “While President Xi’s commitment to clean governance does not seem to be in doubt, he and the CCDI’s Wang [Qishan, 王歧山] need to do more to convince the public that they have not been using one of China’s most powerful organs to consolidate their power and to decimate political foes.”
Wang, who has headed the anti-corruption fight for Xi, is highly regarded for his abilities; he is also a fan of the US drama House of Cards, which perhaps encourages speculation about Machiavellian maneuvering. Both men have a deep knowledge of internal party dynamics, as well as seasoned political skills; and now, it seems, they have public opinion behind them.
“It is a power struggle rather than a genuine crackdown on corruption. In other words, it is a campaign to marginalize opponents in the name of anti-corruption,” Beijing-based independent historian Zhang Lifan (張利方) said.
Zhou was a relatively easy target, despite his elevated position; he had few allies and was made suspect by his ties with former leading politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來), who was toppled spectacularly and charged with corruption and power abuses after his wife was accused (and later convicted) of murdering Briton Neil Heywood. Not only that, novelist Murong Xuecun (慕容雪村) said, but Zhou had scrambled to power from a humble background, while the “second generation reds” who, like Xi, were born to veteran communist families seem mostly unscathed.
“Those groups that support and pledge loyalty to Mr Xi appear untouched,” the novelist wrote last month.
Most striking has been the long investigation into former senior Hu aide, Ling Jihua (令計劃).
Yet, few doubt that the leadership is genuinely concerned about the challenge that corruption poses to its credibility and the nation’s ability to function. People’s Liberation Army General Liu Yuan (劉源) — known for his outspoken denunciations of military graft — warned recently that graft was the No. 1 killer of combat effectiveness.
Corruption entrenches and widens economic inequality; it disproportionately affects the poor. They are the people whose homes are torn down for minimal compensation when property developers buy off local officials. Watching a parade of officials being shamed offers at the least a sense of vengeance, at best a hope of future justice. However, while the “tigers” dominate the headlines, it is often the actions of low-level “flies” that have more impact on people.
“With decentralization and the growth of the market, lower level officials in a local county branch have a lot more power [than in the past],” said Deng Xiaogang (鄧曉剛) of the University of Massachusetts in Boston, who holds a fellowship from Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra center for ethics to study institutional corruption.
“If you want to find a job or do a small business transaction, you need this kind of personal network... It’s about who you know so your child can go to a better middle school; so your relative can see a better doctor when he has cancer. It could be about [passing] hygiene inspections if you sell food. It’s become part of Chinese culture. People take it for granted; it becomes routinized and people may not feel it because it is part of daily reality,” Deng said.
Some misbehavior has gone underground. However, the campaign has had real impact. It has been blamed for plummeting casino revenues in Macau and falling sales of everything from expensive spirits to Tibetan mastiffs. These fierce dogs, which previously sold for hundreds of thousands of yuan, were fashionable gifts for businessmen seeking to woo high officials. On Feb. 14, the World Gold Council cited its strong impact on sales, which were down 38 percent last year. Some hotels have even downgraded their five-star ratings to win back customers.
“Anti-corruption has become a ‘new normal’ in China,” an op-ed in the Global Times said on Feb. 6.
The length of the campaign in part might indicate the time it is taking to unravel the patronage networks that have formed. Corruption patterns have become more complex, sophisticated and deep-rooted. One case leads to another. However, it might also reflect the resistance from those who have benefited from the existing system and face losing everything.
“It now seems very difficult to conclude the crackdown — the initiators may face a backlash if they fail to root out all the other tigers,” Zhang Lifan said.
At the same time, the leadership faces further public disaffection if its efforts halt too abruptly.
Fudan University political science professor and anti-corruption expert Li Hui (李輝) said it is “a nice beginning” to a long-term shift, instead of seeing it as a one-off movement. He ticked off efforts being made to ensure permanent improvement: from making budgeting more transparent and regulating officials’ expenses to establishing a property registration system.
However, he agreed: “The next step is to introduce institution building and rule of law. The government will need to further restrain its power and scrap unnecessary administrative examination and approval items.”
Others argue a powerful independent investigator is needed — something that would be anathema to the party. Xi seems to have turned his back on any prospect of political reform. The last two years have seen an ideological tightening and consolidation of party control.
Sheng said greater scrutiny was needed from outside the system, such as from the press and public. The high-profile figures who have been ousted are just a fraction of those involved in wrongdoing, he said
“The public love to see corrupt officials being brought down. But the system that makes corruption possible remains unaffected by the crackdown,” he said.
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