The political demise of Li Fengchen (李鳳臣) bizarrely began after he busted more than 30 officials who had purchased jobs in the eastern China county he ruled.
However, Li — who once cultivated an image as a poet, scholar and writer — had bought his own job by giving his superior 320,000 yuan (US$48,000). He then reportedly amassed 14 million yuan in bribes and kickbacks, mainly from illegal land deals. In late 2009, he was sentenced to life in prison.
The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece, has cited Li’s case as an example of rampant graft — one of the biggest bugbears of a government eager to tamp down all sources of public discontent.
“Building clean government is a long-term yet urgent task as well as the ardent hope of the people,” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said on Saturday in his speech to open the annual session of the National People’s Congress.
“We will act more quickly to solve serious problems in combating corruption and promoting clean government,” he said, singling out officials who “abuse power for personal gain, neglect their duties or infringe upon others’ rights.”
Corruption is cited every year as a top priority for the government, but the battle on graft is more crucial than ever to the party, with major leadership changes due next year and in 2013 when Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Wen step aside.
“To steadfastly punish and prevent corruption is a matter linked to the support of the people and the life and death of the party,” top party graft-buster He Guoqiang (賀國強) said in a report on corruption before the congress session.
Experts say the problem is so ingrained in the CCP system that the leadership faces a Sisyphean task.
“The main cause of corruption on the local level is a lack of control over political power,” said Hu Xingdou (胡星斗), economist at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
“There is no democratic supervision over officials by local people and even the internal supervision mechanisms of the party are lacking. Local governments supervise themselves so it is natural that corruption is becoming worse and worse,” Hu said.
Well-placed government jobs have long been a way to riches in China, especially during the last 30 years of booming economic growth, but recent corruption cases have revealed stunning greed — and devil-may-care bravado.
Liu Zhijun (劉志軍) was sacked as railways minister last month for allegedly taking more than 800 million yuan in kickbacks linked to contracts for the expansion of China’s high-speed rail network, the Global Times said.
Liu, 58, also kept at least 10 mistresses, the report said.
Government efforts to curb graft have not kept pace with the lengthening list of tempting reasons officials have to become corrupt, said Sun Yan, an expert on corruption in China at the City University of New York.
“Among the main motives for bigger and bigger graft is to send one’s kids to high school or college in a Western country, to purchase an immigration status to one of those countries and to purchase housing for kids while attending [overseas] schools,” Sun said.
“Other motives include to purchase and invest in real estate ... to pay for the maintenance of multiple mistresses and to purchase luxury brand name goods,” Sun said.
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