Making A Difference

Ethical Cleansing

China’s Communists prepare to fight the canker of corruption

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Ethical Cleansing
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Sino-Indian Lapses

  • Though China has one-party rule under the CPC and India has a multi-party democracy, corruption is rampant in both countries.
  • The fight against corruption against senior leaders, key officials, dominate political
    discourse in both countries
  • India and China have acted against corruption: imprisoning senior ministers, but people feel ‘big fishes’ are untouched
  • Despite big economic growth India and China have a rising wealth gap between rich and poor; it can hit their future growth
  • The world’s most populous nations have over 2.5 billion people, yet millions in both still survive on less than a dollar a day

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The political drama involving former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai ended this week almost on the lines predicted by many of China’s critics. Charged with the murder of Neil Heywood, a British businessman, Gu was given a suspended murder sentence by a Chinese court. She had confessed to her crime, claiming Heywood threatened her son’s life. Her detractors say that it was the possibility of the British businessman spilling the beans on her secret bank accounts, where she has allegedly stashed away large sums of money, that led to his murder. Early this year, the high-profile Bo, who had ruffled the feathers of many of his party colleagues, had to go when Gu’s involvement in the murder became public.

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The outcome of the murder trial did not surprise many who were largely sceptical about the fairness of the Chinese judiciary and its political system. The sceptics had seen Bo’s ouster and the subsequent trial of his wife as merely a part of an inner-party struggle in the Chinese Communist Party. The sacking of the Chongqing party boss, according to them, was an attempt by the majority members to prevent the ambitious Bo from getting into the all-powerful nine-member standing committee of the politburo that virtually runs the country.

The suspended death sentence awarded to Gu is widely being seen as a compromise between the various factions in the CPC to prevent further damage to the party’s image. Though the court’s decision has strengthened the views of sceptics, it has also provided the Communist leadership in China an opportunity to show citizens its seriousness in weeding out corruption and punishing even senior party leaders who misuse their power.

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The pearl river waterfront, Guangzhou

There is no Baba Ramdev or Team Anna in China to highlight issues of corruption. A few individuals who tried something similar, like the blind activist Chen Guangchen, are either put behind bars or are encouraged to leave the country by authorities. The fight against corruption is firmly in the hands of the Communist party leadership, which decides the pace and scale at which it should be fought.

But there are many people both within and outside the country who see corruption as endemic to the Chinese political system. They say the higher one goes up the political ladder, the more corrupt one becomes. The issue distresses many Chinese and often dominates the political discourse in the country. Since a new national CPC leadership is scheduled to assume responsibility in a few months’ time, the issue of corruption has gathered even more significance.

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“There is a lot of stress this year on inner-party democracy and the drive to root out corruption,” Luan Jianzhang, deputy director-general of the research bureau of the international department of CPC’s central committee, told Outlook in Beijing. To top it all, there is also the issue of a rising wealth gap between the rich and poor. Together, they pose a serious challenge to China’s future growth and development.

But Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei remains confident of the new leaders’ ability to meet these challenges and keeping the country firmly on the growth path. “With a contribution of over 30 per cent, China is today the locomotive of the global economy and to maintain its current growth rate it needs a strong and stable leadership,” says Hong.

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According to him, China’s stability and growth is not only important for its citizens, but also for the international community as the world economy gasps for breath amidst an acute economic crisis. “I am sure that the new leaders of China who are soon to take up responsibility of running the country will not disappoint the world.”

The confidence he exudes stems from China’s growing economic muscle in the last 30 years. The Chinese economy has grown at an impressive rate of over 10 per cent every year for the past three decades. Its phenomenal development has allowed the Chinese leadership to pull out over 300 million Chinese out of poverty and improve the lives of many others. Today, China is the second largest economy in the world and its leading industrial manufacturer. Of 1.34 billion Chinese, nearly 600 million now live in various cities and urban centres. But more than 700 million Chinese are still in villages and rural areas. Despite its impressive economic growth, China still has over 150 million people who survive on less than a dollar a day.

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“The total number of poor people in China far surpasses the total population of many countries,” says Luan. As a reality check, he also points out that despite its past success China has a long way to go before it can emerge as a real global power. “If China’s achievements are divided by 1.34 billion they become small; at the same time, if our problems are multiplied by the same number they become huge.”

His remarks are significant, as successive leaders in China have been stressing on creating a “harmonious society”. This, even for an ‘equal’ society like China’s, remains a tough goal to achieve as long as a sizeable section remains below the poverty line while a chosen few, particularly those holding important party posts, continue to get richer through corrupt means.

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Supporters of human rights activist Chen Guangchen raise slogans in Hong Kong. (Photograph by AFP, From Outlook 03 September 2012)

The issues of corruption and the rising wealth gap are crucial for China’s Communist party because of their capacity to foment disaffection and erode the legitimacy it enjoys among the 1.3 billion people it rules. “People want to see action against corrupt leaders. Otherwise it will raise serious questions on the trust and confidence they have reposed on the party,” says a middle-ranking CPC member.

A document released by the CPC in 2010 acknowledges corruption at various levels of Chinese society since the country embarked on its economic reforms in the late 1970s. “The switch from a closed economy to an open economy, driven by the market, not only had its major impact on the economy but also on the social sphere,” says the document. Over the years, with the increase in the size of the economic pie, corruption levels also increased. The CPC document admits that since the 1990s there has been “rampant corruption” in China.

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A report of China’s Central Bank last year said that more than 800 billion RMB (1 US dollar=6.3 RMB approximately) were smuggled out of the country by corrupt officials, and nearly 17,000 people had fled the country from the mid-1990s to 2008.

Reports that emerge from China also show the range of corruption that many senior officials and party functionaries often indulge in. According to one report, a central committee member of the party gifted a fancy car to his mistress, a TV anchor, when she expressed her desire to drive around in an expensive car. In another incident, Ma Xiangdong, the deputy mayor of Shenyang, gambled away over $4.8 million at a casino in Macau. Other reports suggest that a former chief engineer of the railway ministry, Zhang Shuguang, stashed away over $2.8 billion, buying several properties in Switzerland and the US.

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A number of steps have been taken by the CPC’s disciplinary agencies against corrupt leaders and officials. In 2009 alone, action was taken against 7,000 party members; till last year nearly 1,40,000 people were punished. Many are senior party functionaries, like the former party secretary of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, who is serving an 18-year sentence. Some, like Ma, who gambled away millions of dollars, have also been executed. Despite such drastic measures, the party has been unable to weed out systemic corruption.

A renewed effort is now being made to fight the menace. The thrust is not only on punishing the guilty, but also on making the dealings of party workers with people at all levels more transparent. All party members who have relatives abroad are now mandated to furnish their details to stop the transfer of illegal money to foreign funds and accounts.

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Much of this effort can be seen in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province that lies along the pearl estuary on the South China Sea. With a history of over 2,225 years—being one terminus of the famed Silk Road—Guangzhou is today a bustling city of over 15 million and enjoys an annual GDP of over 1,250 billion RMB. It is China’s third largest city and attracts a large number of investors, traders and scholars from both within and outside the country. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping had come here to announce the second round of his economic reforms when he faced serious challenges to his policy of opening up the economy from sceptics within the CPC. Now, party leaders in Guangzhou have embarked on a much more ambitious project: to turn it into a “corruption-free” city. Such moves are not isolated—in recent years leaders of neighbouring Hangzhou and Shenzhen have also declared their intention of making their cities free of corruption. This has only encouraged leaders in other cities in the province like Zhaoqing and Zhuhai to go on an overdrive to rid their respective cities of corruption.

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What such efforts finally end up in is a question one can speculate on, but there is no denying that for the fifth generation Communist leaders of the People’s Republic of China, running the most populous country in the world while ensuring equitable growth will be no straightforward task.

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