Tag Archives: Xi Jinping

Why Does the Chinese Communist Party Tear a Hole in its Own Democracy Cloak?

Posted on by
2

The People’s Republic of China recently uncovered the biggest vote-buying scandal since its founding in 1949. On September 13, 2016, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the national legislature, dismissed 45 of the 102 NPC representatives from Liaoning province for securing their seats in the NPC through vote buying. These NPC representatives had apparently bribed representatives to the Liaoning provincial Congress, which elects NPC representatives; 523 out of the 619 Liaoning provincial congress representatives were also implicated in this scandal, and have either resigned or been removed for election rigging, rendering the Liaoning provincial legislature inoperable. The central authorities stated that the “unprecedented” bribery scandal challenged the “bottom line” of China’s socialist system and the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

For many observers, reports of this vote-buying scandal came as a surprise. Some commentators wondered why people would risk getting caught and punished for corruption, just to secure a seat in a legislature that has been derided as little more than a rubber stamp. The most plausible explanation is that a seat on the NPC facilitates access to the rich and powerful, and it is this consideration, rather than the mostly symbolic power of the legislature itself, that motivates candidates to buy votes in NPC elections. (See here, here and here). There is, however, a second puzzle about the recent vote-buying scandal—one that is in fact more puzzling and important, though it has not received as much attention: Why do CCP leaders care about electoral corruption in NPC elections, if the NPC merely rubber-stamps party decisions? True, the CCP under President Xi Jinping has made the fight against official corruption a top priority—but given the prevalence of corruption in so many areas of Chinese government, many of which have immediate practical consequences, why target electoral corruption in the NPC?

The question becomes even more interesting when one considers that calling attention to vote-buying in NPC elections—a form of corruption that might otherwise not attract much attention—poses certain risks to the CCP. First, even if the NPC is mostly a rubber stamp legislature, it represents the symbolic core of state power, and is central to the CCP’s “socialist democracy,” a model the Party has long used to resist the Western-style multi-party democracy. As one commentator put it has observed, the exposure of the NPC vote-buying scandal has torn a large hole in the country’s “democracy cloak.” Second, exposing widespread corrupt practices could also increase pressure for systemic reforms. So why did CCP leaders choose to crack down on corruption in the legislature so openly? Continue reading →

The Reform of the One-Child Policy Will Help Reduce Corruption in China

Posted on by
4

Imagine being pregnant with a second child in a country with a one-child-per-family limit. The penalties for violating the policy are severe-forced abortions, sterilizations, and crippling fines. This was, of course, the grim reality for many Chinese citizens before October 30, 2015. That day, China’s Central Communist Party issued a short announcement that all Chinese couples will be allowed to have two children, ending 35 years of the notorious one- child policy.

The official reason for ending this policy lies in its troubling effects on China’s demographics: After decades of successfully curbing population growth, the one-child policy has caused China to become a country with a rapidly aging population (that is enjoying more longevity) and a corresponding shrinking young work force, which together put enormous pressure on the country’s labor industry and public service resources. Commentators have overlooked the fact that the new two-child policy may also have important implications for President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption crackdown (covered from different perspectives here, here, and here ). The one-child policy (perhaps inadvertently) fostered at least two forms of corruption, and the end of that policy will therefore make a non-negligible contribution to reducing corruption in China.

Continue reading →

What Does China’s Anticorruption Campaign Mean for Africa?

Posted on by
9

In advance of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s attendance at a China-Africa summit in Johannesburg last December, a flurry of news articles in African outlets—especially in Zimbabwe—optimistically highlighted the role China could play in helping African countries curb corruption. As previously discussed on the blog, in the first three years of his tenure, President Xi has made a crusade against corruption an important rhetorical part of his presidency, and backed up those words with actions (though some have questioned his techniques). It’s equally well-established that China has become very involved with Africa.  China increasingly depends on Africa’s mineral resources to feed China’s growing industries, and Chinese businesses see Africa as a potentially lucrative export market. Many African countries seeks partners, like China, that are willing to invest in infrastructure and business development. Though there has been recent pushback to China’s actions, and even a decline in Chinese investment in Africa, President Xi’s $60 billion pledge at the summit indicates China will continue to be an important player in the region for the foreseeable future.

Many commentators hope that the combination of these two factors—China’s anticorruption campaign and its substantial economic engagement with Africa—will give a boost to anticorruption efforts in Africa. Alas, those hopes are overstated.

Continue reading →

Forget FIFA: China Battles Corruption by Banning Golf

Posted on by
4

President Xi Jinping has made fighting many different kinds of corruption a priority of his administration, and so far 180,000 party officials have been caught and punished in the government’s wide-ranging anticorruption campaign. As part of this campaign, the Chinese government recently banned golf memberships for Communist Party members — all 88 million of them. The complete ban is part of an anticorruption strategy that involves cracking down on many of the lavish banquets and other types of conspicuous consumption by public officials that have caused widespread public anger in recent years, anger both at corruption, and at the country’s deepening economic inequality. The golf ban comes after months of tightening restrictions on how officials can play golf, following a scandal involving a suspicion that a top member of the commerce ministry allowed a company to improperly pay his golf expenses, as well as reports that some officials were playing golf during working hours.

The golf ban is not an isolated anomaly: A significant part of the Chinese campaign has involved tightening restrictions on various forms of conspicuous consumption by public officials. For example, officials are now prohibited from staying in five star hotels with public money (a move that led 56 hotels to ask to be downgraded to four stars so that they can continue to accept government clients), while lavish banquets, once a mainstay, have been limited to “four courses and one soup.” Golf is the latest luxury activity to fall under government regulation. But while these crackdowns could help the government look like they are taking corruption even more seriously, banning golf and other types of conspicuous consumption may actually serve to worsen the problem.

Continue reading →

All the Stars are Aligned in the Sky(net): Why Chinese Fugitives are Being Extradited

Posted on by
14

Skynet. To most American audiences, this word is evokes images of the omniscient, malevolent computer in Arnold Schwarzenneger’s classic, The Terminator. But in 2015, Skynet also means something else. Media outlets and the blogosphere (including this blog) are abuzz over Chinese President Xi Jiping’s “Operation Sky Net”: the Chinese government’s efforts to repatriate a “most wanted” list of over 100 Chinese nationals suspected of criminal corruption. (The name “Sky Net” traces its origins to the Chinese idiom, “The sky may look thin and sparse, but it is vast and won’t let you escape.”) Forty of the 100 are suspected of being in the United States—a prime destination chosen for its high standards of living and, more importantly, lack of extradition treaty with China.

It is hardly news that China is doing all it can to repatriate these fugitives abroad, and it is also old news that the U.S. and China have a rocky history when it comes to extradition. As Rick mentioned in a prior post, the United States is extremely reluctant to negotiate a formal extradition treaty with China, and the reasons are plenty: In the U.S. view, China suffers from weak rule of law, lack of due process, and an ignominious record for human rights violations. In addition to precluding the negotiation of an extradition treaty, these factors also stymie case-by-case extraditions. Indeed, until last month, only two Chinese fugitives in the U.S. had been extradited in the previous two decades. All of the above would seem to suggest that China’s recent efforts would be a presumed uphill battle. But in September 2015 alone, two suspected fugitives, Yang Jinjun and Kuang Wanfang, wanted for their separate parts in vast bribery, money laundering, and public corruption schemes, were successfully repatriated to China. What changed?

One way to explain China’s recent success in securing extraditions from the U.S. is that China’s recent requests for assistance in repatriating alleged fugitives involved in corruption crimes have come at a time when the United States has made anticorruption a point of special focus. In short, the stars (in the Sky Net) aligned. Continue reading →

President Xi Hunts Big Prey the Boa Constrictor Way

Posted on by
1

Something remarkable is happening in China. It’s not just that tens of thousands of officials have been caught in President Xi Jinping’s corruption dragnet, or that the crackdown continues unabated even though contributors to this blog and former Chinese Presidents alike have long wondered, “surely this can’t go on much longer?” Instead, I’m talking about how President Xi is using his anticorruption program to slowly and methodically take down Zhou Yongkang, the “most powerful man in China.”

The targeting of Mr. Zhou is at once both extraordinary and routine. On the one hand, his downfall is more about politics than corruption, retribution for backing the wrong man in the transition that catapulted Mr. Xi to power in 2012. On the other, the purging of rivals is seemingly a rite of passage for Chinese leaders; Mao did it aplenty in the 1950s and Presidents Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin “each engineered a high-profile sacking of a political rival (Shanghai boss Chen Liang and Beijing boss Chen Xitong, respectively).” But even then, there’s something different about Zhou’s fall from power — he’s not a provincial party chief, he’s a former member of the almighty Politburo Standing Committee, the former head of China’s feared domestic security services, and the biggest “tiger” yet targeted by President Xi.

And it’s that realization — that Zhou’s fall is momentous — that raises the most interesting question in this dramatic collision of corruption and politics: How did a President, who came to power without a solid independent base within the factionalized Communist Party, manage in just three years to take down the “most powerful man in China”? The answer lies in an intuitive but methodically executed four-step plan developed by President Xi and his Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. In the hope of shedding some light on how other nations might similarly take down the simultaneously corrupt and dangerously powerful without undermining political stability, let’s examine how President Xi has slowly choked off Mr. Zhou’s power.

Continue reading →

Is China’s Anticorruption Enforcement Implicitly Protectionist?

Posted on by
6

When a Chinese court fined GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) US$490 million last year for bribing Chinese physicians and hospital administrators, Western firms doing business in China snapped to attention. Indeed, the GSK action is likely only the tip of the iceberg, particularly given a December 2012 official legal interpretation of the Chinese Criminal Law by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate that departed from the prior emphasis on bribe recipients and redirected attention to bribe payers. Thus far, multinational corporations – including GSK, Danone, and Volkswagen – have figured prominently in President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign, leading many commentators to argue that protectionism is at play (see here and here). To put the point bluntly, the worry is that Chinese enforcers will go after foreign firms for conduct that is equally if not more common among domestic Chinese firms, and will do so largely to protect those domestic firms from foreign competition.

I have to admit, when I sat down to investigate the claims of protectionist bias, I more or less assumed the ulterior motives in Chinese enforcement. The typical refrain among my American friends who have lived and worked in China is: “Of course enforcers intentionally favor domestic companies. Everything is politically motivated.” That may be true. But what I found – or didn’t find – actually caused me to lean in the opposite direction: We don’t have enough evidence to substantiate claims of biased anticorruption enforcement in China. Continue reading →

Looking Where They Shouldn’t: China’s Crackdown on Due Diligence Investigators

Posted on by
1

As Meng suggested in a recent post, there is something admirable about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption crusade. With nearly 182,000 party members reprimanded during his first 18 months in office, President Xi’s program appears both more ambitious and enduring than those of his predecessors. Unfortunately, though, the core of corruption surrounding China’s senior leadership remains largely untouchable. Even as China cracks down on the abusive practices of low-level officials, billions of dollars in “suspicious” funds sit in the foreign accounts of that nation’s “princelings,” protected by the fact that, as Matthew notes, discussion of the corruption of China’s senior leaders remains “absolutely taboo.” After all, shedding too much light on the misbehavior of the nation’s elite threatens to defeat the leadership’s paramount concern: maintaining the legitimacy that undergirds China’s political stability. And this leads to what it is that positive accounts of President Xi’s battle against corruption often overlook: the contemporaneous willingness of China’s senior leaders to crack down on anticorruption efforts whenever those efforts threaten to step on the wrong political toes.

One of the best examples of this phenomenon is the Chinese government’s recent crackdown on investigative companies who perform due diligence. Continue reading →

Is China’s Anticorruption Crackdown Really a Crackdown on Anticorruption Activists?

Posted on by
1

In my last post I noted that political decentralization, and the inter-jurisdictional competition it fostered, could potentially suppress local corruption and promote economic growth. My enthusiasm was fanned by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) aggressive anticorruption campaign. Since President Xi Jinping took power, there has been a wave of anticorruption purges against powerful military and government officials. The very public purge of Zhou Yongkang, a retired official described as “the most powerful man in China,” seems to be an indication that Xi is fulfilling his promise of zero tolerance against “tigers” and “flies.”

However, my optimism has been tempered by recent news that two more anticorruption activists have gone on trial in China. The fact that the two activists from New Citizens Movement—Ding Jiaxi and Li Wei—campaigned for officials to disclose their assets, a cause that echoed CCP’s official aspiration (see here and here) only made the arrests more perplexing.

This seems like a glaring contradiction.  Why does the Chinese leadership continue to trumpet on about anticorruption and simultaneously arrest anticorruption activists?

Continue reading →