[Chasing suspected fraudsters, influence peddlers and others remains popular with the public. But Xi’s campaign also shows other tumult within the upper ranks of China’s leadership, business world and security apparatus.]
By Gerry Shih
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Meng
Hongwei, China's vice minister of public security and the president of
Interpol,
attends
a promotion ceremony at France’s Saint-Cyr national police academy in
June
2017. He was detained and disappeared this month during a visit
to
China. (Nicolas Liponne/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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HONG
KONG — It’s been another
busy month for China’s anti-corruption authorities.
There was the head of Interpol, who was
unceremoniously seized during a trip to Beijing. There was the state bank
executive who was caught hiding tons — literally — of ill-gotten cash in his
moldy basement.
There was the disgraced general who was purged
by the Communist Party as punishment even after he had hanged himself.
Arrests, disappearances, investigations,
posthumous humiliations: The stream of eye-catching headlines coming out of
Beijing in October is a reminder that President Xi Jinping’s hallmark
anti-corruption drive is showing few signs of letting up in its sixth year.
Chasing suspected fraudsters, influence
peddlers and others remains popular with the public. But Xi’s campaign also
shows other tumult within the upper ranks of China’s leadership, business world
and security apparatus.
Leaders are grappling with internal upheavals
at a time when Beijing is juggling mounting challenges, from trade frictions
with Washington to economic stress at home.
Despite rounds of purges in recent years,
“one serious problem that Xi Jinping faces is that the administration is still
actually poorly run,” said Willy Lam, who studies Chinese politics at Hong Kong
University. “They should have their house in order by now, but they don’t. That
could affect China’s ability to carry out policy or fight the trade war with
the U.S.”
The numbers are staggering. Since Xi started
the push in 2012, authorities have investigated more than 2.7 million officials
and punished more than 1.5 million people. They include seven national-level
leaders and two dozen high-ranking generals. Prosecutors have tried about
58,000 officials and sentenced two to death.
Among the latest officials to face
prosecution is Lai Xiaomin, the former head of state-owned bank Huarong Asset
Management and a onetime central bank official.
Lai was expelled from the party last week
after he was found in “serious violation” of party law and regulations.
According to the financial website Caixin, Lai took bribes, flouted government
financial policy — and hid three metric tons of tainted cash worth nearly $40
million in his house.
As a former regulator charged with helping
large Chinese companies deal with their debt, Lai was instead found to be
running Huarong in a “blind and disorderly way,” Chinese authorities said.
Since 2015, when a devastating stock market
crash sparked outrage among the middle class, Communist Party leaders have
viewed the financial markets as an Achilles’ heel for their grip on power,
observers say.
Lai’s downfall represents more than just
another corruption case.
It points to how Chinese leaders are
increasingly using their disciplinary apparatus to enforce government policy,
said Wu Qiang, an independent political analyst in Beijing.
That’s an evolution from five years ago, when
Xi was clearing out rival factions in the Politburo and sensitive institutions,
such as the military, Wu said.
“At the moment, the financial industry is the
focus of the anti-corruption campaign,” Wu said. “It’s in line with the
government’s economic policies such as ‘de-bubbling’ and stabilizing the
finance sector.”
To be sure, Xi’s work to cement his grip on
the police and military, the two instruments of hard power, also appears
unfinished.
Meng Hongwei, a deputy minister of public
security and the head of Interpol, was detained this month by anti-corruption
officials during a visit to Beijing. His disappearance occurred amid
speculation of infighting.
And two top officers in the People’s
Liberation Army, including former chief of joint staff Fang Fenghui, were
expelled from the party last week.
Fang was found guilty of accepting bribes and
political disloyalty. The other general, Zhang Yang, was stripped of his rank
and Communist Party membership, said a statement, which added that he tried to
“escape punishment by committing suicide” last November.
More than 300 officers were swept up as part
of the investigation into the two generals, the South China Morning Post
reported, citing sources close to the military.
This year, Xi expanded the leadership’s reach
by forming a National Supervisory Commission with sweeping powers to investigate
not only Communist Party members but also state-owned companies, hospitals,
schools and even sports teams.
“Once you establish and empower agencies to
investigate, they will inevitably find more and more people to lock up,”
said Zhang Ming, a retired professor of
political science at Renmin University in Beijing. “Eventually, it hurts the
party’s prestige and the public confidence in it.”
For its part, the Communist Party has
signaled that it’s just fine with the cycle of purges and investigations
becoming the new normal of Chinese governance.
Since the campaign kicked into gear, the
state broadcaster has released a documentary about a never-ending corruption
fight titled “Always on the Road” and a slick TV drama that got huge ratings.
Typically tight-lipped government authorities
have been happy to drip-feed details of greed and fecklessness to the media,
rallying the public around the anti-corruption campaign.
They’ve disclosed the number of bill-counting
machines it took to count one rogue energy official’s cash pile (16, four of
which broke down) and the logistics required to confiscate all the gold,
antiques and cash belonging to a crooked former army commander (10 military
trucks). It’s not uncommon to see reports surface about the tonnage of a
particular fallen official’s cash hoard.
Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the
Crumpton Group, said the never-ending corruption crusade is a distraction for
Xi, but it also serves to keep the Communist Party — and vast swaths of Chinese
society — in a permanent state of tension and under his sway.
“The campaign has been a remarkably effective
tool to help him consolidate and hold power,” Blanchette said. “It’s flexible
enough to allow him to essentially go after anyone, with Damocles’ sword
hanging over almost everyone. Why would he ever willingly give that up?”
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