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Politics Undermines China's crackdown <BR>on Corruption-Nations & States - Global Policy Forum Politics Undermines China's Crackdown on Corruption
By Joe McDonald
Nando Times
November 9, 2000
From schools that squeeze parents for extra fees to cadres who steal money for flood survivors, China's communist system is rife with corruption. Those who complain too loudly, however, sometimes wind up in prison while crooked bureaucrats go free.
Death sentences imposed Wednesday on officials in the communist era's biggest corruption scandal are trumpeted by Beijing as proof of its resolve to stamp out graft that even the government admits has cost China billions of dollars. But secrecy surrounding the multi-billion-dollar smuggling case and lack of penalties for senior figures reaffirm the reluctance of the Communist Party elite to hold themselves accountable or to change a system that encourages abuse. "If people don't hear the case and don't see justice being done, then they're always going to wonder whether they're letting the big guys off," said Bob Broadfoot of the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy.
China's epidemic of graft could wreck confidence in its leaders, hold back reform, scare off investors and even obstruct preparations to join the World Trade Organization, Broadfoot said. "The scale of corruption might not be growing, but the seriousness of the problem is getting worse," he said in a telephone interview. The sums involved already are huge for a country with an annual per capita income of only about $750. Xiamen officials were accused of taking bribes to help a local company smuggle oil, cars and cigarettes worth $6.4 billion.
Elsewhere, the government admits officials stole resettlement money for villagers displaced by the giant Three Gorges Dam project in central China. Others are accused of taking flood-relief funds or money meant for piping water to poor farmers. On a smaller scale, schools illegally charge parents for kids' books, and bribed officials overlook building code violations and let in untaxed imports.
Official malfeasance in turn often sparks public protests. Laid-off coal miners are said to have blocked train lines to protest the theft of severance pay. Farmers have attacked government offices to protest illegal taxes. Without trust in its officials, China can't push ahead reform or create structures required by the WTO to enforce free trade, Broadfoot said. Foreign firms could stay away for fear rivals will get cheaper imports or special favors through bribery, he said.
Beijing has responded by allowing the wholly state-controlled media greater leeway in exposing official abuses in hopes of defusing public rage and scaring bureaucrats into changing their ways. In a stinging series of reports, China's auditor general has accused officials of stealing or wasting more than $28 billion. Prime Minister Zhu Rongji warned last year that officials were endangering lives by embezzling money meant for flood-control projects. And rampant smuggling frightens the government, threatening its survival by starving the treasury of taxes. Estimates of losses in the late 1990s ran to tens of billions of dollars a year.
Defendants sentenced in the Xiamen case after secret trials helped smugglers evade $3.6 billion in duties. Those sentenced to death included Xiamen's deputy mayor and its Customs boss. "The trial by the People's Courts of this case fully demonstrates that our country, our government and our party are fully determined to crack down on smuggling and corruption," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said Thursday. Yet Beijing has muddied its anti-graft message by retaliating against private citizens who try to fight corruption.
An Jun, an activist in central China, was sentenced in April to four years in prison on subversion charges after he founded a group that reportedly exposed nearly 100 cases of corruption. Reporter Gao Qinrong was sentenced in 1999 to 13 years imprisonment after exposing a sham irrigation project built to promote the reputation of officials in the western province of Shanxi, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which has appealed for Gao's release.
In the Xiamen case, President Jiang Zemin is said to have blocked an investigation into the wife of a protege. And there has been no word of punishment for China's former chief anti-smuggling official and the former head of military intelligence - both implicated in the scandal.
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