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To have and to hold
Oct 14, 2016 | The Economist
... Corruption in China has been made easy by ill-defined property rights, decentralised administrative authority and the absence of democratic checks and balances, such as an independent judiciary, a free press and political competition. -
China jails former graftbuster for life over corruption
Oct 14, 2016 | Reuters
By Ben Blanchard
A senior Chinese official who worked in anti-corruption departments for almost 20 years has been jailed for life for graft, state news agency Xinhua said on Friday. -
XI JINPING: Destined to reign
Oct 14, 2016 | The Daily Star
By Shakhawat Liton
...When he assumed the presidency in March 2013, public confidence in CPC was eroding due to corruption by many high officials of the party and administration. In efforts to consolidate further his party's base in the country, he issued a note of warning against corruption. -
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Oct 14, 2016 | The Economist
IN 1989 the movement for democracy brought the Chinese Communist Party to within days of extinction. According to official reports, on one day alone, May 22nd, 6m people joined demonstrations in 132 cities across the country. The party’s immediate response was to use the people’s army to crush the people by force, in Tiananmen Square. To rebuild the loyalty of those who would continue to rule in the party’s name, its leaders went on to create the conditions in which officials at all levels could loot state property. Thus, the biggest democracy movement in history was countered by the greatest opportunity for predation the world has ever seen.
China has never had a formal privatisation programme. Instead, as Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, writes in “China’s Crony Capitalism”, decentralising the rights of control over state property without clarifying the rights of ownership gave those who rule “maximum advantage to extract wealth from society”. Rights of control have been separated from rights of ownership in China—and where ownership is uncertain, control is key.
Mr Pei’s book is quietly devastating. In sober, restrained language, he exposes the full gravity of corruption in China. Presenting a wealth of evidence, he shows that this is not the unfortunate by-product of rapid economic growth but the result of strategic choices by the party. With clinical precision, Mr Pei explains how corruption operates at every level, perverting each branch of the party-state and subverting the political authority of the regime. The party cannot mitigate, let alone eradicate, “crony capitalism” because, since 1989, it has been “the very foundations of the regime’s monopoly of power”, the author argues. The conclusion, he believes, is that far from saving the regime, President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive may accelerate its demise by creating divisions within the ruling elite even as it reinforces strong popular resentment of corruption.
The state continues to hold the residual property rights to at least half of the net worth of the economy. Since 1978, when Deng Xiaoping launched his economic programme, the party-state has jealously guarded this walled garden for its officials and their business cronies. Throughout this time there has been some economic reform but no political reform. Thus the party, as Mr Pei points out, can only protect its interests with the full Leninist range of repressive instruments—and daily displays its willingness to do so.
This exercise of power is not subject to any of the checks and balances of a liberal democracy. China’s structure of government makes it impossible to staunch the corruption. There is a lack of probity at the highest levels of the party, as seen in the imprisonment of former members, including the former chief of security, Zhou Yongkang. The improper exercise of power is most obvious in property development, mining and the restructuring of state-owned enterprises. Corrupt officials collude with superiors as well as subordinates. Their venality has infected every province. Some regions have become mafia states. Only highly competitive sectors, where property rights are better defined, such as consumer goods and high-tech manufacturing, mostly in the private sector, are largely free of it.
Thanks to the extensive decentralisation of administrative power, local party chiefs have “acquired the authority to allocate capital, award large contracts and determine land use”. Local businessmen bribe these local bosses to their own advantage. Starting in 1994, local governments have been allowed to keep all the receipts from land sales, using them largely to finance infrastructure projects.
But lax controls have allowed officials to exploit these projects for personal enrichment. State assets are not the only area in effect to have been privatised; so too has the power of the state. Appointments and promotions in every department have been for sale for a quarter of a century. “Bribes, instead of merit, determine who is chosen,” Mr Pei writes. Mr Xi said the same to a gathering of party officials on October 16th 2014: “Corruption in personnel matters is a prominent problem…Our system of cadre management is for show only.” Court documents reveal that this practice has extended to environmental-protection agencies, the police, secret intelligence services, judiciary and the highest ranks of the armed forces.
As Mr Pei explains, anti-corruption investigations are carried out by the party itself. Courts rubber-stamp the party’s own verdicts on its own officials. The author exposes the weaknesses of the investigatory organisations and shows that only a small percentage of officials are seriously sanctioned. He goes on to point out that Mr Xi’s anti-corruption campaign is dealing only with the symptoms of the disease, not the underlying causes.
Corruption in China has been made easy by ill-defined property rights, decentralised administrative authority and the absence of democratic checks and balances, such as an independent judiciary, a free press and political competition. Only by improving all of these can it be permanently reduced. Belatedly, the party under Mr Xi has recognised that corruption poses a mortal threat to the regime, but it has, at the same time, rejected the very reforms that offer the only prospect of a remedy.
Mr Pei grew up in Shanghai and lived there in the hopeful early 1980s, but he is not optimistic now: “Even a revolutionary overthrow of the old order may not usher in the dawn of a liberal democracy. The legacies of crony capitalism…will enable those who have acquired enormous illicit wealth under the old regime to wield outsized political influence in a struggling new democracy that will have poor odds of survival,” he writes. He fears that Russia and the Ukraine may show China what can happen when a one-party dictatorship is overthrown, as it so nearly was in 1989. This book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand China today, or engage with it at any level, in any field.
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21708644-how-chinas-elite-has-taken-control-economyand-country-have-and-hold
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China jails former graftbuster for life over corruption
Oct 14, 2016 | Reuters
By Ben Blanchard
A senior Chinese official who worked in anti-corruption departments for almost 20 years has been jailed for life for graft, state news agency Xinhua said on Friday.
Jin Daoming was put under investigation by the ruling Communist Party in 2014 while serving as a deputy head of the provincial legislature in northern Shanxi, one of the focus spots for President Xi Jinping's war on deep-rooted graft.
He had previously worked in the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party's main anti-graft watchdog, rising at one point to the position of deputy secretary general.
He had held several other anti-corruption positions starting from 1987, his official resume showed.
Jin was found guilty of taking more than 120 million yuan ($18.00 million) in cases involving coal mine projects, promotions and anti-corruption investigations, Xinhua said, citing a court in the eastern city of Zhenjiang.
As Jin had admitted his guilt and cooperated with the investigation he had received a lighter sentence, Xinhua added, meaning he avoided the death penalty.
It was not possible to reach Jin's family or lawyers for comment.
Shanxi, one of China's top coal producing provinces, has been among the epicenters of Xi's battle on corruption.
In June, its provincial party boss said parts of the region had been "disaster areas" when it came to corruption, but the situation was improving.
Shanxi has experienced an economic boom fueled by soaring energy demand over the past decade, one of the reasons state media have identified behind the corruption.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-corruption-idUSKCN12E09I?il=0
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Oct 14, 2016 | The Daily Star
By Shakhawat Liton
He was sent to a poor village in the countryside at a tender age of 15 to work there for seven years. He did the same work as locals used to do and lived the way they did. Villagers accepted and praised him for his honesty, sincerity and hard work.
When he studied at Tsinghua University, according to a report by The Telegraph, his classmate Qiao Mu recalled that "most of professors and students around us said he would be an emerging leader for next decade”.
Their prediction came true. He is now the most powerful Chinese ruler since Mao Zedong, founding father of People's Republic of China. Xi Jinping, the president of China, the world superpower next to the US, is now holding all three offices required to be China's paramount leader.
Xi was well prepared for the leadership position long before he took the helm due to China's meritocratic selection system, according to Yongnian Zheng, professor and director of East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore.
"In the 1980s, he was placed as one of the candidates for the future generation of leaders. It is believed that he had already formulated his vision of China when he took over power from Hu Jintao," writes Zheng in an article in last March.
When Xi became top leader of Chinese Communist Party in November 2012 and was confirmed as the next head of the state for next one decade, The Telegraph of UK published his life-sketch titled "Xi Jinping: profile of the man born to lead China."
When he assumed the presidency in March 2013, public confidence in CPC was eroding due to corruption by many high officials of the party and administration. In efforts to consolidate further his party's base in the country, he issued a note of warning against corruption.
Records say he was always tough on corrupt people. When he was the chairman of the standing committee of the Provincial People's Congress in Zhejiang province, he warned officials in 2004: "Rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain."
The anti-corruption measures he initiated as head of the state has been lauded globally by many.
Bloomberg News in a report in March 4, 2014, said, "His campaign against corruption is growing into one of the broadest in China's modern history, snaring dozens of businessmen and government officials and positioning Xi as the country's most powerful leader in decades."
Forbes Magazine in 2015 said Xi has fought harder than his predecessors against corruption and in favor of greater economic and security alliances.
In Global stage, his vision is to take China to a new height. He is been moving with an assertive foreign policy for expansion of Chinese's influence on the global stage particularly on Asia.
Soon after assuming the presidency, he began his world tour with his vision. He visited so far 40 foreign countries with his ambitious mission to build a new Silk Road economic belt under "One Belt and One Road" initiative.
This has been Xi's foreign policy priority and China has been pouring billions of dollars in large-scale infrastructure projects in foreign countries with the aim of building the network for connecting Asian countries with Europe and Africa.
Beijing looks to garner international favour through a massive investment effort in Europe and Asia to surpass the US on the world stage, said Sputnik in a report on June 3 this year.
In recent years, China planned infrastructure projects involving over $200 billion for construction, and $1 trillion for other projects are on the horizon, dwarfing US foreign investment by several orders of magnitude, mentioned the online news and radio broadcast service established by the Russian government-controlled news agency Rossiya Segodnya.
When he took the rein, China has become the second largest economy of the world, next to the US.NOT AN EASY TRIP
Born in Beijing in 1953, Xi could have been an army officer as his father had managed a job in Chinese army for him. But he was unwilling to do army job. He preferred to go to village. And in 1969 he was then sent to the remote village of Liangjiahe in Shaanxi province.
In an interview in 2004, Xi recalled the moments he left Beijing for the remote village.
“Everyone was crying, there wasn't anyone on the train who didn't cry," he remembered in his interview posted on Sina.com and other websites. But he felt elated to escape the political stresses of Beijing, where his father has been purged by Mao Zedong.
His father Xi Zhongxun, one of the first generation of Chinese communist leaders and also a vice-prime minister under Mao Zedong, was purged from the post in 1962 prior to the Cultural Revolution and eventually imprisoned.
"But I was smiling, the only one smiling. Of course, my relatives beside the train asked me, 'Why are you smiling?' I told them that if I had to stay then I'd be crying, because I wouldn't even know if I'd survive,” he remembered.
Xi described his seven rural years as a life-transforming immersion in poverty, hard work, spartan eating and bed fleas.
He left the village in 1975 to go to Tsinghua University in Beijing to study.
However, it was very difficult for him to get membership in the party. According to reports of the Associated Press, he tried to join the Communist Party at least nine times but was rejected because of his father's issues.
Finally, he was accepted into the party in 1974 when his father was still in prison. At the beginning, Xi served as a local party secretary in Hebei province and then went on to ever more senior roles in Fujian and then Zhejiang provinces.
He held regional leadership positions in four provinces before being appointed to the nine-man Politburo Standing Committee in 2007, and was named vice president in 2008.
In 2010 he became vice-chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission.
In 2012 he became general secretary of CPC. In March, 2013, he became China's president and chairman of the central military commission. In 2014, he became head of China's new national security commission. Xi thus emerged as the most powerful leader of China after Mao Zedong.
http://www.thedailystar.net/supplements/xi-jinping-destined-reign-1298575
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