To curb corruption, China must do more than taking down tigers
Chang Ping says the problem with China's fight against corruption has never been the lack of examples to serve as a deterrent: the arrest of top officials alone won't curb abuse of power
Just before July 1, the Chinese Communist Party hit the headlines with news on several high-profile corruption investigations. This could be its way of celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the party, on July 1, or perhaps it was trying to steal the limelight from the annual march in Hong Kong.
On June 27, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced that Wan Qingliang, the party chief of Guangzhou and member of the Guangdong Standing Committee, was under investigation for violation of party discipline. Three days later, the Politburo announced it was expelling Xu Caihou, a former vice-chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission, from the party. The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping. It said Xu, facing accusations of bribe-taking and other violations, would be handed over to military prosecutors.
On the same day, the central discipline commission disclosed on its website that three other ministerial-ranked officials or executives of state enterprises have also been expelled from the party. They are Li Dongsheng, a former vice-minister of public security; Jiang Jiemin , former chairman of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission; and Wang Yongchun, a former deputy general manager of China National Petroleum Corporation.
To quote Xi's "tiger and fly" theory of corruption, these few were very big tigers indeed. Xu was a former member of the Politburo while the other four were all members or alternate members of the Central Committee.
Their arrests exemplified the central government's iron fist in fighting corruption and its determination to enforce party discipline, the said in a post on its official Weibo channel. "The party will never allow any kind of corruption and the military will never tolerate the corrupt and their shameless dealings," it said.
Many people are still not satisfied, however, because the biggest tiger of them all has yet to be indicted. Former Politburo Standing Committee member and security chief Zhou Yongkang has been under investigation since last year, yet there's been no news of his fate. There are worries this means the investigation has run into a problem, or that a dirty deal has been done that would see the captive tiger freed.
