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Endemic corruption and the CCP
By Nathan Novak 李漢聲
According to the People’s Daily and Xinhua news agency, former Chinese minister
of railways Liu Zhijun (劉志軍) was dismissed on Feb. 12 for “severe violation of
discipline.” Liu had apparently been under investigation by the Chinese
Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection since the
beginning of this month.
Liu earned the nickname “Leaping Liu” for his desire to develop China’s railway
system in a “leapfrog” fashion, and was said to have prized the concept and
development of high-speed rail systems. Liu’s tenure witnessed the opening of
the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the highest railway in the world.
However, his time in office also witnessed numerous corruption allegations,
harsh conditions for migrant workers and several rail accidents, including the
Shandong train collision of 2008, the worst railway disaster in China in more
than a decade, which killed or injured close to 500 passengers.
A scandal involving his younger brother, Liu Zhixiang (劉志祥), in 2006 brought
with it a death sentence that was first suspended and then commuted to life in
prison. The younger Liu was found guilty of hiring a man to stab a businessman
in front of his wife and child.
According to the Straits Times of Singapore, many in China thought “he [the
elder Liu] should have been fired long ago.”
The same report also divulged the reason why Liu Zhijun -survived as long as he
did politically and professionally: his close ties with former Chinese president
Jiang Zemin (江澤民).
Liu Zhijun rose through the railway ranks under the tutelage of Han Shuping
(韓淑萍), a former minister and Jiang confidante, and escaped numerous calls for
his removal unscathed.
According Willy Wo-Lap Lam (林和立) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong: “[The
elder Liu’s] downfall has to do with the power struggle between Hu Jintao [胡錦濤]
and Jiang. There has been much talk that the Jiang camp has put a lot of
pressure on Hu ahead of the 18th Party Congress next year. This is Hu’s
counter-attack.”
By many accounts, the sacking of the minister of railways demonstrates that
factional politics is alive and well within the ranks of the CCP in the run up
to the 18th Party Congress, set to take place in the fall of next year. Hu,
although handpicked by the late Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) as Jiang’s successor, owed
his own rise in part to Jiang’s support.
As the transition from Hu, a former Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL)
secretary and member of the CCYL faction — as designated by Chinese leadership
academic Cheng Li (李成) — to Xi Jinping (習近平), a member of Cheng’s “princeling
faction,” continues, one might reasonably expect that more heads could role, as
Jiang’s “Shanghai clique” may be in the process of being elbowed out.
The apparent open season on the once well-protected elder Liu is perhaps
indicative of a larger political push.
Using corruption allegations to topple a Jiang crony, if not the entire Shanghai
faction, would be ironic, as Jiang himself placed a great deal of focus on
reining in corruption and began referring to corruption as a life-and-death
issue for the party.
Speculation as to the scale of such inner-party factional struggles aside,
observers should be troubled by the ongoing campaigns against well-connected
officials within the party.
Although the transfer of power within the CCP has been relatively peaceful over
the past two decades, such pillorying of high profile officials is problematic
for a number of reasons.
First, selecting a handful of high-level politicians for punishment will not
solve the China’s corruption issues. Indeed, Xinhua itself lists the number of
officials punished for corruption last year alone at more than 100,000.
Past cases against such party heavyweights as former Politburo member and
Beijing mayor Chen Xitong (陳希同), a one-time rival to Jiang, and Chen Liangyu
(陳良宇), himself a former “Shanghai clique” member, Shanghai party committee
secretary and rival of Hu, have made headlines but no discernible headway in
curtailing rampant official misconduct.
Second, if corruption is a life-and-death issue for the CCP, and if such
high-level corruption cases have not deterred party members from improper
behavior, the death knell may have already been sounded for the party itself,
and all that is left is not the bang commentators expected back in May and June
of 1989, but more a last whimper in the early years of the 21st century.
Third, if high-level corruption “show trials” — called “show trials” here
because of their -headline-making impact, but inability to effect real change,
not because they implicate innocents — do not solve the problem, and if such
problems lead to the end of the CCP, we are bound to be ask what comes next,
what the future holds for China.
Why? Well, for starters, most criminal elements within the CCP, undeterred by
the convictions of their seniors and left to their own devices, would more than
likely remain in positions of power in any post-CCP regime.
The situation in Russia and the former-Soviet republics following the collapse
of the USSR in the late 1980s and early 1990s is perhaps the most appropriate
point of reference here.
If the CCP were to fall, any outcome short of full democracy would be a
devastating disappointment for foreign (as well as some domestic) observers;
indeed, such a development could mean a far worse situation for everyone.
Nathan Novak studies cross-strait relations at National Sun
Yat-sen University.
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