A failing student who offered his professor £5,000 in cash in an attempt to pass his degree has been jailed for 12 months.

[...]Li had been given a mark of 37% in his dissertation, short of the 40% needed to pass. Graves told him he could resubmit the 12,000-word essay, appeal against the mark or accept it and withdraw from the course.

But Li offered a fourth option, the court was told. He told Graves: “I am a businessman,” and placed £5,000 in cash on the table in front of him. “You can keep the money if you give me a pass mark and I won’t bother you again,” Li was alleged to have said.

Graves asked Li to leave but as the student put the money away, a replica handgun – loaded with six pellets – fell from his pocket to the floor, the court heard.

This case has brought back into the spotlight the mutual struggles between Chinese students and their hosts. Since 2000, the number of Chinese students abroad has been rapidly climbing, and last year China became the world’s top source of foreign students. International education has become a profitable industry both for schools seeking more foreign students, and for the agencies that help Chinese students gain acceptance to overseas schools, often by using shady tactics. While some advocate bilateral study abroad programs as a means to enhance strategic international relationships, others have characterized them as “ticking time bombs” that, due to cultural differences, could lead to crises. Indeed, cultural differences were cited by Li Yang’s lawyers in his defense, who noted that carrying large sums of cash is common in China. While covering the Li case (and other similar cases), the Global Times talked to lawyers and education professionals about playing the “cultural difference” card when caught breaking the rules:

However, there are factors that make bribery a more attractive choice in China. According to the criminal law, bribe-taking has a lower threshold before it constitutes a crime and a tougher punishment than bribery, which makes the legal costs smaller. At the same time, those found guilty of bribery can have their penalties reduced by providing evidence to law enforcers.

“On the other hand, those who offer bribes are often considered the weak party compared with the more powerful bribe-takers, and the public likes to see corrupt officials being punished – this eventually formed an attitude in society where using money or gifts in exchange for interests is not ‘bribery’ or crime, but a ‘favor,’” Guo Rui, a Beijing-based attorney, told the Global Times.

[...]There are many, however, who think this is no excuse. “Cultural difference is not a fig leaf of ignorance of the law or an excuse to evade responsibility,” said Xue Yong, assistant professor at Suffolk University in Boston, in his Sina column.

Last year, when a Chinese student studying in the U.S. was accused of sexual assault, his parents flew to the U.S. and allegedly attempted to bribe the accuser. In that case, witness tampering charges against the parents were dropped due to “cultural differences”.

For more on profits and problems in overseas educational programs, read director of Peking University High School’s international division Jiang Xueqin’s posts for The Diplomat, or see The Chronicle of Higher Education’s coverage of China. Also see prior CDT coverage of overseas Chinese students.

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During the course of that broader probe, the Justice Department approached News Corp.’s outside counsel in early 2012 and said it had received information from a person it described as a whistleblower who claimed one or more Journal employees had provided gifts to Chinese government officials in exchange for information, according to people familiar with the case.

[…] According to U.S. and corporate officials, News Corp. has told the Justice Department that some company officials suspect the informant was an agent of the Chinese government, seeking to disrupt and possibly retaliate against the Journal for its reporting on China’s leadership. The company officials came to that view after finding no evidence of the alleged bribery and because of the timing and nature of the accusations, company officials say. It isn’t clear what, if any, evidence the company officials have for that claim, which reporters for this article couldn’t independently verify.

[…] The Chinese bribery allegations against the Journal arose around the time that U.S. and Dow Jones officials believed Chinese hackers were targeting Dow Jones’s computer systems, according to people familiar with the matter. That is one reason company officials say they suspected the informant’s actions were part of a broader attack on the paper.

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Consider the case of Huang Yubiao, a Chinese real estate millionaire with a charitable streak. He was seen on local television promising poverty-stricken villagers, “I’ll give you whatever you need.”

But his failed attempt to buy a seat on the Hunan Province People’s Congress turned him into a whistle-blower. Online, he went public, admitting that he’d given out approximately $50,000 worth of bribes to about 320 members of the Shaoyang City People’s Congress in his bid to become a provincial delegate.

“Everyone was doing it,” he told NPR in a telephone interview. “My bribes were the lowest, so I wasn’t elected. They asked me to add money, but I didn’t. They told me I couldn’t be elected as I only paid $160 a head. It needed to be higher, maybe even triple that.”

[...]“Everything’s for sale,” says historian Zhang Lifan, noting that China has a 2,000-year history of buying and selling posts in the bureaucracy. “Some people don’t even use cash. I know that people who want to be legislators can just give an antique or a voucher to whoever is in charge, or even help their family members to go overseas to study. There are all kinds of transactions.”

Click through to read the full report and listen to the broadcast.

Also see prior CDT coverage of corruption and the newly appointed CCP administration’s plan to eradicate it.

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As part of Gu’s strategy, dozens of Yage staffers spent the workday surfing the Internet in search of negative news, comments and postings about government officials. Any official whose reputation seemed to be threatened would be contacted and offered Yage’s services as soon as negative information surfaced online.

High season for Yage’s business with local government clients was usually just before the National People’s Congress and China People’s Political Consultative Conference held every March in Beijing. It’s around conference time that officials typically come under attack from whistleblowers. It’s also when these officials are often willing to pay a premium to see negative publicity vanish.

[…] Arrested with Gu was Hu Chunyu, the financial news channel chief at Qianlong, a website tied to state-run media including the Beijing Daily newspaper, the Beijing Radio Station and Beijing TV. The site is managed by the Propaganda Department at the Beijing Municipality’s Communist Party Committee.

A few years after its founding in 2000, Qianlong started outsourcing part of its news production to public relations companies. In 2009, Yage won a more than 100,000 yuan-a-year contract to supply business channel content. Yage also won the right to post and delete articles on that web page.

[…] “We think Qianlong is shameless,” [a] source said. “But you really can’t cross it. It’s still one of the Beijing government’s official propaganda portals.”

Four Baidu employees were fired in July last year for carrying out paid deletions, and three of the four were subsequently arrested. At the time, Marbridge Consulting’s Mark Natkin told The Wall Street Journal that the problem was far more widespread: “There’s no major Chinese Internet company that has been able to completely avoid this sort of thing. It’s just very difficult to police everybody all the time.”

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Some who are involved in Hollywood’s entry into China are privately expressing hope that the Justice Department inquiry will be resolved before they run out of time on what one of them last week called a “ticking clock,” as Chinese consumers outgrow their receptivity to Hollywood fare.

The squeeze started last year when they began to spend more money on some homegrown films than on the American blockbusters.

But Michael W. Emmick, who was formerly a prosecutor with the Justice Department, and now focuses on the corrupt practices cases, among other things, in his private law practice, said a resolution could be a long time coming.

“This is still early in the game,” he said.

While Mr. Emmick is not representing clients in the investigation, and said he had no direct knowledge of it, he said that regulators sometimes use such industrywide inquiries as a “cost effective” way of putting an entire business sector — like the pharmaceuticals industry or the portion of the financial industry dealing in sovereign debt — on notice.

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Qu Jianguo in court on Friday. (Yangcheng Evening News)

The following examples of censorship instructions, issued to the media and/or Internet companies by various central (and sometimes local) government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to those instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.” CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

Guangdong Propaganda Department: Regarding the case against former Guangfa Bank Zhuhai branch director Qu Jianguo, all media must follow the requests from our department meeting. Produce only straightforward reports, and do not play up the issue. (December 14, 2012)

广东省委宣传部：对广发银行珠海分行原行长屈建国一案，各媒体要按照我部有关会议要求，只作简单报道，不炒作。

On Friday, the Zhuhai People’s Court found Qu guilty of corruption and bribery, sentencing him to the death penalty with a two-year suspension [zh].

Central Propaganda Department: Except for Xinhua wire copy, all media are without exception not to voluntarily investigate, report, or comment on issues related to Chonqing’s beat black campaign, especially as it involved Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun. (December 14, 2012)

中宣部：对重庆打黑相关问题特别是涉薄熙来、王立军案件的报道，除采用新华社通稿外，各级媒体一律不自行采访报道评论。

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, bribery, censorship, Chongqing, corruption, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, justice, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, official corruption, propaganda, Qu Jianguo, Wang Lijun
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China’s departing president, Hu Jintao, entered the summer in an apparently strong position after the disgrace of Bo Xilai, previously a rising member of a rival political network who was brought down when his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman. But Mr. Hu suffered a debilitating reversal of his own when party elders — led by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin — confronted him with allegations that Ling Jihua, his closest protégé and political fixer, had engineered the cover-up of his son’s death.

According to current and former officials, party elites, and others, the exposure helped tip the balance of difficult negotiations, hastening Mr. Hu’s decline; spurring the ascent of China’s new leader, Xi Jinping; and playing into the hands of Mr. Jiang, whose associates dominate the new seven-man leadership at the expense of candidates from Mr. Hu’s clique.

The case also shows how the profligate lifestyles of leaders’ relatives and friends can weigh heavily in backstage power tussles, especially as party skulduggery plays out under the intensifying glare of media.

Beyond the police and government officials reportedly enlisted by Ling Jihua to suppress details about his son’s death, The South China Morning Post also reported last month that the government had questioned the head of China’s biggest oil and gas producer about alleged hush payments made to the families of the two female passengers injured in the crash.

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Post tags: bribery, corruption, cover-up, Ferrari, Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin, Ling Jihua
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Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

Bo Xilai at the National People’s Congress in March.

Central Propaganda Department: Strictly adhere to the information issued by authoritative departments when reporting on officials suspected of involvement in graft or bribery, who have become degenerate, and related issues. Do not speculate on or exaggerate these issues. Do not investigate or report of your own accord. Do not quote from online sources. (December 1, 2012)

中宣部：有关官员涉嫌贪污受贿、生活腐化等相关问题的报道，严格按权威部门发布的信息刊播，不炒作不渲染，不自行采访报道，不转引网上信息。

This year, official corruption has been revealed at all levels of the Chinese government, from Watch Brother to Bo Xilai. Social media gives ordinary people a platform to publicize, critique, and lampoon officials. While the censors cannot pin down every weibo, they can keep a lid on official media.

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Nearly everything has a price, parents and educators say, from school admissions and placement in top classes to leadership positions in Communist youth groups. Even front-row seats near the blackboard or a post as class monitor are up for sale.

Zhao Hua, a migrant from Hebei Province who owns a small electronics business here, said she was forced to deposit $4,800 into a bank account to enroll her daughter in a Beijing elementary school. At the bank, she said, she was stunned to encounter officials from the district education committee armed with a list of students and how much each family had to pay. Later, school officials made her sign a document saying the fee was a voluntary “donation.”

“Of course I knew it was illegal,” she said. “But if you don’t pay, your child will go nowhere.”

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Post tags: bribery, corruption, education
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They said the probe into China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) chairman Jiang Jiemin focused on a large sum of money – several tens of millions of yuan – that was transferred from CNPC to the families of two women injured in the single-vehicle accident.

The episode raises doubts about corporate governance practices at CNPC, the giant state-owned energy company. Sources said the party’s top disciplinary officials were shocked by the ease with which such a large sum of money could be transferred out of a giant state firm without any accountability or proper documentation.

It also raises questions about the oversight capability of government regulators including the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, led by Wang Yong. At a group discussion at the party’s 18th congress last week among delegates from central government-administered companies and agencies, Jiang sat next to Wang in the front row.

Sources said Jiang had been trying to help Ling [Jihua], then head of the powerful General Office of the party’s Central Committee, pay compensation to the families of the other victims and prevent details of the car crash from leaking out to the public.

The crash occurred in March and attracted a considerable amount of attention in Chinese social media, though an official report from the Global Times did not mention the name of the driver. Key details did not emerge until September, when Ling Jihua was removed from his post atop the General Office of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. The Wall Street Journal reported on the government’s response to the crash last month, calling out the quiet way in which officials suppressed information about the incident and spared Ling Jihua public embarrassment over his son’s lifestyle and his family’s wealth.

The involvement of CNPC and any payments made to the victims’ families, however, is new information. Sources also told the South China Morning Post that the investigation into Jiang may partly explain his disappearance from public view from late July onwards, which CNPC downplayed in a September statement. From The Financial Times:

Mao Zefeng, a PetroChina spokesman, told the Financial Times that Mr Jiang “presides over PetroChina and CNPC as usual”.

Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said Mr Jiang was ill, having been admitted to hospital in July, and was being treated.

However, citing CNPC, the agency added that he did not suffer from “cancer or any other serious illness”.

The Daily Mail also published several photos from the crash scene which had appeared on Chinese social media.

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Post tags: bribery, CCP, China National Petroleum Corp, corruption, Jiang Jiemin, Ling Jihua, social media
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Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said in a statement Monday that Lt. Col. Chang Chih-hsin was suspected of “spying for officials at the Communist Party in China” and “bribing other officers in the navy for illegal gains” during his tenure, which ended in May, at the Naval Meteorological & Oceanographic Office. The office provides mapping data for the military.

Authorities arrested Lt. Col. Chang after “gathering evidence of Chang’s illegal behavior” following a report the ministry received in March, the statement said, but added “there was no leakage of confidential information and [the behavior] didn’t involve any officials currently serving in the navy.” It didn’t elaborate further.

The ministry didn’t make Mr. Chang available to comment, and said he will be tried by a military court, but the date hasn’t been set. The ministry said the two others arrested were also retired military officials but declined to identify them.

The Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council denied any knowledge of the spy case to the Global Times, and its spokesman declined to comment. The Taiwan-based China Post has more on the case:

According to Luo, the case came to light after the 45-year-old Chang was accused of attempting to collect information for the Beijing government from military personnel.

The MND’s anti-espionage system received tips on Chang’s alleged misconduct as early as this March.

The ministry later turned the case over to prosecutors for further investigation on the alleged spying attempt. Initial probes showed no confidential military intelligence was leaked to Beijing via Chang, he said.

Chang, who filed for retirement this May, was reportedly recruited by a Chinese intelligence agency before his discharge from the Naval office that is responsible for mapping the maritime areas surrounded Taiwan.

In 2011, Taiwanese Military High Court sentenced General Lo-Hsein Che to life in prison after he admitted to selling military secrets to China since 2004.

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In his brief statement, posted Saturday evening on Tumblr, the younger Bo wrote: “Personally, it is hard for me to believe the allegations that were announced against my father, because they contradict everything I have come to know about him throughout my life. Although the policies my father enacted are open to debate, the father I know is upright in his beliefs and devoted to duty.”

The statement continued: “He has always taught me to be my own person and to have concern for causes greater than ourselves. I have tried to follow his advice. At this point, I expect the legal process to follow its normal course, and I will await the result.”

Mr. Bo confirmed in an e-mail that the statement was authentic, but declined to comment further.

News of Bo’s expulsion emerged several days after former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun received a 15-year prison sentence, and alongside an announcement that the much-anticipated 18th Party Congress, where the revamped Politburo Standing Committee lineup will be announced as China commences a once-in-a-decade leadership transition, will open on November 8th. The case against Bo could still progress before the congress, writes Reuters’ Christopher Buckley, and he “will almost certainly be jailed”.

Two sources in Chongqing told The Telegraph’s Malcolm Moore that different powers in the party ” were fighting each other” over how to handle Bo’s case, but ultimately “decided to get rid of him thoroughly” to blunt the influence of those that still support him. The charges ensure that Bo will not go quietly, writes The Economist’s Gady Epstein, and Oxford University’s Rana Mitter tells NPR’s Louisa Lim that the Party must navigate a number of dangerous questions raised by his offenses:

“How is it possible for someone like that, first of all, to get so far in the party –- within sniffing distance of Politburo standing committee, the very top team in Chinese politics — and what does it say about his connections at a very high level in Chinese politics?” he says.

Mitter says the government will be hard pressed to convey their side of this story to a skeptical public.

“The only way I can see that the Chinese Communist Party can spin this in a way that will serve their interests is to basically make this a morality tale. This is one rogue character, a bad apple, and the party system works because it eventually it caught up with him, even though it was very late in the day,” Mitter added.

The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos adds that the scope of the allegations against Bo may turn his case into a Pandora’s box as the Party “hangs its dirty laundry out in public”:

How much of Bo’s political history will eventually be open to discussion? One of the biggest surprises in these charges is that the Party didn’t confine its attention to the dramatic events of this spring and declare victory. On the contrary, they harkened back to virtually his full political career, accusing of him impropriety as early as his posts in Manchuria, where he was first stationed in 1984. That’s a quarter century of opportunities, and for years, Bo was said to have been involved in corruption. But nobody ever thought he would be prosecuted for it, not any more than they think that the other members of the Politburo who are routinely subject to rumors about corruption will ever see a day in court.

And therein lies the powder keg at the center of the Bo Xilai case. In seeking to purge him with a finality that can restore short-term political balance, the Party may have raised a more dangerous spectre: the full-scale accounting of a life in government. The results could reveal a culture of self-dealing and personal enrichment that exceeds even the Chinese public’s considerable tolerance of official abuse. It may start a conversation that will be hard to end.

For The Guardian, Isabel Hilton writes that “there was no perfect solution to the Bo Xilai problem”, but the Party’s choice comes with a number of risks:

But such a scandalous trial of a politburo member – on charges of corruption, abuse of power, womanising, and bearing responsibility for the murder of the British businessman Neil Heywood, as detailed by the official news agency Xinhua on Friday – also has its risks. Few in China will believe that similar charges could not be levelled against hundreds of party officials, from the most senior leaders, whose families have grown immensely rich from their connections with high office, to the most junior local power holder, who mimics his superiors by extorting money from defenceless peasants.

Bo Xilai’s crime was not that he stole or abused his power: if those were really crimes in China, few would escape censure. His real crime was the manner in which he pursued his political ambition: he tried to be bigger than the party, campaigning publicly for a coveted seat in the standing committee of the politburo, China’s tiny supreme body. And the party, like the mafia, does not take kindly to any member, however powerful, who forgets that the party is bigger than any individual.

This will be the biggest political show trial since the Gang of Four – Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing, and her three close allies – in 1981 when they lost the power struggle that followed Mao’s death in 1976. Jiang Qing received a suspended death sentence and died in prison.

With the purge on, Tea Leaf Nation’s Liz Carter and David Wertime took stock of the comments emerging on microblogging site Sina Weibo, where a search on Saturday for posts mentioning “Bo Xilai” garnered nearly 7 million results (now that searches for his name are no longer blocked). One reporter dissected Xinhua’s press release and concluded via weibo that Bo’s crimes “sound unimaginable”, calling the release “the blueprint for future charges” and speculating that Bo will probably receive life in prison or a suspended death sentence. A number of netizens also drew parallels between Bo’s case and the Cultural Revolution:

One post by liberal columnist Zhao Chu @赵楚 on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter drew recent attention. In his post, Zhao urged netizens to look at the complete picture of Bo’s rise to power, attributing three factors to his earlier success: “Bo Xilai has totally failed, but people should reflect. Bo didn’t just fall out of the sky. He climbed up the ladder step by step, his wife, family members, and lackeys did so many bad things for more than 10 years, this is not happenstance. A political environment that has never fully reckoned with the Cultural Revolution or Chinese history, a law that lacks a strong supervisory voice [and faces] strong pressure from dictatorial methods; [and a central government that has lost its authority and gives local government too much power]; this overall situation has provided the fertile soil giving rise to Bo.” [1]

A number of users responded in agreement, calling for a “reckoning” or “clearing” of the “poisonous legacy” of the Cultural Revolution. @无码的视界 alluded to the sensational trial of the Gang of Four which signaled the end to China’s Cultural Revolution, remarking, “I hope this is the last of court politics. If the system is not changed, the Cultural Revolution could return at any time.”

Other netizens observed rhetorical similarities between the charges against Bo and those commonly leveled during the Cultural Revolution. @小费同学Fernando pointed out that “the wording is the same as during the Cultural Revolution…the techniques are exactly the same.”

Of all the charges leveled against Bo on Friday, perhaps none has drawn more focus than the allegation that he “maintained improper sexual relations with a number of women” while in power. The South China Morning Post reports that observers weren’t surprised, as “sex and power often go hand-in-hand in cases of mainland corruption,” and Foreign Policy’s Isaac Stone Fish runs down a list of other fallen officials whose private lives were exposed alongside their official transgressions. The dossier against Bo reportedly contains a list of his alleged mistresses, including CCTV anchors and other film and television stars, but the lawyer for Zhang Ziyi told The Telegraph that no evidence linked her to the fallen party boss.

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Investigations found that Bo seriously violated the Party disciplines while heading the city of Dalian, Liaoning Province and the Ministry of Commerce as well as serving as a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau and party chief of Chongqing Municipality.

Bo abused his power, made severe mistakes and bore major responsibility in the Wang Lijun incident and the intentional homicide case of Bogu Kailai.

He took advantage of his office to seek profits for others and received huge bribes personally and through his family.

[…] Bo had affairs and maintained improper sexual relationships with a number of women.

He was also found to have violated organizational and personnel disciplines and made wrong decisions in personnel promotion, which led to serious consequences.

The investigation also found clues to his suspected involvement in other crimes.

The trial of Bo’s former sidekick Wang Lijun triggered renewed speculation that Bo would face criminal charges last week. A lengthy Xinhua account of the trial described a dramatic encounter between the two men and implied that Bo had failed to act on knowledge of his wife’s crime; furthermore, Wang was said to have earned a reduced sentence by cooperating with other investigations, of which Bo seemed a likely target. Bo’s fate is not unprecedented, as Michael Forsythe wrote at Bloomberg News:

Bo’s is not the first case of a Politburo member to be referred to the criminal justice system. Former Beijing party chief Chen Xitong was imprisoned for corruption following his 1995 Politburo expulsion and former Shanghai party boss Chen Liangyu was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2008 for taking bribes after he was expelled from the Politburo in 2006.

Chen was replaced in Shanghai by Xi Jinping, the current vice president, who is forecast to take over the top party and government positions within the next year.

The news about Bo was released on Friday evening at the start of the week-long National Day holiday, and announced with a cursory recitation of Xinhua’s report in the number two slot on the Xinwen Lianbo evening news. Top billing went to the 18th Party Congress start date: at The Wall Street Journal, Jeremy Page commented on the timing of these two major stories

The twin announcements from the state-run Xinhua news agency indicate that party chieftains have likely reached broad agreement on who should run the country for the next 10 years. Internal differences over how to handle the Bo case are widely believed to have delayed an announcement on when the leadership change would begin. […]

[…] By unveiling the accusations against Mr. Bo at the same time as the announcement of the beginning of the leadership change, party officials appear to be trying to send a signal to the country regarding corruption, the abuse of power and the decadent lifestyles of many within the party elite—issues that have inflamed national public opinion. It also serves as an acknowledgment that the issues have become a direct challenge to the party’s hold on power.

For background on the case, see past coverage on CDT, and also The Bo Xilai Scandal: Power, Death, and Politics in China, a $1.33 Kindle ebook by The Financial Times’ Jamil Anderlini.

Updated at 06:01 PST: China Real Time’s Josh Chin has rounded up some initial reactions from Sina Weibo, including the following:

Liu Chun, vice president of web portal Sohu: How is that all I care about is the last line [about the women], that all I can think of is gossip? Could it be that there are some people I know who are a part of it?

Lei Yi, historian: What we should be thinking about is how, at every step along the road, he was violating discipline. How did he climb so high? We should consider problems with the system.

Sisi2008’s World: Before every leadership change, some big official takes a fall. I don’t know what this says.

DarrenLIU (censored): Inappropriate sexual relations with multiple women. Damn. That’s not the sexual problem most Chinese officials have.

On Twitter, meanwhile, Liu Xiaoyuan weighed in (via TIME’s Austin Ramzy):

薄熙来对王立军要承担用人失察责任，那么，谁来对薄熙来承担用人失察之责？

— 刘晓原律师 (@liu_xiaoyuan) September 28, 2012

Lawyer @liu_xiaoyuan tweets: Bo Xilai failed in his oversight of Wang Lijun, so who failed to oversee Bo?

— Austin Ramzy (@austinramzy) September 28, 2012

At the Associated Press, Christopher Bodeen presented a range of views on the political motives behind Bo’s toppling:

“They want to drive a stake through the heart of his political career, and make it absolutely impossible, not only for him to reappear but for anyone else who has that idea of trying to create that sort of personalized, political, charismatic leadership in some part of China which may challenge the leadership,” Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese history and politics at Oxford University.

[…] Bo’s supporters called the Politburo decision a political tactic. “I have doubts on any criminal wrongdoings of Bo Xilai. I need to see the evidence,” said Han Deqiang, an economics professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a leading voice in what Chinese call the new left. “I think this is a political battle turned into a criminal one.”

[…] “This announcement is long overdue. This means there is some progress in the rule of law in China. There is more transparency,” said Li Zhuang, a formidable defense lawyer who found himself jailed in Chongqing after he accused police of extracting his client’s confession by torture. “Of course it is also political. In China, politics and law often go hand in hand.”

Updated at 14:36 PST: Edward Wong at the New York Times weighs in with more about the accusations against Bo:

The most serious accusations against Mr. Bo appeared to be those relating to bribes and the Heywood murder, though no details were given. Ms. Gu was also accused of taking bribes. One Chongqing resident with government ties said officials had learned of the decision in afternoon meetings in that city; at one session, the attendees were told that Mr. Bo had taken several million renminbi in bribes and Ms. Gu had taken more than 20 million renminbi, or $3 million.

The Xinhua report also said Mr. Bo had violated party discipline for many years, starting with posts in the city of Dalian and Liaoning Province, continuing during a stint as commerce minister and extending through his four-year governance of Chongqing, where he was known for a so-called anticorruption crackdown and a revival of Mao-era patriotic songs through public singalongs.

The report also said investigators found Mr. Bo “had or maintained inappropriate sexual relationships with a number of women,” but did not give names. That line did not appear to be referring to potential criminal charges, but instead read like an attempt to soil the reputation of Mr. Bo in the eyes of ordinary Chinese. Officials in Chongqing were also told of Mr. Bo’s improper relationships, as well as those of Wang Lijun, a former police chief, and Wu Wenkang, another Bo associate in the government, said the resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of official reprisal.

The public airing of such serious and sordid charges showed that party leaders had reached agreement that Mr. Bo had to be dealt with severely.

Meanwhile on Sina Weibo, netizens seemed especially taken with one particular accusation:

“a number of women” as in “Bo had or maintained improper sexual relationships with a number of women” trending now @ #2 in 时事 on Weibo

— Liz (@withoutdoing) September 28, 2012

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, abuse of power, Bo Xilai, bribery, Chen Liangyu, Chen Xitong, Chongqing, corruption, dalian, gu kailai, Li Zhuang, Liaoning, Liu Xiaoyuan, mistresses, Neil Heywood, new left, Wang Lijun, Xi Jinping, Xinhua
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Wang, the former vice mayor and police chief of southwest China’s Chongqing municipality, was charged with several crimes and received a combined punishment for all offenses, according to a verdict announced by the Chengdu City Intermediate People’s Court in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.

Wang received seven years in prison for the charge of bending the law for selfish ends, two years in prison and deprivation of his political rights for one year for the charge of defection, two years in prison for the power abuse charge and nine years in prison for the charge of bribe-taking. He received a combined punishment of 15 years in prison and deprivation of his political rights for one year.

Wang stated to the court that he would not appeal the sentence.

Defence lawyer Wang Yuncai suggested to The Telegraph’s Malcolm Moore, however, that there is some possibility of Wang’s early release on medical grounds:

“I cannot say how many years he will serve,” she said. “If he gets the chance to go to a hospital for a serious illness then there is no minimum sentence that he will have to serve.” She declined to comment further.

Mr Wang appeared in rosy health at his trial, and clips of him giving evidence, dressed not in the standard orange boiler suit of Chinese prisoners but in a crisp white shirt, were broadcast on national television.

However, one diplomatic source suggested in the run-up to his trial that he was in poor physical and mental health.

A psychiatrist who knew Mr Wang in Chongqing also said he exhibited “clear signs of mental disturbance” in the days before he fled to the US consulate in February.

Wang’s sentence is the latest omen of the fate of his former superior, Bo Xilai, for whom its relative lightness—Wang could have faced the death penalty—may be a bad sign. A nine-page Xinhua account of Wang’s trial explained last week that the defence had sought a reduced sentence in recognition of his “meritorious reporting” of others’ crimes. The account also implied that Bo had been aware of his wife Gu Kailai’s killing of Neil Heywood for over a week before Wang finally brought it to light, suggesting his complicity in the cover-up for which Wang, Gu and several others have already been prosecuted.

Caixin editor-in-chief Hu Shuli alluded to the possibility of a Bo trial in an editorial on Friday:

The magnitude of power Wang had at his disposal during the famous Chongqing “anti-mafia” campaign and the cover-up of Heywood’s death was a public outrage. But even more egregious was just how quickly local political and police forces moved to smother Wang when he fell out of favor with the Bo family.

The rule of law is written in China’s constitution, and states that consensus between the ruling party and the public is a goal. The trials of Bogu and Wang, and the shards of truth that have since emerged, were an important exercise in the rule of law.

According to the prosecutor, Wang “revealed important information of others’ legal activities” and “played an important role in the investigation of relevant cases.” Perhaps this represents only a prelude to another trial, which can serve as the final installment to the saga and open the door to legal reforms. While nothing has been a foregone conclusion with regard to the handling of the cases, it is clear that the establishment of a judicial system that can make horizontal and vertical checks on power must be implemented with greater urgency than ever.

In the wake of Wang’s trial and sentencing, the South China Morning Post examined how Bo’s criminal prosecution might come about:

So far, Bo has only been accused of breaching internal party discipline. But experts say the public citing of Bo’s angry rebuke of Wang has raised the likelihood that he too will face criminal charges, probably after the party congress.

Before then, party leaders could first expel Bo from the party and hand him over for criminal investigation.

“The prosecutors said Wang exposed leaders to major crimes by others,” said Li Zhuang, a Beijing lawyer who opposed Wang and Bo for mounting a sweeping crackdown on foes in the name of fighting organised crime. Bo was the likely target of Wang’s allegations, said Li.

“That was a slap around the ears that changed history,” Li said of Bo’s alleged actions against Wang. “Otherwise, Bo might still be in power and hoping to rise higher.”

Li himself faced charges, later dropped, of “fabricating evidence” in defence of a client during one of Bo’s signature anti-Mafia campaigns. AFP’s account today of Wang’s rise and fall describes how he personally “confronted Li at the airport, in front of dozens of police cars, their lights flashing, greeting him with the words ‘Li Zhuang, we meet again!’ before taking him into custody, the lawyer said.”

Another profile by The Guardian’s Tania Branigan also describes Wang’s expansive flamboyant side, as well as his extreme dedication to police work:

He claimed to have wrestled a suicide bomber to the floor just seconds before the man detonated his explosives. He boasted about love letters from awed young women and that his classmates at police academy had nicknamed him “tiger general”. But for all the self-mythologising, he succeeded in winning popular acclaim.

[…] Now 52, Wang, grew up in north-eastern Liaoning province and served in the army – where he met his wife – before joining the police, initially as a traffic policeman.

His devotion to duty was such that he chose to holiday in Beijing, where – rather than sightseeing – he spent hours standing at major road junctions, watching the traffic officers work.

Once back home, he used the photographs he had taken to practise his gestures and hand signals.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: abuse of power, Bo Xilai, bribery, Chengdu, Chongqing, corruption, defection, gu kailai, Hu Shuli, legal system, Li Zhuang, Neil Heywood, trials, Wang Lijun
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On July 9, 2008, Rao Wenwei, the young secretary of the Politics and Law Committee in Wushan County, Chongqing was sequestered in a hotel by local authorities. He was detained a week later, then formally arrested on August 15 under suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power and the overthrow of the socialist system and conspiring to overthrow the authority of the people’s democracy” [zh]. Convicted in November of that year for bribery and inciting subversion, Rao is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence and faces an additional three years without political rights.

Earlier in 2008, Bo Xilai, the infamous former party secretary of Chongqing, ordered an investigation into a series of 52 essays published overseas decrying the Chinese Communist Party and Bo in particular. Authorship was traced to Rao. Writing under the pen name Mao.2W (毛.2W), Rao’s essays made their way onto the website of the Epoch Times under the title “A Short Critique of the Communist Party—‘Reactionary’ Notes from a Chinese Man” (短评共产党——一个中国男人的“反动”手记). Zhang Qi, an old colleague of Rao’s, told Radio Free Asia that Bo gave instructions to the investigative team to “deal harshly” with the author [zh] and to charge him with bribery, claiming “officials of your rank can’t say you haven’t accepted hundreds of thousands [of RMB].”

Rao’s case remained hidden until this summer, when Bo’s removal from office and detention brought to light a multitude of claims of wrongful arrest and conviction in this southwestern metropolis. Bo’s anti-corruption campaign ran on the “presumption of guilt,” Zou Zhiyong, whose father-in-law is currently serving a life sentence, told Reuters. Zou, Rao’s family and many others intend to seek redress for these convictions after the leadership transition at this October’s National People’s Congress.

Rao is recognized by the Independent Chinese PEN Center as a writer in prison (he is number 140 on their list). “We will offer assistance to his family in finding a lawyer and will support his appeal,” says Assistant Secretary-General Zhang Yu [zh]. The organization will raise his case at the PEN International Congress, which begins September 9.

CDT’s Little Bluegill has translated essays 13 through 15. The entire series is available from CDT Chinese: read essays 1-9, 10-20, 21-31, 32-44, 45-52 and epilogue.

Essay 13

What should the Communist Party give back to the people?

The Party furthers its own interests in the name of the nation and demands a permanent, invincible position. Yet this in itself violates the laws of history and the very theories held by the Communist Party’s forefathers!

Just how many of the rights and interests of those living in China today have been confiscated by the Party? Just who is the greatest usurper of the state, the greatest bearer of calamity and misfortune to the Chinese people? The most frightening aspect of the Party is the “big stick” it so tightly grasps in its hands—the military. This is the only “talisman” that the Party has, over the past few decades, so willingly unleashed on the people of China. To take back their rights, the people must grab this weapon out of the Party’s hands. In actuality, this “talisman” belongs to the people and to the nation; it should not belong to this faction or that party. The military should only serve the interests of the nation, protecting the country as its own family. It should never aim its guns at its own people!

The true portrait of the Communist Party of the last few decades is one of flip-flopping and destruction of order. The system is seemingly devoid of moral standards. The “boss” always calls the shots. There is a system [the law] but it’s never used. The Party’s shamelessness knows no bounds!

There are three rights that the Party has taken away from the people and must return:

Number One: Freedom of speech and freedom of religion, without the constitutional regulation which enables the restrictions on freedom of the press, assembly and belief imposed by various government departments. For example, if I wanted to establish a “People’s Free System Party,” would that be possible?

Number Two: The right to elect one’s own leaders, instead of leaders being appointed by the Communist Party.

Number Three: The military belongs to the nation and to the people. Its duties are simply to remain loyal to and fight for the interests of the nation. The military must never participate in any domestic conflict between political factions or in politics of any kind. It must never aim its guns at its own people. With the exception of disaster relief, the military must never participate in national or local affairs! The military’s deployment should be controlled by an organization of democratically elected officials. Significant military decisions should be made by the nation as a whole.

The Communist Party must also remove the language it has so shamelessly written into the “constitution” that demands generation after generation support the leadership of the Communist Party (the so-called Four Cardinal Principles). Restore the purity of the constitution! The constitution is the highest law of the land. The people have no responsibility to uphold the leadership of the “Communist Party.” To take a step back: if you do well at leading the country, then the people will naturally support you. But if you’re no good, the people have the right to cast you out. Why must you be enshrined in the “constitution?” Is it because you believe that if you are squeezed in there, you will be able to exist forever?

There are two important “stolen” powers that the Party clenches in its fist: the so-called right to cadre appointment and the so-called right to absolute control of the military. The Party clearly understands that without these two powers, it is finished. Yet it must relinquish them.

If the Party is just, then it must relinquish these powers which do not belong to them!

If the Party strives for permanence, then it must relinquish these powers which do not belong to them!

If the Party truly wants to realize its own goals, then it must relinquish these powers which do not belong to them!

But will they? What is the answer?

The Communist Party continues with its lies. From its objectives to “letting some people people get rich first,” from the “Three Represents” to harmonious society and the Scientific Development Concept; which of these is based on serving the people? Which of these ideas has served or is capable of serving the people? In which does the Communist Party even believe? Let us take, for example, the ideology of “wholehearted and enthusiastic” [service to the people]. This in itself is biggest lie in the world. Is it possible for one person or one party to wholeheartedly, completely and unselfishly serve the interests of another? If one does not serve his own interests, how can he proceed to serve others? By the deceitful nature of this phrase, we can recognize just how horribly we have been swindled, we can finally understand what it means to say one thing and do another! Take, also, the example of the policy by which only “some people get rich first.” Why should these privileged people be allowed to get rich first? Why should they enjoy more “privilege” than others? Will those who get rich first actively initiate the trickle-down of wealth? If not, how else is this supposed to work? In reality, the disparity in wealth between different people and locales confirms the deceit of this policy.

Take, also, the example of the “Three Represents” [Jiang Zemin’s theory that the Party represents China economically, culturally and politically]. If the Communist Party is a political entity, can it then represent economic production? It just doesn’t make sense. But, fine, let us ignore for a moment that it doesn’t make sense. What happens if the Party is unable to represent the country’s economic production? Does it really represent it now? The answer is no. One can see that the “Three Represents” is craven nonsense!

The largest disaster caused by the decades of Communist Party rule is the people’s total loss of their natural harmonious way of thinking. Instead, the people now unquestionably pursue their own selfish interests. The terrible truth is that they lack a sense of law and order. They pursue their own interests to the detriment of others; they lie; they lack morals and principles. They place no trust in each other. Instead, greed and jealousy abound. As this vicious cycle continues, human conscience dies out, and as a result, the people will hurt themselves, destroying this ancient civilization!

The most destructive part of the decades of Communist Party rule has been the destruction of social institutions. The Party smashed them into oblivion, only to then smash those they put in their place. Those which, against the odds, were left untouched cannot be practiced either openly or in secret.* What prevents society from providing equal opportunity for everyone? Why is the legal system unjust? Why is development uneven? Why is this unfair, that unfair?

Why is it that the greatest skill of Communist Party officials is toadying and currying the favor of those in power? Because to live under the system of the Communist Party, you must do this. If you don’t, you will have no opportunity, you will not develop. But if you do, you inevitably will be without a conscience, without humanity, without dignity. Can you keep your integrity as you shamelessly flatter your superiors? As you falsely agree with this and agree with that, can you still retain your conscience? And yet, if you were to not flatter your superiors, would you garner the attention of the Party authorities? If you failed to endorse the Party, if you didn’t agree with the Party, would you still have any chance for advancement? This paradox defines the lives of Chinese people today. And it is a choice that must be made. If you do not make your choice, you will grow old in hardship! I dare say with absolute certainty that many Communist Party members lead split lives, and both of these lives are rife with hardship. They live between farce and reality, switching their conscience on and off at a moment’s notice.

Since this life is so painful, what else are you waiting for?

Can it be that life truly could not go on without the Party? That the country would fall into chaos?

No, no!

Let me make my choice. I choose to restore our nation to greatness through order and democracy!

Communist Party: Give me back my freedom and my democracy!

A Brief Critique of the Communist Party’s “Three Mosts” (Essay 14)

The most rotten institution of the Communist Party is the cadre system. In actuality, it’s a classic centralized system of concentrated money and power. It is the most rotten because the entirety of corruption and evil in China since the beginning of Communist Party rule all stems from the “cadre” system.

The Communist Party relies most on the institution of “propaganda.” In actuality, this institution does nothing but work to fool the public, numb the masses and keep freedom under lock and key. This propaganda is the very reason why the people are so ignorant, apathetic and immoral. The Party deprives the people of their rights by propagating this culture of reliance.

The Communist Party’s most detestable institution is “Party leaders’ absolute control of the military.” In truth, this institution usurps the people’s rights through intimidation and repression. One uses the word “detestable” because it is the Party that controls which way the guns point. It does not matter whether you are a good person or an enemy of the state. Who would dare disobey “his” Party?

Establishing a “harmonious society” is of course a positive goal for governing the country. But if you wish to grow “harmony” on top of the “current system,” then you are wishing for the impossible. The flower of “harmony” cannot bloom on the tree of the Party’s evils!

I assert: Without changing the current system, China will never know harmony!

 

 

The Evil Nature of the Communist Party’s Cadre System (Essay 15)

The “management of cadres” is one of the fundamental principles of the Party. Former Organizational Department Head Zhang Quanjing has said, “If the Party did not manage its cadres, it would give up its right to lead.” The essence of this statement is that the Communist Party depends on its control over cadres to exercise its right to lead—and this is precisely where the evil lies. “Cadres” are actually “officials.” I never understood why the Party insists on calling them “cadres.” However, after much thought, I realized that this is just another deceitful invention of the Communist Party. In all, cadres probably number in the hundreds of thousands. But no matter how you look at it, the number of “official positions” shrinks as one moves up in the system. At the same time, the Party must rely on “offering posts” to maintain its right to lead and to realize its position of power. In that case, the party secretary and the Standing Committee represent the very top, and from there it goes down through the secretaries of each level of government. This system is unable to solve a fundamental problem: many want to move up, but only a few can. Because of this, those who wish to move up all work in their own self-interest, and those in higher positions all work to protect their seats. The authority to decide who moves up or down always remains one level higher than the last, straight up to the Central Politburo. Top officials will surely never relinquish their authority over the management of cadres, so a cadre then has no choice but to scheme his way up the ladder, making an utter mess in the process!

This system, in which all decisions are top-down, is necessarily profuse with evil. At the highest levels, the Party plays some “democratic” charades, but everyone knows that decisions over who is above whom will forever remain firmly in the grasp of the very few.

As a result, the numbers of officials and special interest groups continue to grow. Their selfish in-fighting intensifies. The evilest part of this system is that it takes a person’s humanity and turns it into boundless evil. There’s no need for me to list them one by one. Just tune in to any Party-sanctioned media outlet and ask yourself: which of these evil phenomena are not caused by the “cadre system”?!

* Rao refers to three epochs in China’s recent history. In the early communist period, intellectuals were rooted out and persecuted in the Anti-Rightist Campaign; the Great Leap Forward, intended to industrialize the country and institute collectivism, caused millions of people to starve to death. The country had a short reprieve from upheaval before the Cultural Revolution tore families apart and nearly destroyed tradition. Despite the openness of post-Mao China, many social institutions are still tightly controlled, from family size to religious belief. Back to essay.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: beat black, Bo Xilai, bribery, cadres, CCP, Chongqing, constitution, Epoch Times, essays, harmonious society, Jiang Zemin, leadership transition, military, official corruption, Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee, Politics and Law Committee, propaganda, Rao Wenwei, rule of law, Three Represents, Zhang Qi, Zhang Quanjing, Zou Zhiyong
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