In all this mysticism ordinary Chinese see little but corruption in drag. “Officials aren’t interested in helping the people when they practice feng shui,” said Duan Xiaowen, an anticorruption activist here in Hunan Province. “All they can think of is getting a higher position.”

[…] According to a 2007 report by the Chinese Academy of Governance, 52 percent of the nation’s county-level civil servants admitted to believing in divination, face reading, astrology or dream interpretation.

Cheng Ping, a professor at the academy who oversaw the survey of more than 900 officials, said that such beliefs were the result of millennia-old traditions melded with the pressures of careers in which promotions are earned through mastering the dark arts of factions and favors, rather than hard work. Not surprisingly, she said, many practitioners are often shamelessly crooked, since they feel little accountability to the public. “Find a corrupt official and he’ll probably be superstitious,” she said.

The placement of mirrors is one aspect of feng shui to which officials might be well advised to pay attention: apart from disrupting or redirecting the flow of qi, they can be used to hide cameras.

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Post tags: corrupt officials, feng shui, officials, superstition
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Eight suspects have been arrested and charged with using modified pornographic photos in an attempt to extort 4.5 million yuan (US$724,050) from government officials, corporate executives and managers, prosecutors in central China’s Hunan Province said yesterday.

Prosecutors in Shuangfeng County said the gang used PhotoShop computer software to modify the photos to make them appear as if the victims were in them, and sent them to their targets. They had received 255,000 yuan before they were captured by police.

The eight suspects, all natives of Shuangfeng, began using such photos to extort money in 2011. They mailed more than 210 letters containing fake pornographic photos in the past two years.

Prosecutors said more than 150 unsent letter were seized. The number and details of the victims were not disclosed.

More recent reports claim as many as 37 have so far been arrested in Shuangfeng county for trying to blackmail officials with doctored pornography. Global Times reports that this practice spreads far beyond Shuangfeng, describes local authorities’ attempts to dissuade such blackmail tactics by posting public slogans on billboards, and encourages officials across the country to follow suit:

“Let’s work together to launch a ‘people’s war’ against blackmailers using Photoshop on sex photos!” is a slogan that can be seen every 50 meters in Shuangfeng, a small county in Hunan Province where police this month arrested 10 people in a ring using fake sex photos to blackmail officials.

The billboards have replaced the “long live Chairman Mao” slogans that plastered cities across China back in the 1950s.

[...]Unfortunately, not all governments are as determined as Shuangfeng in the “people’s war” on fake sex photos, which is why blackmailers have become more brazen in recent years.

[...]If officials across China are serious about nipping the problem of fake sex photos in the bud, they should follow Shuangfeng’s lead and launch similar campaigns to crackdown on cyber blackmailers.

France 24 has more on similar blackmail attempts across the country and local campaigns to dissuade the practice, before noting that, in the wake of recent highly-publisized sex scandals, some are wondering if the public campaigns aren’t a means to guard against coming official impropriety:

Of course, in a country where the authorities themselves make frequent use of Photoshop to alter reality (see examples here and here), such cases are not limited to Shuangfeng. A recent one in eastern Zheijang province made international headlines when a man was arrested after allegedly attempting to blackmail more than 40 government officials with altered pornographic pictures. And in Xing’an County, in southwestern Guangxi province, the local Land and Resources Bureau took an unusual measure to deter troublemakers: they blurred photos of their officials on their website, reportedly to deter blackmailers.

Some online commentators have wondered if this new billboard campaign could have another, more subtle purpose: getting the public to think that all photos of officials involved in apparent sex scandals are fakes. Indeed, China has been rocked by a series of such scandals, ranging from orgies to sex tapes involving mistresses – no Photoshop involved.

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Post tags: blackmail, corrupt officials, extortion, Photoshop, sex scandals
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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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Post tags: bribery, corrupt officials, corruption
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China’s upscale restaurants and hotels are feeling the pain as the government pulls back on public funding for fine dining amid efforts to project an image of increasing official austerity.

Upwards of 60% of restaurants have faced cancellations since the austerity push began, according a report released on Thursday by the China Cuisine Association (in Chinese), which surveyed 100 restaurants and hotels across the country to determine the economic impact of the government’s belt tightening.

One five-star hotel in Beijing saw roughly 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) in reservations cancelled, according to the report. Catering businesses in the northeast city of Tianjin have seen business drop by 30% this year compared to the same period last year, the report added, though it didn’t specify a time frame for the period.

In another article about the ongoing crackdown on corruption, The Wall Street Journal cites a Xinhua report on an official who was suspended for failing to observe the ban on official banquets:

Officials have suspended Zhou Shaoqiang, the manager of state-owned Zhuhai Financial Investment Holdings Co., for holding a luxury banquet last month despite a government ban on lavish government-sponsored events, according to a report Tuesday from the official Xinhua News Agency.

Luxury brands have also long raked profits from the pockets of corrupt officials, and have also been a cause for public outrage – last September, Yang Dacai, aka “Watch Brother,” was removed from his official post after netizens lambasted him for wearing designer watches whose price tags far outweighed his salary. On his blog at The New Yorker, Evan Osnos reports on the gains that luxury brands have seen in China, and the declining returns that watchmakers have seen since the anti-corruption campaign began:

Global luxury sales and epic Chinese political corruption have become so inextricably intertwined over the last decade that the recent kerfuffles in Chinese politics—the investigations and convictions and pledges of propriety—have been nothing but trouble for the privileged few. That became clear last fall, when political disorder in Beijing made it difficult to know which faction would end up on top, and one luxury-brand representative told the Journal that sales were down because “no one knows who to bribe.”

Some of the heaviest hearts are in the luxury-watch business. No industry has enjoyed such a warm embrace in China as the one that packs such enormous monetary value into a small, easily exchanged physical object. And, sure enough, the luxury watch business enjoyed a banner year in 2011, growing forty per cent. But then China’s anti-corruption campaign began, and by September, Bo Xilai was in handcuffs, and watch exports to China suffered a devastating blow—down 27.5 per cent compared to a year earlier, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. China Daily quoted an industry consultant saying the anti-corruption drive “hurts the luxury watch business a lot.”

It’s not just watches. In 2009, the industry experts estimated that gifts to government officials made up nearly fifty per cent of all of China’s luxury sales.[...]

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Post tags: anti-corruption, chinese new year, corrupt officials, corruption, lunar new year, luxury brands, luxury goods, official conduct, Year of the Snake
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With his five cellphones constantly ringing, it is not easy these days to get the undivided attention of Zhu Ruifeng, a self-styled citizen journalist whose freelance campaign against graft has earned him pop-star acclaim and sent a chill through Chinese officialdom.

[…] A former migrant worker with a high school education, Mr. Zhu has become an overnight celebrity in China in the two months since he posted online secretly recorded video of an 18-year-old woman having sex with a memorably unattractive 57-year-old official from the southwestern municipality of Chongqing. The official lost his job. Mr. Zhu gained a million or so new microblog followers.

The takedown was just the opening act, Mr. Zhu says. He promises to release six more sex videos that he predicts will make a number of other men run for cover. “I’m fighting a war,” he said with characteristic bombast, his voice a near-shriek. “Even if they beat me to death, I won’t give up my sources or the videos.”

[…] Mr. Zhu, who began his Web site in 2006, largely relies on whistle-blowers to funnel damning evidence to him. Through the years, he said, he has exposed 100 officials, bringing down more than a third of them. He has been threatened and beaten; more than once, he says, he has been offered huge sums of money to delete an incriminating post from his site, which is called People’s Supervision.

Zhu’s “characteristic bombast” may seem excessive, but is at least in part a matter of self-defense: by courting attention from traditional and social media, he hopes to deter attempts to silence him. That he credits Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption speeches, the Chinese Constitution and his own love of country with inspiring his activities may confer some measure of additional protection.

Nevertheless, his crusade has cost him. He has chosen to end his marriage, he says, rather than see his wife, a P.L.A. officer, suffer retaliation from his adversaries. “To be honest,” he told The Times’ Jonah Kessel, “I would like to tend to the big family in sacrifice of the small family.”

Kessel has also posted outtakes from their conversation on Vimeo, including an extended account of a recent police visit to Zhu’s Beijing home. Chongqing authorities appear determined to contain the sex tape scandal by acquiring Zhu’s remaining videos, but as in the recent New York Times hacking attacks, identifying sources seems to be their primary goal. From Tom Lasseter at McClatchy:

Powerful interests were searching for his sources, he explained over lunch last Friday [January 25th]. Police detained one contact in the southwestern city of Chongqing, where the scandal had erupted, Zhu said. They traced a second source to Henan province, hundreds of miles away, and had questioned that person at least twice.

Two days after that conversation, the police showed up at Zhu’s home in Beijing. They banged on his door Sunday night and demanded that he come with them. He refused but reported to a police station Monday morning, where he was held for more than seven hours. Police officers from Chongqing pressed him to hand over five sex recordings he hasn’t made public and to tell them the identities of his informants. They threatened that “if you don’t present evidence, you will be in violation of national law,” according to Zhu’s account.

The pressure on Zhu suggests that despite Communist Party rhetoric about an all out campaign against corruption, limits remain. The party’s leader, Xi Jinping, said shortly after being installed in November that failing to crack down on corruption would risk the downfall of the state. But while Beijing has dismissed some wayward officials and canceled extravagant banquets that stoked resentment among average Chinese, it so far seems set on keeping a tight grip to keep the process from spinning out of control.

Undaunted, Zhu has offered a cash reward to anyone who can verify the identity of a state-owned enterprise president allegedly caught on one of the videos. Meanwhile, the woman in the videos was formally charged with extortion last week, though she too has been hailed—perhaps less plausibly than in Zhu’s case—as an anti-corruption crusader. From Keith Zhai at the South China Morning Post:

“Zhao was officially arrested on December 31 for extortion,” Zhang said yesterday, adding that she had been “brainwashed” by a company she left in 2009 to secretly record herself having sex with officials to give the firm leverage. “After all, she was young and a victim herself.”

[…] Zhao has drawn support on social media, with internet users hailing her as a heroine for exposing corrupt officials.

Many have compared Zhao’s case with that of Deng Yujiao , a hotel waitress who in 2009 stabbed to death a local party official in Hubei and wounded another after they tried to force themselves on her.

Deng was charged with assault, rather than murder, but walked free on grounds of diminished responsibility after having received widespread support from the online community.

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Post tags: anti-corruption, Beijing, bloggers, Chongqing, citizen journalism, citizen journalist, constitution, corrupt officials, Deng Yujiao, extortion, journalistic ethics, lei zhengfu, migrant workers, muckraking, PLA, sex scandals, Xi Jinping, Zhu Ruifeng
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In China, “bureaucracy lit” is a hot genre, far outselling spy stories and whodunits as the airport novel of choice. In these tales of overweening ambition, the plot devices that set readers’ pulses racing are underhanded power plays, hidden alliances and devious sexual favors. The current craze began in 1999 with “Ink Painting,” by Wang Yuewen, and has become so intense that last year a deputy bureau chief who writes a series under the pseudonym Xiaoqiao Laoshu was named China’s 17th-richest author. “Officialdom lit” is hugely popular, not just as a peek behind the curtains, but also as a go-to guide for aspiring cadres in search of their own sycophancy strategies.

[… But t]he trifling plots of bureaucracy lit look positively petty compared with the grand crimes surrounding the downfall of one of China’s highest-flying politicians, Bo Xilai, formerly the Communist Party secretary of Chongqing, whose wife was found guilty of murdering a former British business partner. Bo’s wife — or a woman rumored to be her plumper stand-in — was given a suspended death sentence, while Bo’s former police chief got 15 years for abuse of power, corruption and defection. Bo himself is facing a criminal investigation into charges including abuse of power, corruption, improper sexual relationships and possible involvement in covering up a murder. It’s hard for any novelist to compete.

Lim goes on to describe the “gargantuan irony” of official celebrations of Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize for Literature. Also at The New York Times is a spoiler-laden review of Mo’s Sandalwood Death and Pow! by Ian Buruma, who concludes with a sympathetic assessment of the author’s widely criticized politics:

Perhaps Mo Yan really is in tune with the current Communist regime. Perhaps he simply wants to play it safe. But the political perspective of his fiction is also a reflection of his peasant spirit. To a villager, all politics are strictly local, especially in China, with its vast distances. The capital is far away. National politics aren’t the peasant’s concern. What counts is food on the table, fertility, sex and staying out of trouble, if necessary by appeasing the powerful, be they local or foreign.

[…] To demand that Mo Yan also be a political dissident is not only what the Dutch describe as “trying to pluck feathers from a frog.” It’s also unfair. A novelist should be judged on literary merit, not on his or her politics, a principle the Nobel committee hasn’t always lived up to. This time, I think it has. It would be nice if Mo Yan were more courageous, but he has given us some great stories. And that should be enough.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, books, bureaucracy, civil servants, corrupt officials, corruption, literature, mo yan, Nobel Prize, officials, Wang Xiaofang, yu hua
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When asked by reporters, a spokesman for Guizhou Intermediate Court said: “Are you asking about Bo Xilai case? This is rumour, we have never received this case.”

The China-run Ta Kung Pao newspaper said on its website that Bo’s trial would start on Monday in the southern city of Guiyang and last three days. It cited “well-informed Beijing sources”, but gave no details.

[…] One of Bo’s lawyers, Li Guifang, declined to comment when reached by telephone. Reporters were unable to reach his second lawyer, Wang Zhaofeng, despite repeated telephone calls.

[…] Li Zhuang, a Beijing lawyer who opposed Wang Lijun and Bo for mounting a sweeping crackdown on foes in the name of fighting organised crime, said he also thought it was possible for a Monday hearing.

“I would only say it’s possible, though not totally certain,” Li said.

Comments about Bo’s likely fate from Li Jingtian, executive vice president of the Central Party School, were similarly inconclusive. From Tom Orlik and Gerard Baker at The Wall Street Journal:

“We have always had severe punishment for corrupt officials,” Mr. Li said during the interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, in response to a question about the fate of Mr. Bo. Such interviews are rare for senior party officials.

He cited the examples of Liu Qingshan and Zhang Zishan, two leaders in the party’s early days who were executed in the 1950s following accusations of embezzlement and other crimes in one of the party’s first anticorruption campaigns.

[…] Mr. Li’s comments don’t mean Mr. Bo is likely to face execution if found guilty. While he cited the case of another execution—that of Cheng Kejie, a former top legislator who was executed in 2000—he also cited the case of Chen Xitong, a former party chief of Beijing convicted on corruption charges in 1998 but released from prison on medical parole in 2006. He also named Chen Liangyu, the former party secretary of Shanghai who was dismissed in 2006 and later sentenced to 18 years in prison on corruption charges.

See more on the Bo case to date, some of it more certain than the above, via CDT.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, Central Party School, Chen Liangyu, Chen Xitong, corrupt officials, corruption, Davos, death penalty, embezzlement, execution, Guizhou, Li Guifang, Li Zhuang, prison, trials, Wang Lijun, Wang Zhaofeng, World Economic Forum
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The authorities have launched several crackdowns over the past two decades, but the crime has persisted. Since a renewed effort began in 2009, more than 54,000 children have been rescued and 11,000 trafficking gangs “smashed”, Xinhua, the state news-agency, reported in December. Officials claim the problem has become less rampant.

Given the patchiness of official data, this is hard to prove. Individual cases of abduction are rarely reported by the state-controlled media. But Deng Fei, a Beijing-based journalist and prominent campaigner on behalf of victims and their families, believes the number of children being abducted is falling. Mr Xiao estimates that the price of abducted boys has risen in recent years from around 40,000 yuan to about 90,000, perhaps because the supply of abducted children has been affected by the police crackdown.

Social media may also have played a role. In recent years, parents and activists have been using websites and microblogs to share information about cases and draw public attention to child abduction. Their efforts have put pressure on the police, who have responded (unusually, given their suspicion of internet activism) by using the internet themselves to contact the families of victims.[...]

Earlier this month, The Telegraph’s Malcolm Moore reported on family planning officials suspected of trafficking children:

Wang Yiping is the head of the village family planning committee in Anxi county, Fujian, and a mother of four, according to the China Youth Daily newspaper.

The police said she is suspected of assisting in the illegal sale of four babies, including the recent sale of a baby boy from Yunnan province for 52,000 yuan (£5,200).

[...]In December, 12 family planning officials in Hunan were suspected of selling orphans abroad, and were found to have “seriously violated regulations”, but were later cleared of any wrongdoing.

For more on child trafficking in China, see prior CDT coverage. Also visit the website for “Living With Dead Hearts“, a forthcoming film by Charlie Custer and Leia Li,  for much more information on the topic, including links to charity organizations dealing with this cause.

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Post tags: child trafficking, corrupt officials, human trafficking, kidnapping
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“They never register the houses in their own names and they use a string of agents to do the deals,” said Mr Fu. He said one company had bribed an official by buying him a property at the Mountain Water International Complex. “The property was put in the name of the official’s relative. After six months, it was sold for two million yuan (£200,000), around the same amount it cost. Then the official could cash out.

[…] Marco Pearman-Parish at Corporation China, a company in Beijing that helps clients find properties abroad, said there had been a strong rise in clients looking for homes in the Cayman Islands.

“In Beijing, half our clients are government officials,” he said. “Nine out of ten claim to be businessmen, but it emerges over the course of the deal that they have government jobs. What they are looking for is resident permits abroad so that if anything happens they can escape easily.”

Neither the anti-corruption speeches nor the escape artistry began with Xi’s appointment in November. According to the Commission report, Moore writes, as much as U.S. $1 trillion was smuggled out of China last year—though this figure is disputed—while 714 officials made successful getaways during the October National Day holidays alone.

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Post tags: anti-corruption, Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, corrupt officials, corruption, naked officials, property market, real estate, smuggling, Xi Jinping
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Liu Yang, a Shanghai-based game developer said the games with the most propaganda embedded in them had been the least successful. “The problem is that the propaganda related themes are not intrinsically popular with players and tends to push them away.

“The public today have their own judgment and criteria, and most of them do not like this sort of propaganda stuff,” he said.

Meanwhile, Prof Nie found that the Chinese players in Resistance War Online often spent more time squabbling with each other than fighting the Japanese.

“The players are easily distracted from the patriotic nature of the game and have, instead, turned the games into feuds among the Chinese resistance forces. Ironically, the internal feuds are actually closer to the historical reality than the notion of a perfectly united resistance against the Japanese”.

Propaganda gaming is not a Chinese invention. Since 2002, the U.S. has produced America’s Army, a hugely successful game-slash-recruitment tool which has also spawned a series of comic books. The game has come under fire from critics including veterans’ organizations who accuse it of exploiting impressionable teenagers.

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Post tags: corrupt officials, diaoyu islands, gaming, Japanese, Lei Feng, online games, propaganda, U.S military, video games
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“I acknowledge and confess the guilt accused by the prosecuting body and show my repentance,” Wang said in his final statement at court.

“My acts were crimes, and I hope the serious impacts (caused by my acts) both at home and abroad would be eliminated through the trial. Meanwhile, I hope the trial will issue a warning to society and let more people draw lessons from me,” he said.

“For the Party organizations, people and relatives that have cared for me, I want to say here, sincerely, ‘I’m very, very sorry, I’ve let you down,’” Wang said.

Speaking to The New York Times, Wang’s lawyer endorsed the Xinhua account as, for the most part, a faithful record of the proceedings. It offers some explanation for the unannounced early start of what, it was initially reported, would be an “open” trial:

The Chengdu Municipal Intermediate People’s Court held a closed-door trial on Monday for Wang on the charges of defection and abuse of power and an open trial on the charges of bribe-taking and bending the law for selfish ends on Tuesday.

Despite the gravity of these crimes, Xinhua explained, Wang’s sentence is likely to be somewhat reduced because of his “meritorious reporting” of others’ criminal acts. These others may include his former superior, fallen Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai, who for the first time was officially linked to the events surrounding his wife’s murder of Neil Heywood. The Xinhua account describes what would turn out to be a pivotal moment, soon after which Wang fled to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu; Bo is not named, but his identity is clear.

Relevant testimonies from witnesses showed that on Jan. 28, Wang Lijun reported to the then leading official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Chongqing Committee that Bogu Kailai was highly suspected in the Nov. 15, 2011 Case. On the morning of Jan. 29, Wang Lijun was angrily rebuked and slapped in the face by the official.

Guo Weiguo, who was present when Wang Lijun was slapped, said in the interrogation record that “the conflict was made public after Wang Lijun was slapped.”

That Bo was told of his wife’s crime and failed to bring it to light appears to implicate him in the cover-up for which Wang and four other police officers have already stood trial. Observers disagree, however, over what the episode’s inclusion in the official record means for Bo’s fate. From The Guardian:

[…] Kerry Brown, an expert on Chinese politics at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy, said the party could still deal with Bo’s case internally, adding: “It seems to have been very rigorous in keeping Bo’s malfeasance apart from Gu’s.

“That kind of story [about the confrontation] was so well known that it was hard not to try to address it.”

He added: “I can’t see any big gains from totally trashing Bo now. Not going for the jugular might be more sensible, particularly at the moment.”

But others have read it as a sign of possible criminal proceedings. June Teufel Dreyer of the University of Miami told Bloomberg, for example, that “the nuggets are the clues which could lead to a Bo Xilai indictment later on. They have very cleverly left the door open with several phrases.” The Financial Times’ Kathrin Hille wrote that this interpretation is consistent “with information recently given to senior party members. Lin Zhe, a professor at the Central Party School, said the main point that the internal investigation had found Mr Bo guilty of was helping to cover up for his wife.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Deborah Kan discussed the issue with Jeremy Page, who concluded that an announcement on Bo’s fate is likely “in the next couple of weeks, or immediately after [the] National Day holiday”.

The final section of the Xinhua account is devoted to emphasising the investigation and trial’s thoroughness, fairness and strict adherence to procedure:

Gu Mingan, a professor with the Law School of the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics as well as an observer at the trials, said the two sides made full efforts to raise and cross-examine evidence during the trials, and the court scrupulously heard the opinions of the prosecutors as well as the defense counsel, fully reflecting the judicial concept of the equality of the prosecution and the defense, and safeguarded the sanctity of law.

After the trials, Wu Qunfang, a resident from the Taoyuan community in the Chenghua District of Chengdu, said that after the trials they have fully understood the beginning and subsequent development of Wang Lijun’s case.

“We believe that all is equal before the law and expect a fair verdict from the people’s court,” Wu said.

Global Times elaborated, stressing the inevitability of justice in China and invoking a favourite recent theme, the awesome “moral whip” of online scrutiny.

Those who commit crimes, regardless of the power or position they hold, will not escape punishment. Wang’s case has strengthened this faith among the public and served as a serious deterrent in the country.

Wang’s trial will drive forward China’s political system, as it has highlighted the urgency of checks and balance of power.

Confusion still exists over the case, but people are gradually believing more that justice will eventually trump over any privilege.

Confidence is built on more criminal officials being firmly punished, on the influential emergence of online supervision and the rising voice of individuals via Weibo.

But the Xinhua account leaves some questions unanswered. Siweiluozi wondered, for example, what evidence exists that Wang had applied to the U.S. for asylum, justifying the charge of defection.

[… W]hat I really, really want to know now, though, is what is the prosecution’s evidence for this? Do they have the application for asylum? If so, how did they get it? Or is their evidence of this fact Wang’s confession?

If the evidence for Wang’s asylum application is based solely on his confession, then this should be insufficient grounds to convict under Chinese law, since Article 46 of the Criminal Procedure Law states, in relevant part:

A defendant cannot be found guilty and sentenced to a criminal punishment if there is only his statement but no evidence.

To be clear, I am not saying that Wang will (or even necessarily should, within the terms of Chinese criminal justice) be acquitted of defection. I’m merely pointing to what I think is an interesting question regarding evidence. Put simply: what is the evidence to back up this charge? Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic that I will ever see either the verdict in this trial or, through some other means, the evidence disclosed in sufficient detail.

Xinhua’s description of Wang’s actions after he was drawn into Gu’s conspiracy, such as secretly keeping hold of evidence against her, shows his acute awareness of being on treacherous ground. But according to a profile of Wang’s earlier career by The Telegraph’s Malcolm Moore, he had known for many years that his position was precarious:

As early as the late 1990s, when Mr Wang was a star policeman in the city of Tieling, in Liaoning province, he spilled his fears to Zhou Lijun, the script writer of “Iron Blooded Police Spirits”, a television drama series based on his career. “I was in a bath house with Wang Lijun in Fushun, Liaoning, and we were both sitting naked in the hot tub,” Mr Zhou recalled on his blog.

“And he said: ‘I know exactly what I am, I am just a piece of chewing gum in the officials’ mouths. They will chew me up and when they find there is no taste anymore they will spit me out onto the ground, and God knows whose shoes I will be sticking to by that time.’”

[…] “Everybody has some sort of mental problem,” Mr Wang told Mr Chen, his biographer. “I dream about a normal life, but it is not possible. I am struggling between glory and confusion, but I will not let myself collapse. I may be wiped out by certain powers, or die when I am still young, but history will remember me.”

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Post tags: abuse of power, Bo Guagua, Bo Xilai, Chengdu, Chongqing, corrupt officials, corruption, defection, Global Times, gu kailai, justice, legal system, Neil Heywood, rule of law, Wang Lijun, Xinhua
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Public resentment over corrupt and extravagant officials is mounting. To try to dilute public ire, Beijing has announced a new regulation aimed at trimming the cost of government receptions, vehicles, and official trips—three areas of often-excessive spending (dubbed the “the three public consumptions”) that have been rife with abuse and opportunities for embezzlement. By Oct. 1, government agencies will be prohibited from purchasing luxury items and other goods priced above set standards; officials who fail to comply will face disciplinary action.

[…] Many citizens are skeptical that the new regulation will have much bite. Previous campaigns that were supposed to trim government excesses, such as one that called for official banquets to feature just three hot dishes and one soup, resulted in bureaucrats “simply turning a deaf ear,” recalls Prof. Hu Xingdou of the Beijing University of Technology.

“I doubt the current campaign to limit official spending will be successful,” Hu told The Daily Beast, “Since the central government announced limits to official expenditures on purchasing cars, a lot of leading officials have in fact asked state-owned enterprises to buy cars for them … The SOEs have become like private ATM machines for local government officials.”

See also a CDT Word of the Week entry on “naked officials” and more on debates over how to deal with “naked officials,” dating back to 2010.

© Wendy Qian for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corrupt officials, corruption, embezzlement, emigrants, naked official, official corruption, overseas Chinese
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Membership in the Chinese Communist Party has many advantages. Officials often enjoy government-issued cars, bottomless expense accounts and the earning potential from belonging to a club whose members control every lever of government and many of the nation’s most lucrative enterprises.

There is, however, one serious downside. When party members are caught breaking the rules — or even when they merely displease a superior — they can be dragged into the maw of an opaque Soviet-style disciplinary machine, known as “shuanggui,” that features physical torture and brutal, sleep-deprived interrogations.

[…] Few who have been pulled into the system emerge unscathed, if they emerge at all. Over the last decade, hundreds of officials have committed suicide, according to accounts in the state news media, or died under mysterious circumstances during months of harsh confinement in secret locations. Once interrogators obtain a satisfactory confession, experts say, detainees are often stripped of their party membership and wealth. Select cases are handed over to government prosecutors for summary trials that are closed to the public.

“The word shuanggui alone is enough to make officials shake with fear,” said Ding Xikui, a prominent defense lawyer here.

Last year, the Dui Hua Foundation translated an account, cited in Jacobs’ article, of a blogger’s visit to a shuanggui facility (via CDT). The introduction to the translation noted that “sadly, acceptance of shuanggui seems to have seeped into international human rights circles and resulted in a dearth of relevant research and advocacy. While stamping out corruption is a worthy cause, it by no means warrants extra-legal detention, torture, or lack of transparency and rule of law.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, CCP, corrupt officials, corruption, detention, forced confessions, party discipline, Shuanggui, torture
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If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net.

裸体做官 (luǒ tǐ zuò guān): naked official

A naked official (often abbreviated 裸官 luǒ guān) is a government official whose family members (except himself) reside overseas.  This name suggests that the official  funnels illegally obtained public funds to his overseas family members; thus, the official appears naked (without assets) but is really preparing a nest egg outside of China.

Between 1978 and 2003, the Ministry of Commerce estimates that about 4,000 corrupt officials left China, taking with them at least USD$50 billion.

Former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai is perhaps China’s most notorious naked official. Although his income was just US$1600 per month, he managed to send his son Guagua to an elite British boarding school, then Oxford and Harvard. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, is suspected of murdering family friend Neil Heywood after he demanded a larger cut of an illegal overseas money transfer.

Read about more notable cases in English and Chinese.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, corrupt officials, word of the week
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Chinese leaders enjoy a level of privacy unheard of in the West; the often vast business and political dealings of their families are shrouded in mystery by design. Only when Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai fell from grace in March did he expose himself to scrutiny from the outside world, illuminating the web of connections that bound him and his family to global business and political interests.

[...]In recent years, only the Bo clan has had its affairs ingloriously paraded in front of the international media — the  business ties of top leaders like President Hu Jintao and his successor Xi Jinping remain mostly unknown. But here are four senior Chinese leaders whose web of connections have already been probed, and whose full exposure would most increase the outside world’s understanding of how the system works. [...]

In a post for China Realtime Report, Stanley Lubman explains how internal corruption is dealt with in China. As can be seen by Liu Zhijun’s recent expulsion from the CCP, and by the ongoing investigation of Bo Xilai, party members are subject to their own separate legal system:

There are two parallel systems in China to punish criminal conduct, one for Communist Party members and the other, the formal criminal process. When a party member is suspected of a crime, it is the party’s own investigation that comes first.

[...]In theory, CCP members who commit crimes will be turned over to the procuracy or police and the courts for criminal prosecution after initially being punished internally by the party’s own Commissions for Discipline Inspection (CDI). In practice, this happens in only a small minority of cases, and Party officials have the final say over the courts’ dispositions of those cases – a stark illustration of the Party’s influence over the criminal justice system.

[...]China’s leadership has consistently proclaimed that Chinese law must have “Chinese characteristics,” but that is a contradiction: Legal institutions remain subject to party control despite the ideal of the rule of law that is stated in the Chinese constitution.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, corrupt officials, corruption, high-level corruption, Li Peng, Liu Zhijun, rule of law, Wen Jiabao, Yu Zhengsheng, Zhou Yongkang
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