Hu’s salary is low not only in absolute terms, but also by comparison with his country’s per capita GDP. While unusual by international standards, however, it reflects the generally low disclosed pay for other Chinese officials. This presents a politically favourable picture of relative modesty, but masks a range of other benefits and can encourage the less upstanding to augment their income with bribes. At Foreign Policy, Isaac Stone Fish argues that China should beef up official salaries.

… If government statistics are to be believed, Hu makes just over $10,000 a year. Officials at the ministerial level make that same amount, and lower ranking Party apparatchiks can make as little as a few hundred dollars a month. “While the benefits, like housing, are very good, the salary is low, that’s definite,” says Yiyi Lu, a Beijing-based China analyst. Even with benefits, Chinese government salaries encourage corruption by bestowing high power but low salaries on people who have very little transparency over their actions. Whereas in Singapore ministers remain clean in part to keep their seven-figure salaries, in China one always wonders how those officials making, say, $1500 a month can afford those Rolexes.

See also coverage of last year’s exposé of extravagant wristwear by the General Secretary of the Flower and Fruit Mountain, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, Hu Jintao, official corruption, salaries, singapore
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Official reception is currently an “important task” for grass-roots level cadres. Some unit chiefs spoke candidly [on this topic]: “If we didn’t have to wine and dine people, work wouldn’t be so hard.” In other words, grass-roots level cadres are fed up with the excesses of official reception. In truth, China has extremely strict restrictions on “official reception” — but many of these norms and constraints are often no more than “unwritten rules.” An official from Pingyao County in Shanxi said it best: “all who come are visitors, none of whom can be angered.” How can the issues of official be resolved under these conditions? This is a worthy topic of reflection for relevant departments.

Inspections and investigations are a source of distress for grass-roots level cadres. In a Guangxi coastal city, many villages received inspections from superiors 30 times, with the most being up to 90 times. Village leaders are occupied with reception niceties between 150 to 300 days in a year. In the famous and beautiful Guilin, a certain county received over 80 regional and municipal evaluation and inspection groups — not including national “official inspection groups” — in one month. In a certain county-level city lush with red woods and on the Sino-Vietnamese border, a regional unit received 7 inspection groups in one day. In the afternoon, arrangements were made for the teams to attend different restaurants for meals. Staff members — though out in full force — were nonetheless insufficient. And in order to give each group an opportunity to give a toast, the bureau chief rushed to different restaurants by automobile. After sending off the inspection teams, the office director entered the hospital.

In an interview, a few grass-roots level cadres joked: “The amount of drinks equals capability, and drunkenness amounts to a work style.” One government official even went so far as to say that “reception is ‘hard reason,’” and “reception is a productive force.” Under the pull of these ideals, reception can make high demands on a cadre’s body. For example, in recent years, an official died of intoxication after receiving guests. This was reprinted over and over in newspapers, with some even seeing him as having “died in the line of duty” and posthumously recognizing him as a “martyr.” Imbibing spirits has already become a central part of reception, and has become a “required course” for grass-roots level workers.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: local officials, official corruption
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On April 23rd, the Politburo of the Central Committee discussed strengthening supervision over “naked officials.” A “naked official” is an official whose wife and kids have left China to live in a foreign country, leaving only him behind to take care of things at home. “Naked officials” have attracted such attention because they’ve been involved in so many classic corruption cases and have become a model of corruption. Given this, should the country adopt a strict “one size fits all” policy against “naked officials”?

Those against: The “presumption of innocence” is the guiding principle of a society ruled by law. Without evidence or proof that a “naked official” used his power for personal gain, he is no different from a regular person, and is entitled to the same legal rights and benefits. If someone were fired just because he’s a “naked official,” it would be a classic violation of a citizen’s legal rights.

Those in favor: People who hold public office are limited in ways that ordinary citizens are not. For example, officials must regularly make public their personal finances, and sometimes even the finances of their family members. Moreover, officials’ public activities – and a few private ones – are not protected by the right to privacy. Officials are not ordinary people. If you hold public power you must give up some private rights.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, official corruption
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In any of these cases, the question is not whether investigators will find corrupt officials, it is how far up or down or sideways in the bureaucracy will they go in making arrests. The party knows from the top on down that corruption is a chronic and thorough affliction of the one-party state, and has long assigned many authorities to the task of curing it.

But many of the highest-profile crackdowns, including former General Secretary Jiang Zemin’s against the Beijing party secretary in 1995, Chen Xitong, and current General Secretary Hu Jintao’s against Chen in Jiang’s power base of Shanghai, are viewed less as cleanup efforts than as factional maneuvers to undermine enemies and consolidate power.

The Chongqing crackdown was one of the most publicized in years. Many were shocked the local party chief was able to take on such entrenched corruption. People assumed, perhaps correctly, that Bo had some ulterior motive for moving on the Chongqing mafia: Maybe he was trying to impress Beijing so that he could move up in the party hierarchy; maybe he was uprooting a faction that rivaled or threatened his own. The notion that a leader in government simply would see wrong and try to right it, Robert F. Kennedy-style, exists in Camelot, not China.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: coal mine boss, official corruption, Shanxi
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Cash, real estate and a golden book of traditional Chinese morals –literally made of gold – were just a few of the perks Fan Zhongqian received during 20 years as a government official in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou Province.

Fan apparently enjoyed the cash and property, but ignored the book. Authorities say he bypassed moral ways to wealth for a fast track by accepting bribes in exchange for government favors.

Fan, 52, has been awaiting a court verdict since March after standing trial in Guiyang Intermediate Court for accepting more than 10 million yuan bribes. The former mayoral assistant and chief of the city’s land resources and urban construction department has been in custody since spring 2008.

His wife, Tan Jin, a former official at Guizhou Normal University, has already been sentenced to a five-year prison term for taking bribes. She was convicted shortly before Fan went to court.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Guiyang, official corruption
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Zhou Jiugeng, former director of the real estate management bureau in Jiangning District, the provincial capital of Nanjing, was convicted of accepting 1.07 million yuan and 110,000 Hong Kong dollars in bribes from contractors, subordinate businesses and officials.

The Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court also confiscated 1.2 million yuan (175,784 U.S. dollars) of Zhou’s personal property.

The court said the 49-year-old was given lenient punishment for confessing to the prosecutors and handing over the bribes on his own.

A number of officials have shared their thoughts on the role of netizens in official supervision. Excerpted from China Daily:

Liu Binjie, head of the General Administration of Press and Publication, agreed, saying many problems were first exposed on the Internet and then received the government’s attention.

“Internet supervision is playing a very important role in promoting democracy and ensuring the people’s right to know, which should be fully encouraged and supported,” Liu said.

Some scholars, however, expressed worries over whether Internet supervision could work as well as people expected.

Gao Xinmin, a professor with the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said: “The Internet provides a new way for people to supervise officials, but what really matters is that the government listens to their voices and takes action.”

While online manhunts can help fight corruption, they must be properly used or they can infringe on people’s basic human rights, he said.

Read also a report by Jane Macartney at Times Online.

For more background on this story, see this Global Voices post by Bob Chen, “Commissioner Scrutinized by Netizen Detectives.”

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Jiangsu, netizens, official corruption, Zhou Jiugeng
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Xu Zongheng had been put under shuanggui – a form of detention imposed on party officials, given his alleged links to Huang Guangyu, the founder of GOME and once ranked China’s richest man, the South China Morning Post reported citing several unnamed sources.

‘It must have something to do with economic irregularities… but it could also have something to do with a power struggle,’ a government source was quoted as saying by the Post.

Corruption investigations in China can be proxies for political struggles.

Xu would be the latest in a number of senior officials to be implicated in Huang’s graft investigation, triggered last year by alleged financial misconduct.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Huang Guangyu, official corruption, Shenzhen, Xu Zongheng
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Wen said any construction of new government buildings, training centers and government hotels were banned between now and the end of 2010.

[...]Reception expenditures this year should be reduced by 10 percent over 2008, car purchase and maintenance fees should be cut by 15 percent on the basis of the average amount in the recent three years, and expenditure for business trips abroad reduced by 20 percent based on the average amount over the recent three years.

Wen said, this year efforts will be focused on investigation and handling of corruption cases involving government organs and officials, and hard strike will be given to “collusion between officials and businesses, power-for-money deals and commercial bribery cases.”

He urged officials to discipline themselves and “resolutely oppose bureaucratism and formalism.”

While Wen and others have expressed concern for the extent of official graft, the treatment of whistleblowers remains harsh. Wu Zhong of Asia Times reports:

Fear of retribution is a major concern for whistleblowers. “Nine of the top 10 anti-graft fighters in the past three decades have faced retaliation,” He Zengke, director of the Institute of Contemporary Marxism under the CCP’s Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, told China Youth Daily. He did not give details on who the top 10 anti-graft fighters were, or what retribution had been meted out to them, but there are plenty of cases of informants being killed, jailed or attacked after tipping off the authorities.

In May 2002, Li Wenjuan, a civil servant with Anshan Office of State Revenue in Liaoning province, reported suspected irregularities in tax collection and accounting to the party’s Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection (CCDI) – the party’s top anti-graft watchdog – and the General Administration of Taxation. After the taxation office sent an investigation team to Anshan, Li was first removed to a local branch and then one year later fired, though after the CCDI’s intervention she was re-instated.

However, in September 2004, Li was sacked again after she was arrested by Anshan police and sent to a “education through labor” camp on charges of “slandering” an official on the Internet. She was released after two years and has said she “would not dare” to report corruption again.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: official corruption, whistle-blower
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Ten central government departments, including the powerful Ministry of Finance, “misused or embezzled” more than 4.52 billion yuan, or $660 million, last year, according to a report from China’s top auditor.

The report also said that 14 officials were referred for prosecution, 88 people in all were arrested and an additional 104 government employees were punished for their roles in mismanaging or embezzling what amounted to billions of dollars of additional government funds, state media reported Thursday.

Even the State Administration of Taxation was accused of fraud.

Read the Xinhua report on this topic.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: embezzlement, official corruption
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It all started with a bulletin announcing promotions of four “cadres” at Benxi City in Liaoning Province for the city Communist Youth League’s secretary and deputy secretaries. Candidates and their short bios are as follows, briefly:

Sun Mingdi, born in May 1979. Started work in March 2005 and joined CCP in June 2006. MBA from an Australian university. Now deputy governor of Nanfen District government, to be promoted as secretary of city Communist Youth League branch. (The reporter noted that the university was founded in 1994 and is virtually unknown in academia.)

Li Haoran, a graduate of an on-the-job college program, now is deputy secretary of Jinshan neighborhood committee of Minshan District.

Gao Ting, born in August 1981, joined CCP in December 2006. Now director of foreign trade and economic cooperation of Minshan District, and deputy chief of investment attraction.

Judging by their ages and lack of experience, it’s an amazing achievement that they are going to assume important positions with some potential power and self-enriching opportunities.

A deeper look reveals that Sun Mingdi, for example, is the son of Benxi city’s trade union president. Gao Ting’s father is secretary of the city’s Party Discipline Inspection Committee. Li Haoran’s father is head of the city’s Department of United Front. Two of these parents are in the city’s politburo. No wonder that the announcement, posted on the city government’s official site on April 11, quickly triggered explosive anger over the Internet.

“Why can’t officials’ children become successful?” Sun Mingdi answered with frustration in an interview.

Someone who posted this announcement in a forum labeled these kids as “Benxi’s well-known princelings” and said they “will become department level officials (ju ji or fu ju ji) in a couple of years, standing on the shoulders of their powerful parents.” Although most of these posts have been deleted, the damage has been done and a wave of criticism poured the government’s way.

A couple of weeks later an official site of the city flashed with a bulletin saying that the promotions of the four people were invalid. The city party branch studied and decided that some were not qualified for the positions and that the deliberation process had violated certain rules of officials’ promotions, namely avoiding relatives of current officials or such things.

The story isn’t over yet. A Beijing News commentary called for a systematic reflection. It was indeed another victory for media supervision that Benxi officials admitted their wrongdoing in this scandal. But the pity was that the authorities didn’t apologize “sincerely.” Since Benxi was at fault in these promotions, and it had very bad social implications, shall we hold relevant officials accountable for this? The local government didn’t say a word about this.

Speaking of all the controversies surrounding official selections, including the recent “post-80 kids assuming high positions,” etc., we cannot just look at the Benxi scandal as an individual case, but have to look at it from the systematic perspective. Otherwise, cronyism in official promotions and black-box operations in personnel arrangements will be unchallenged and the system will remain unable to correct its flaws.

Another commentary, from RedNet, cautioned that the Benxi scandal is commonplace in many places, as the saying goes, “Being good at math, physics and chemistry is not as good as having a good dad.” A disguised form of hereditary officialdom, if becoming a social norm, will be the most horrible political cancer.

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Benxi, official corruption, officials children, princelings
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