From The Washington Post:
The Chinese government last week announced the disgrace of another senior Communist Party official accused of corruption. Du Shicheng, it said, was stripped of his posts as deputy party secretary of Shandong province and party secretary of Qingdao city because of a “serious discipline violation.”
Nothing was said about what misdeeds Du might have committed, but the announcement stated that his fall from power was “another sign of the central government’s tough stand against corruption.” The Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection was investigating the case, it added, but there was no word on whether he would be charged with a crime.
Du’s firing — the fourth of a major party figure this year — was another chapter in President Hu Jintao’s crackdown on the bribery and embezzlement that have become a big part of China’s economic expansion. But it also illustrated the limits of Hu’s anti-corruption drive. Despite repeated vows to weed out corrupt officials, the government’s campaign remains a self-cleansing operation by the Communist Party’s own bureaucracy, without monitoring by an independent judicial system or a free press.[Full Text]
