China has launched a sweeping crackdown on graft in the boom city of Shenzhen, seeking to rein in unruly officials and soothe public anger over high-level vice, analysts said.
The campaign, which has already cost the city mayor his job, comes just three years after an anti-corruption drive led to a trail of top officials and businessmen being jailed in Shanghai in a similar case.
“It is a large-scale anti-corruption case in a province at the forefront of reforms, where there is large money,” said Willy Lam (林和立), an expert on Chinese politics at the Jamestown Foundation, a US think tank. “It is not surprising there is corruption there, and a high degree of collusion between politics and business.”
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) has repeatedly insisted that fighting corruption is a question of “life and death” for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the fact that the battle is now taken to Shenzhen only raises the stakes.
Just a fishing village a generation ago, Shenzhen is now a city of 11 million people.
Its hypermodern skyline is seen as testimony to the achievements of China’s market experiments, but to many the emerging corruption case reflects the dark side of reform.
Shenzhen Mayor Xu Zongheng (許宗衡), 53, was placed under internal CCP investigation earlier this month for “serious violations of discipline,” state media reported.
Such charges often result in graft convictions in China’s judicial system.
It may have especially triggered Beijing’s ire that Xu reportedly bought his way to power, challenging the party’s monopoly on appointments.
“It’s very important for the party to ensure subordination and discipline among officials,” said Joseph Cheng (鄭宇碩), a China watcher at City University of Hong Kong.
Media reports say Xu is also being probed for links to Huang Guangyu (黃光裕), formerly China’s second-richest man and the founder of Gome Electrical Appliances. Huang was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of financial crimes, including manipulation of the stock market.
Xu’s wife as well as a vice mayor, a former assistant minister of police, and a leading Guangdong politician may also be under investigation for alleged links to Huang, local media have said.
Some have pointed to echoes of the case surrounding Chen Liangyu (陳良宇), Shanghai’s former top party official, who was convicted of accepting bribes and abusing his power. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison in April 2008, becoming the highest CCP leader to be jailed for graft since 1995.
“There is a bit of an impression that after Shanghai comes Guangdong,” said Jean-Philippe Beja, a Hong Kong-based China scholar with the French National Center for Scientific Research and a prolific writer on Chinese politics.
Meanwhile, Lam said the crackdown was unlikely to expand much further: “The campaign is coming to an end: morale is very low in Guangdong, officials are afraid and need to be reassured.”
The Philippine Department of Justice yesterday labeled Vice President Sara Duterte the “mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the nation’s president, giving her five days to respond to a subpoena. Duterte is being asked to explain herself in the wake of a blistering weekend press conference where she said she had instructed that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr be killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed. “The government is taking action to protect our duly elected president,” Philippine Undersecretary of Justice Jesse Andres said at yesterday’s press briefing. “The premeditated plot to assassinate the president as declared by the self-confessed mastermind
Ireland, the UK and France faced travel chaos on Saturday and one person died as a winter storm battered northwest Europe with strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice. Hampshire Police in southern England said a man died after a tree fell onto a car on a major road near Winchester early in the day. Police in West Yorkshire said they were probing whether a second death from a traffic incident was linked to the storm. It is understood the road was not icy at the time of the incident. Storm Bert left at least 60,000 properties in Ireland without power, and closed
Czech intelligence chief Michal Koudelka has spent decades uncovering Russian spy networks, sabotage attempts and disinformation campaigns against Europe. Speaking in an interview from a high-security compound on the outskirts of Prague, he is now warning allies that pushing Kyiv to accept significant concessions to end the war in Ukraine would only embolden the Kremlin. “Russia would spend perhaps the next 10 to 15 years recovering from its huge human and economic losses and preparing for the next target, which is central and eastern Europe,” said Koudelka, a major general who heads the country’s Security Information Service. “If Ukraine loses, or is forced
THIRD IN A ROW? An expert said if the report of a probe into the defense official is true, people would naturally ask if it would erode morale in the military Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun (董軍) has been placed under investigation for corruption, a report said yesterday, the latest official implicated in a crackdown on graft in the country’s military. Citing current and former US officials familiar with the situation, British newspaper the Financial Times said that the investigation into Dong was part of a broader probe into military corruption. Neither the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Chinese embassy in Washington replied to a request for confirmation yesterday. If confirmed, Dong would be the third Chinese defense minister in a row to fall under investigation for corruption. A former navy
RSS