- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
A Chinese court has sentenced a former senior official to death for accepting more than 2.21 billion yuan ($325 million) in bribes over a 30-year period, according to a statement from the Changzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Jiangsu province.
Seems like an effective way to deter corruption.
Not really. That’s just unapproved corruption.
Unfortunately you can’t deter corruption, some humans are just worthless but can hide themselves as a worthwhile person for a while. This does, however, ensure the effects of corruption are ended pretty quickly after its found and proven.
And we have Trump with his bribery air force one plane, bragging about insider trades, and corporate bribe donations for tax cuts. 🙄
Trump has no problem calling his political opponents “corrupt”. Xi is playing the same game.
Such ‘corruption cases’ have been going on in China for decades, though with a little uptick in recent years. As many analyst and investigation show, however, the fate of these officials may have more likely to do with power struggle than corruption.
The purge “isn’t about corruption, it isn’t about leaking secrets, it is about a general that became too powerful”, [an analyst said in January this year after a high-ranked Chinese general was purged].
Observers say that there is indeed corruption, but it is also often a pretext “to make the party a more effective governing machine and a cudgel to remove political enemies,”
For Xi [Jinping], observers argue, corruption has become a catch-all term that encompasses not just graft, from small-time favours to huge bribes, but much more - ideological impurity, a lack of commitment to China’s ambitions and, crucially, disloyalty.
They say it triggers one of his big fears: an out-of-control party would prove disastrous for China, like it did for another major communist power, the erstwhile Soviet Union, whose fall he has often spoken about. The possibility of any such decline on his watch would threaten his power - and his legacy.
The recent purge of two military generals as cited in the linked article, has shown that,
“Official narratives after the purge of [the two Chinese military generals] Zhang and Liu make clear that their dismissals were political in nature and based on a [perceived or real] lack of loyalty to Xi and his goals” …
Xi’s circle of trusted followers is narrowing ever more to exclude the very people he relied on to consolidate his power, … but he expects this to “continue to play out until there are hardly any leaders left that aren’t complete Xi products”.




