China: Xi's anti corruption drive targeting billionaires and bankers

Beijing: Xi Jinping’s anti-graft law reportedly targeting billionaires and bankers in China, reportedly to enforce ideological adherence apart from controlling corruption within his party and beyond. According to Yuen Yuen Ang, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and the author of a book on corruption in Chinese politics, “intense scrutiny” has become the “new normal” in China. The anti-corruption campaign has been one of Xi’s signature initiatives since he took office in 2012. A former senior official at the China Development Bank named Fu Xiaodong was given a 10-year prison term on Friday for taking 4.3 million yuan ($503,466) in bribes between 2007 and 2020. Days before, the former head of the enforcement division of the Supreme People’s Court received a 12-year prison term for collecting bribes totaling 22.74 million yuan ($2.65 million). Meng Xiao was found guilty of misusing his position for more than ten years in order to acquire financial advantage. It is presumably a victory for due process that a public official whose influence could be bought has been removed from the system. However, this week’s conviction followed a series of inquiries by China’s anti-corruption body, as Xi redoubles his efforts to purge and rein in officials within the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and outside. Senior corrupt officials are referred to as “tigers” and “flies” by Xi, who views corruption as an existential threat to the CCP. More than 180,000 officials received disciplinary action during Xi’s first year in office, up from nearly 160,000 the year before. The party’s anti-graft watchdog disciplined 3.7 million cadres during the course of the following ten years, including around 1% of the leaders at the federal and provincial levels. The campaign was well-liked by the Chinese people, who were outraged by the growing accumulation of wealth that came with political power and assisted in ridding Xi of political competitors. The wealth was frequently astounding; according to a recent analysis by the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, a research organization, 91% of officials convicted of corruption in China’s urban areas in the decade after Xi took office belonged to the richest 1% of the population. Only 6% would have been a part of that top group had it not been for their illegal profits. “Corruption is thus a very powerful mechanism of upward income mobility,” write authors Li Yang, Branko Milanovic, and Yaoqi Lin. The thriving private enterprise sector in China is where powerful leaders frequently make friends. According to Johns Hopkins professor Ang, these businesses “prosper when their patrons rise and perish together when their patrons fall.” The anti-graft agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), has either investigated or reprimanded more than 50 senior executives from significant banks and state-owned businesses this year. Financial threats are viewed by the party as a subject of national security. The CCDI issued an essay in February about the “battle” against corruption that specifically criticised “financial elitism.” The purge has included a number of well-known figures. Zhao Weiguo, a semiconductor tycoon, was referred to prosecutors in March by the CCDI after it came to the conclusion that he had participated in corrupt behaviour while serving as the chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup. The company, which was formerly among China’s top producers of computer chips, was declared bankrupt in 2021. Li Xiaopeng, the former head of the state-owned financial behemoth China Everbright Group, and Liu Liange, the former chairman of the Bank of China, were both the targets of investigations recently revealed by the CCDI. Bao Fan, a millionaire tech banker, hasn’t been seen in public since the authorities took him away in February to help with an investigation. Xi personally has doubts about bankers’ allegiance to the party and their motives. China’s elites began fleecing their money out of the nation in 2013, following the start of his anti-corruption campaign. China had about $4 trillion in foreign reserves in 2014; within two years, that amount had decreased by almost one-quarter and had not yet recovered. The party is also aware that corruption frequently follows money. “Top leaders, including President Xi, have repeatedly emphasised preventing corruption in areas with high capital intensity,” says Zhu Jiangnan of the University of Hong Kong. The term “sweet potato economy,” first used by Xi in 2021 to describe Chinese companies that remain rooted in China and under the CCP’s control, even as they expand to absorb the “sunlight” and “nutrients” of the global economy, has recently come up in discussions among Chinese officials, according to James Palmer, deputy editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a longtime China observer. Not just financiers have been affected by the most recent sweep. The General Administration of Sport and 30 state-owned companies would be under investigation, the CCDI announced on April 9; numerous football officials have already been under inquiry. The shift to looking at larger fish is a trend. The majority of the targets of the anti-corruption effort in its early years, according to Yale University’s Zeren Li, were local authorities. The emphasis, however, has shifted in recent years to central ministries and specialised inspections, such the most recent one on finances. Some might wonder why the party led by Xi appears to still be solving issues after more than a decade of purges. According to Ling Li, a lecturer at the University of Vienna, the party’s very organisational structure encourages corruption because a lack of openness benefits both dictatorial leaders and dishonest cadres. In addition, while corruption “occurs in a very decentralised fashion,” Ling was quoted in a Guardian report saying, watchdogs like the CCDI are centralised. This means that there is always more corruption than the anti-corruption agency can look into. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .