The new anticorruption campaign in China (2012-2014)
p. 353-356
Texte intégral
March 2015
1Corruption has existed for many years in Communist China, but during the Maoist period – a time of puritan and egalitarian ideals – it was not displayed in public and did not occur to such an extent. After President Mao’s death and the launch of the economic reform, it gained a new momentum : it was then stimulated by the introduction of a market economy, the increase of the currency circulation, the reemergence of private enterpreneurs and the rising consumerism. Corruption may be found in the provinces as well as in Beijing, in all the sectors of civil society and all the layers of the bureaucracy. Alliances between cadres and enterpreneurs lead to an interweaving between wealth and power. Bribes, influence-peddling, embezzlement, misuse of public funds reach million and billion of dollars. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, increased globalization enlarges even more the scope and scale of this corruption.
CaMap of the 2014 corruption perceptions index, according to Transparency Internation. China is ranked as the 100 th less corrupted country, out of 174. In the Asia-Pacific region, it is ranked as the 16 th less corrupted country, out of 28.

© 2014 / Transparency International.
2Chinese leaders are well aware of the dangers that such abuses poses to the economy and the society, as well as to the political regime. As a result, since the 1980s, they keep launching big anticorruption campaigns targeting both corrupters and corrupted. The spectacular downfalls of some major private entrepreneurs and high-ranking officials – such as Chen Xitong, the Beijing mayor, in 1998, or Chen Liangyu, the secretary of the Shanghai Party Committee, in 2008 – frightened the public but did not prevent the spread of corruption, for officials themselves were heavily involved in illicit dealings : how can a robber be caught when he and the policeman are the same ?
3As soon as he was elected General Secretary of the Chinese Communist party by the XVIIIth Congress in November 2012, and without waiting to be appointed President of the Republic, Xi Jinping made the struggle against corruption a top priority to be matched with the absolutely necessary and urgent economic reform. Is this new anticorruption campaign likely to be more successful than the previous ones ?
A maoist-style campaign carried out with determination
4The new campaign is carried out in accordance with the rules laid down during the Maoist period : using slogans, the Party pointing at targets, dismissing the presumed culprits from their jobs, isolating them and attacking their inner circle and their supporters’networks and finally submitting them to an investigation conducted by the Disciplinary Commission of the Communist Party Central Committee. After having been found guilty by this commission, the accused is kicked out of the party and morally discredited by allegations of sexual misconduct and finally sent to court. The leading role in these proceedings, which may last several months, is played by the Communist Party and its Disciplinary Commission, which decides to initiate investigations and whose verdict precedes and determines the judgement of the court. If this kind of campaign no longer entails mass terror, as it did under Mao’s reign, it nevertheless calls for violence against individuals : during the secret investigations carried on by the Disciplinary Commission outside any legal framework, all means – including torture – are good to obtain confessions.
5Even if these proceedings are not new, this campaign still distinguishes itself by the firm resolution of its promoters, its broad range and the weakening of the protections from which the higher-level cadres have benefited until now.
6At the XVIIIth Party Congress, in November 2012, Xi Jinping announced his intention “to chase tigers and flies” (i. e. major as well as petty criminals) and, since then, he often restated this intention. In August 2013, the Political Bureau approved the new Five-year Plan (2013-2017) for preventing and repressing corruption. All cadres were prohibited from receiving money or gifts-in-kind, from using public funds to finance extravagant spending : lavish banquets, travels to foreign countries, fancy company cars, etc. These provisions apply to military as well as to civilian officials. To implement this policy Xi Jinping appointed Wang Qishan as head of the Disciplinary Commission. The man is an energetic financial expert of the highest standards and integrity.
An efficient campaign
7It did not take long to see the results of the campaign. In 2013, the number of punished cadres raised to 180,000 (an increase of 13.8 % over 2012). The movement spread to each and every social and professional groups : state-owned companies (more particularly oil and coal companies), real estate speculators, high-level officials, provincial cadres, military circles, the media world, the academic community. The quality as well as the number of disciplined individuals attest to the radical nature of the campaign. The casualty list includes many of the public service and power elite : Jiang Jiemin, ex-Director of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, Liu Tienan, ex-Deputy Director of the National Development and Reform Commission (in charge of the general economic policy), Li Dongsheng, ex-Vice Minister of China’s Ministry of Public Security, General Xu Caihou, ex-Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission that oversees the Chinese armed forces.
8The most remarkable case is that of Zhou Yongkang, who was until the XVIIIth Party Congress one of the most powerful men in China. He was a member of the 17 th Politburo Standing Committee, within which he was in charge of security problems. The roots of his power were to be found in the complex networks of patronage that he had successively built as a leader in the development of the oil industry, as Party Secretary of the rich province of Sichuan and as head of China security apparatus. Never before had the Party allowed a member of the supreme decision-making body, that is the Standing Committee of the Politburo, to be investigated. Zhou Yongkang’s conviction has indeed broken down this taboo.
Yongkang’s relationship network: his family, the Public Security Service, the Sichuan administration and the oil industry.

© 2014 / Shwangtianyuan, under a Creative Commons license.
9Frightened cadres, as a collective whole, have got back to a more frugal lifestyle, as is attested by the falling imports of luxury goods. The campaign however meets with opposition from local interest groups, from big State-owned enterprises rejecting any measures which could decrease the lack of transparency in their management as well as the size of their profits, and also from top Party leaders, who feel threatened and unsure about their future. These resistances have partly been overcome and they may be defeated if, as planned, the campaign can be pursued for several years.
The limitations of the campaign
10They arise from its very nature. First of all, from the Party and the party discipline’s predominant part, to the detriment of citizen participation and the court system. Though the Politburo in August 2014 stated that cases of corruption were to be conjointly investigated by the Party, the population, the judiciary and the medias, and even if some instances of corruption were disclosed by the press or the social networks, the ultimate decision to prosecute the suspects is the responsibility of the Party only. The New Citizens movement, which approved and relayed the official anticorruption program, was repressed and, in January 2014, its activists were brought to court for disrupting social order. The party, and only the party, would police itself.
A Hong Kong newspaper reports all of Zhou Yongkang’s secretaries.

© 2014 / released in the public domain by The Voice of America.
11Such a policy gives rise to the suspicion of the instrumentalization of the anticorruption campaign. Is not this present-day campaign used to ruthlessly thrust aside rival cliques challenging current power holders, as was often the case in the previous movements ? Is it not used to knock down the supporters of ex-President Jiang Zemin ? Or still more important, those of Bo Xilai, ex-Secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee (Sichuan), who was suspected of wanting to take the top leadership away from Xi Jinping on the eve of the XVIIIth Party Congress ? And if Zhou Yongkang was finally brought to court, is not the reason to be found in the established liaisons existing between this ex-Head of Security and Bo Xilai ?
12Suspicions of a biased campaign are all the more serious because all taboos have not been eliminated, and the “Princelings” (i. e. the descendants of prominent senior communist officials) – Xi Jinping being one of them –, remain immune from prosecution. None of the “48 tigers “investigated between 2012 and 2014 was a “princeling”. And yet they are not the last ones to use their privileged situation to make a fortune. It is only thanks to enquiries conducted by American journalists and through leaked information relating to secret off-shore bank accounts opened in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands or British Virgin Islands (China leaks) in January 2014 that the amount of some princelings’ fortune was made known. Such revelations however did not result in sanctions against perpetrators but only in measures taken against foreign newspapers and journalists.
A campaign with mixed results
13Because of the biases and cronyism to be found in this campaign, public opinion, while on the whole favourable, still has some doubts about the sincerity of the leadership. Frightened officials are retreating into apathy. The slowdown of economic growth hinders synergy with economic reforms. The campaign launched two years ago by Xi Jinping has however acquired some credibility. Intended to raise ethical standards in public life and to address social discontent, it was also used to strengthen the power of the Party and more specifically that of its leader. Its efficiency as well as its limitations result from the authoritarianism that is the hallmark of China’s regime. And this once again raises the question of whether or not the continued existence of such a regime may be consistent with the pursuit of China’s economic growth and social development.
Auteur
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Marie-Claire Bergère
Historian, professor emeritus at Inalco & former director of studies at EHESS

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