I sometimes see people "celebrate" this, with the rationale that China is cracking down on white-collar crimes and handing out sentences unheard of in the west.
But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption. As others have noted, some of the highest civilian and military officials have been removed for it. Some sentenced to death.
He sees it as a challenge to his legitimacy and China’s power, which, as you’d expect are the most important things to him; even if you take the most cynical view.
Another timely example, because it is the World Cup, is the Chinese football programs. They’ve been decimated because of corruption prosecutions, both executives and players. It’s a major reason why China isn’t competitive on the global stage, which much smaller countries with significantly smaller budgets can compete. And, yes, Xi does care about competing in the World Cup. Prestige is very important to his concept of China’s honor and global standing.
Xi Jinping rose to power on a message of anti-corruption, and part of the reason he remains in power on an indefinite term is by presenting himself as the "only trusted" person to maintain anti-corruption amongst all the factions.
While I'm sure he doesn't catch all corruption and the CCP overall has selective enforcement, the reason they do have measures like this is in large part because of Xi Jinping's specific reputation and positioning.
I think the way to determine how real this is: is the corruption allowed to damage the real economy? Most of the problems of Africa and South America are linked to that answer being "yes".
Probably not but it's hard to really pin this down. On the one hand, China's rise has in the recent past has been phenomenal but that kind of rapid cleanup has always been accompanied by repression and destruction of political rivals. So. perhaps a bit of both.
Not everything that Chinese leadership does is perfect, they have made mistakes, but overall, leadership that is openly like "we need to maintain a tight control over the population for stability" is generally more trustworthy than that campaigns on freedom and small government only to get in power and make themselves richer.
Are you claiming Europe is not obviously corrupt? Or Latin America? Or Korea, or Japan? I can't speak to Australia or New Zealand, I suppose.
Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply make it legal. I would prefer if our politicians or popular media could at least acknowledge this.
And not just because corruption has some "indirect taxation" effect, but also because low corruption/trust is a big enabler for a society.
You are never gonna get rid of clannish mentality, vigilantism, nepotism and other undesirable behavior if your citizens don't have any trust in the system.
Europe is prosecuting the Epstein Pedos. Trump is protecting his friends
Corruption is everywhere and varies in degree. The US likes to claim a mantle of superiority when it seems quite the opposite. We have a bully/greatest conman ever in the white house
>Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing
no need to speculate, it's already happened. Zhou Yongkang who was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee (the highest governing body in Chinese politics) was prosecuted, and up until that point people at the top were considered relatively untouchable. Xi also axed the last to vice chairmen of the central military commission, Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, that's the commander in chief of the PLA.
The Zhou Yongkang incident happened over a decade ago, it happened in roughly the first year of Xi Jinping's tenure, Zhou Yongkang was a supporter of the also-purged Bo Xilai, and while he was still in power he ran the department responsible for internal security. I don't doubt the guy was corrupt but this is exactly the sort of target you go after if you want to maintain your own grip on power.
I understand that perspective to some degree, but imagine a hypothetical country with say, two parties in power, where prosecutors only crack down on white collar criminals if they are supporters of one party and not the other. We would call that system corrupt, and probably not celebrate that at least some of the criminals face justice.
Also, from a practical standpoint, charging some and not others is not necessarily better if the selection is made politically. That moves the needle from "at least something got done" to "law is just a tool of oppression".
How else do you propose a system that is fucked like that ever gets unfucked?
What you are alluding to in a kinda of handwavy way is that once a situation is sufficiently corrupt there is no path out of it that includes any amount of justice.
I think your attitude betrays an epistemic position that basically the rule of law can't exist and can't ever be recovered.
To unfuck a system like that you have to have a clean reset of sorts. It will feel unjust because past criminals will all go free, but you have to prioritize future stability. You offer amnesty for past crimes in exchange for absolute transparency and massive structure reforms moving forward.
Or, you do what the democratic party in the US has been afraid to do: Rip the bandaid off, accusations of weaponization of the DOJ be damned. The parent's hypothetical situation is precisely what is happening in the US right now where Garland failed to prosecute, and the entire democratic party was far too afraid of appearing to weaponize the justice system meanwhile the opposition has no qualms about doing so. Yes, the public will view it as entirely partisan but there's no other path forward.
But if you just do nothing at all, eventually the social contract breaks. The cost of the corruption becomes too high and the state fails, or you get a forced regime change.
> But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
> thus celebration that at least something got done
Is it really something to celebrate if:
1. Someone got sentenced to death because they lost some internal power struggle, and bribery was falsely used as the public reason?
2. The guy's getting killed as a scapegoat, or because he pissed off his superiors by not sharing more of his bribes, etc.?
>it's the choice between "prosecute this one or nobody"
Even that assumes a normal of being lucky that anything is prosecuted, ever. So it's good but against a low bar rather than rising to the bar parent commenter suggested.
> Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
The west is inundated with simplistic anti-chinese propaganda, so you would never perceive it as such, the way it would be presented to you in the west is as the evil dictator Xi Jingping purging his opposition, for instance:
Correct, so long as there is a state controlled media and no independent media and we can only speculate on where people who have “disappeared” from public view are, this is exactly the position everyone should hold.
This is single party autocracy, no matter how much people cry about propaganda.
Killing people in any context is barbaric because it is not possible to bring someone back from the dead.
I’m not a law expert but it seems pretty basic that there shouldn’t be irreversible punishment.
Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence, which doesn’t happen anywhere in the world as far as I can understand.
So harsher punishment means people with less power will get shafted harder
Just to be clear - you can't really "reverse" most things. The arrow of time only moves in one direction. People who are jailed and then exonerated do not have their lives "reversed". Their future circumstances are changed. Maybe they are compensated. But they still suffered in jail. You cannot erase that part of their reality anymore than you can raise the dead. This is not to discount your point that making amends while someone is still alive is seen as preferable.
Of course, attempts are made to "reverse" even after someone had been put to death. Posthumous pardons are a thing. It may not bring anything to the person who has passed, but it could give somewhat similar benefits to living descendants.
It's just to say we shouldn't undermine how impactful something like incarceration is on the theory that it is "reversible". Evidence suggests such experiences mess people up in pretty severe ways. Lets also remember thinking of death in these distinct terms may be very cultural. Few penal systems escape barbarity. There are worse things than death. There are many instances or societies were it is preferable or expected people kill themselves rather than go through something like the ignominy of incarceration.
As to the last line, I'm also not sure. Brutal societies have a way of turning on themselves. Nations that accord more protections to their people are generally a better place for their rulers, even if the reverse is not always true. Personally I would love a legal system that baked into its norms higher punishments for people with more power. I think these have existed in the pass, even if enforced through less modern mechanisms.
It is also the case that people in power do things that people with less power are incapable of. Getting rid of notions of executive privilege or qualified immunity would be a good start. The way the law is written currently, people in power won't simply not be punished - they won't even be charged. Take George Bush. Did he ever even just have to testify under oath about the rationale for the Iraq War once? Would the United States really descend into a banana republic if he had been charged for perjury or war crimes? It seems like the push in that direction can instead trace its genesis to the fact that in America, we evidently make our leaders untouchable.
I am not convinced. "You can no longer hold office" is a permanent punishment. Why should that not be allowed?
> Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence
I am also unconvinced. I don't think it is fair to treat a child like an adult and I think those in power should have more stringent standards and larger consequences for violating them.
> I am not convinced. "You can no longer hold office" is a permanent punishment. Why should that not be allowed?
Let's say that some new evidence comes out that exonerates the person. You can indeed reverse the "no longer hold office" punishment. You can't bring someone back from the dead.
Le sigh. Fine, the punishment was you forfeit your chickens to your neighbor. Should those chickens be inedible by the new legal owner? What if they have to return them later if new evidence comes to light?
So what is the alternative punishment for folks like this who have destroyed the lives of countless people ? Hard labour for life in a mine until death ?
We improve it by ensuring the same people don't dominate the justice system and that prosecutions still happen whenever they don't. It was Biden's and his AG's job to do something about this and he fumbled.
What happens to the money in these cases? I could imagine the official taking solace knowing the money he amassed over the years would eventually go his family.
Hang on. City level officials play an incredibly important role in China. While Nanjing is not in the same tier as Shanghai, Beijing, or Shenzhen, it is in the tier just below them. It is the provincial capital of one of China's most important provinces -- GDP similar to Texas. Many large Chinese companies are often tied to specific cities -- they get grants and subsidies via the city they are located in.
This guy did it over 30 years so it is feasible.
Scapegoat isn't the right term but I think it is very possible he is being executed to essentially send a message. I think your bigger point that there are way more corrupt officials than just this guy involved seems very plausible.
That's not how this works. It really depends on how close you are to a position, where people might want to bribe you. Low provincial officials with direct ties to local land development might e.g. be able to take many more bribes than a highly ranked official in an office that is far removed from economic activity.
Nah he took the bribes and probably paid 90% upward/laterally. Being the guy that actually takes the bribe is likely part of how he got promoted to where he is, in a way, like a soldier who gets promoted for being a calculated risk taker.
I don't really understand the mentality of people who do this sort of criminal activity. If he'd stopped after, say, $5m and just retired he'd probably have managed to get away with it. Continuing to such a ridiculous degree through sheer greed led him to a death sentence. That's just plain stupid.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Unless you are extremely crafty, you don’t get to retire from this sort of criminality. Everyone who enabled you wants more and you have a semi-permanent metaphorical sword hanging over your head.
I think your logic makes sense, if this was both logical and about the money. But it seems to be more about greed, discontentment, and "more". There is no limit to "more".
Yup, it's called greed. It's a part of human nature. That's one reason societies create laws and penalties: to discourage harmful behavior and keep that instinct in check.
The topic comment at the time I’m writing this is asking fair questions, in my opinion.
- Many people feel the death penalty is wrong in every case.
- Some have a general familiarity with high-level politics of elites and wonder about selective enforcement.
These don’t feel like they’re in bad faith. The merits are difficult to know from the outside, so there will always be speculation based on someone’s lived experience and perceptions. Better to have those aired with a chance to respond, in my opinion.
Especially for China, since it is a global power that operates differently from others. In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.
Main difference between death penalty in US and China, is in US police officers easily sentence subjects to death and the courts do it with great difficulty. In China the inverse.
For instance, high level executive Bryan Malinowski was executed by the ATF and barely anyone noticed, but if the courts had sentenced him in such way, there would be great outrage.
If we actually punished corrupt officials and we had some kind of truth serum that forced people to admit yes/no as to whether they are corrupt, I would not be surprised if the majority of officials in the federal government would be culled. Its practically a breeding ground for corruption.
If we executed people in Congress who make money in a way that is illicit for the general population we’d be left with like a handful or two left in the congress. They all have PACs and or engage in insider trading.
But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
It’s not totally clear what the consequences were for those purged or if their crimes were legit but seems like they are all in prison.
[1]. https://www.afpc.org/publications/articles/the-inevitability...
He sees it as a challenge to his legitimacy and China’s power, which, as you’d expect are the most important things to him; even if you take the most cynical view.
Another timely example, because it is the World Cup, is the Chinese football programs. They’ve been decimated because of corruption prosecutions, both executives and players. It’s a major reason why China isn’t competitive on the global stage, which much smaller countries with significantly smaller budgets can compete. And, yes, Xi does care about competing in the World Cup. Prestige is very important to his concept of China’s honor and global standing.
While I'm sure he doesn't catch all corruption and the CCP overall has selective enforcement, the reason they do have measures like this is in large part because of Xi Jinping's specific reputation and positioning.
Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply make it legal. I would prefer if our politicians or popular media could at least acknowledge this.
So is crime. But it's all about prevalence.
And not just because corruption has some "indirect taxation" effect, but also because low corruption/trust is a big enabler for a society.
You are never gonna get rid of clannish mentality, vigilantism, nepotism and other undesirable behavior if your citizens don't have any trust in the system.
If you just look at e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Corruptio...
you will see that the spread is very wide, and China/India is significantly behind most western nations.
This thing about not caring about appearances is new. (And also the only thing I commented about.)
Corruption is everywhere and varies in degree. The US likes to claim a mantle of superiority when it seems quite the opposite. We have a bully/greatest conman ever in the white house
no need to speculate, it's already happened. Zhou Yongkang who was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee (the highest governing body in Chinese politics) was prosecuted, and up until that point people at the top were considered relatively untouchable. Xi also axed the last to vice chairmen of the central military commission, Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, that's the commander in chief of the PLA.
it's not a question of "prosecute this one or the other person" - it's the choice between "prosecute this one or nobody"
thus celebration that at least something got done
Also, from a practical standpoint, charging some and not others is not necessarily better if the selection is made politically. That moves the needle from "at least something got done" to "law is just a tool of oppression".
What you are alluding to in a kinda of handwavy way is that once a situation is sufficiently corrupt there is no path out of it that includes any amount of justice.
I think your attitude betrays an epistemic position that basically the rule of law can't exist and can't ever be recovered.
I think that's pretty defeatist and lame.
Or, you do what the democratic party in the US has been afraid to do: Rip the bandaid off, accusations of weaponization of the DOJ be damned. The parent's hypothetical situation is precisely what is happening in the US right now where Garland failed to prosecute, and the entire democratic party was far too afraid of appearing to weaponize the justice system meanwhile the opposition has no qualms about doing so. Yes, the public will view it as entirely partisan but there's no other path forward.
But if you just do nothing at all, eventually the social contract breaks. The cost of the corruption becomes too high and the state fails, or you get a forced regime change.
> thus celebration that at least something got done
Is it really something to celebrate if:
1. Someone got sentenced to death because they lost some internal power struggle, and bribery was falsely used as the public reason?
2. The guy's getting killed as a scapegoat, or because he pissed off his superiors by not sharing more of his bribes, etc.?
Even that assumes a normal of being lucky that anything is prosecuted, ever. So it's good but against a low bar rather than rising to the bar parent commenter suggested.
The west is inundated with simplistic anti-chinese propaganda, so you would never perceive it as such, the way it would be presented to you in the west is as the evil dictator Xi Jingping purging his opposition, for instance:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41670162
This is single party autocracy, no matter how much people cry about propaganda.
I’m not a law expert but it seems pretty basic that there shouldn’t be irreversible punishment.
Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence, which doesn’t happen anywhere in the world as far as I can understand.
So harsher punishment means people with less power will get shafted harder
Of course, attempts are made to "reverse" even after someone had been put to death. Posthumous pardons are a thing. It may not bring anything to the person who has passed, but it could give somewhat similar benefits to living descendants.
It's just to say we shouldn't undermine how impactful something like incarceration is on the theory that it is "reversible". Evidence suggests such experiences mess people up in pretty severe ways. Lets also remember thinking of death in these distinct terms may be very cultural. Few penal systems escape barbarity. There are worse things than death. There are many instances or societies were it is preferable or expected people kill themselves rather than go through something like the ignominy of incarceration.
As to the last line, I'm also not sure. Brutal societies have a way of turning on themselves. Nations that accord more protections to their people are generally a better place for their rulers, even if the reverse is not always true. Personally I would love a legal system that baked into its norms higher punishments for people with more power. I think these have existed in the pass, even if enforced through less modern mechanisms.
It is also the case that people in power do things that people with less power are incapable of. Getting rid of notions of executive privilege or qualified immunity would be a good start. The way the law is written currently, people in power won't simply not be punished - they won't even be charged. Take George Bush. Did he ever even just have to testify under oath about the rationale for the Iraq War once? Would the United States really descend into a banana republic if he had been charged for perjury or war crimes? It seems like the push in that direction can instead trace its genesis to the fact that in America, we evidently make our leaders untouchable.
I am not convinced. "You can no longer hold office" is a permanent punishment. Why should that not be allowed?
> Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence
I am also unconvinced. I don't think it is fair to treat a child like an adult and I think those in power should have more stringent standards and larger consequences for violating them.
Let's say that some new evidence comes out that exonerates the person. You can indeed reverse the "no longer hold office" punishment. You can't bring someone back from the dead.
I agree with you, but we also can't reverse entropy.
It will have the same answer, no
who would be able to prosecute them and how?
who would even investigate them
Inner circle leadership won't be prosecuted anywhere as long as their group holds some power.
So, then, question is, how can this be improved?, can it be improved?
This guy did it over 30 years so it is feasible.
Scapegoat isn't the right term but I think it is very possible he is being executed to essentially send a message. I think your bigger point that there are way more corrupt officials than just this guy involved seems very plausible.
He got away with it for 30 years. That shows at least some level of craftiness.
It's a mentality where you can't stop.
One thing that China does should be adopted in the West.
1. strong defensive positions float to the top... which could be astroturfing.
2. the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.
maybe it's all fair, but on a site where everyone's ~anonymous, it's hard to take the discussion at face value.
- Many people feel the death penalty is wrong in every case.
- Some have a general familiarity with high-level politics of elites and wonder about selective enforcement.
These don’t feel like they’re in bad faith. The merits are difficult to know from the outside, so there will always be speculation based on someone’s lived experience and perceptions. Better to have those aired with a chance to respond, in my opinion.
Especially for China, since it is a global power that operates differently from others. In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.
For instance, high level executive Bryan Malinowski was executed by the ATF and barely anyone noticed, but if the courts had sentenced him in such way, there would be great outrage.
Tariffs on all things Chinese is pretty much an open admission that the West can't compete.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.