China still has something to fight

 China has officially announced a new wave of anti-corruption purges. The Central Commission for the Inspection of Discipline, the main body of the Communist Party of China specializing in combating corruption and abuse in the party ranks, reported that state-owned enterprises in the fields of energy, finance, infrastructure and pharmaceuticals will be subject to special scrutiny. The relevant communiqué was issued following the statement of Chinese President Xi Jinping that the anti-corruption situation is still difficult.

And the anti-corruption fight continues again

The fight against corruption in China has become the hallmark of Xi Jinping since becoming President of the People's Republic of China more than a decade ago. And in recent years, the Chinese leader has repeatedly demonstrated that his attitude to eradicate bribery at all levels is serious and for a long time. This week, the Chinese public was officially assured of the continuation and expansion of the anti-corruption campaign, pointing to those who will be targeted.

On Wednesday, the Central Commission on Discipline Inspection, the most important anti-corruption and political disciplinary body of the Communist Party of China, issued a communiqué stating that priority would be given to investigations in the financial, agricultural and pharmaceutical sectors, as well as at state-owned enterprises, which play a central role in the country's economy.

The document appeared two days after the meeting of high-ranking members of this commission with the President of the People's Republic of China, at which Xi Jinping called for "perseverance, perseverance and accuracy" in the fight against corruption. "It is very important to make our top priority the suppression of any collusion between officials and businessmen, the fight against self-serving activity with the help of the authorities, it is necessary to resolutely prevent the penetration of interest groups and power groups into the political sphere," Comrade Xi was quoted by the state media on Monday.

Back in 2018, Xi Jinping first announced a victory over corruption. However, the following years showed that the joy was somewhat premature. Which, in fact, Xi Jinping himself admitted this week. On Monday, the President of the People's Republic of China noted: although ten years of tireless efforts to fight corruption have brought a "staggering victory," the situation remains difficult.

"We should never turn back, relax or show mercy in our fight against corruption," Mr. Xi told the members of the main anti-corruption body.

According to the Central Commission for the Inspection of Discipline, over the past decade, 4.7 million officials have been investigated in China, of which about 1.5 million people have been subjected to various punishments. Someone got off with the party's expulsion and dismissal, and someone received very long prison sentences with the confiscation of property.

At the same time, the past year turned out to be especially "rich" on the landings of corrupt officials, and not from the category of "flies", as small stolen officials were called in China, but from the category of "tigers", that is, representatives of the highest political and business elite of the country.

A corrupt official sits on a corrupt official and waves a corrupt official

In total, more than 100 top managers of financial institutions were under investigation for the whole of 2023 - almost twice as many as a year earlier. It is not for not that at the new stage of the anti-corruption fight, one of the main emphasis was placed on the field of finance. Former President of the State Bank of China Liu Liange, former head of the state-owned China Life Insurance Wang Bin, former vice-president of the State Development Bank of China Wang Yongsheng are just a small part of those who burned on receiving bribes last year.

And this year's "pleiad" of exposed high-ranking corrupt officials promises to become no less bright.

In the first week of January alone, the Chinese prosecutor's office reported the arrest of former top managers of the China National Petroleum Corporation, China Taiping Insurance State Insurance Corporation and China Everbright Group Corporation.

One of the main evidence that the work on the anti-corruption front is an unstarted edge was the situation in the military sphere. The most resonant case was the removal of the post of Defense Minister of the People's Republic of China, Li Shangfu, presumably due to corruption schemes during his previous position as head of the Department of Military Procurement of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA). But this was only the beginning: following the removal from all posts of the head of the defense department in December, nine deputies were removed from the National Council of People's Representatives (Chinese parliament), including high-ranking heads of the PLA unit controlling China's nuclear and conventional missile arsenals and officials of state-owned enterprises related to the defense sector.

In the West, closely following Xi Jinping's large-scale campaign to clean up military ranks from the mudsers, this even gave rise to a curious theory. According to Bloomberg, citing some informed sources, corruption among the military in China was so widespread that instead of fuel, missiles in the country are actually filled with water.

In the expert community, these assumptions were called, to put it mildly, untenable, noting that since the 1980s, in principle, China has not developed liquid-fueled missiles using solid-fuel missiles.

And the official Beijing did not comment on it at all.

Meanwhile, in parallel with the doubling of efforts to identify corrupt officials in the ranks of the party, state-owned companies and the army, the Chinese authorities spared no effort and detailed explanations of the internal audience of what is good and what is bad. In the new year, a four-part documentary about bribe takers, created by the very Central Commission for the Inspection of Discipline, was released on Central Chinese television. One of his heroes was, in particular, the former deputy head of the People's Bank of China Fan Yifei, who lost his post and party card last summer for kickbacks from company executives in exchange for loans. How many years behind bars will corruption turn out for him, the court has not yet decided.

I wanted to be an official and at the same time rich. I was completely wrong," admits Mr. Fan in the final episode of the film in edification to others.

In a similar penitential way, Chinese viewers were faced with other heroes of the documentary - for example, the former head of the city of Liupanshui Li Zaiyong, who approved the construction of 23 tourism projects, of which 16 were ineffective or ineffective, or the former chairman of the Chinese Football Association Chen Xuyuan, suspected of some "serious violations of discipline and law".