China’s new anti-corruption chant: Ensnaring ‘tigers’ and swatting ‘flies’

Tigers or flies – China’s President Xi Jinping has declared his resolve to take on the corrupt no matter how high or mighty they may be. In his speech at a CPC disciplinary watchdog meeting on January 22, 2013, the newly-anointed CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping had called for a crackdown on corruption within the Communist Party. Stating that it was just as important to go after the “flies”, or lowly people, as it was to tackle the “tigers”, or top officials in the battle against graft, he had argued that the Party needed to “earnestly resolve unhealthy tendencies and corruption problems happening all around people”[1] As he took over the reins of the CPC in March this year, President Xi renewed his calls for campaigns against corruption, advocated an open approach to governance and a comprehensive national renewal to make the  “Chinese Dream” a reality[2]. Perhaps the most significant among these anti-corruption calls was the recent sentencing of former Communist Party leader Bo Xilai.

A campaign against corruption

Once a rising politician of the Communist Party, Bo Xilai was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of corruption, embezzlement and abuse of power on September 22, 2013. The conviction was seen by many as an effort by the Xi Jinping’s government to make an example of the Party’s anti-graft norms by:

a) Punishing wrongdoers: The Party’s stand on the Bo Xilai case is reminiscent of the fate met by leaders who fell out of favour with the CCP due to corrupt, ‘anti-Party’ policies.  Bo is being made to suffer the same fate as previous high-level figures Chen Xitong – the late mayor of Beijing who was toppled in the late 1990s and the former party leader Zhao Ziyang, who was ousted for talking to the student leaders ahead of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.[3]His sentencing has gone on to prove that the Party was dead serious about putting in place a tough disciplinary mechanism to prevent corruption among its cadres and punish any violators. The verdict of a life imprisonment sent out clear messages to Party members and the public that the CPC would not tolerate any member associating him/herself with any of the “four forms of decadence” namely: formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance[4]. National anti-corruption legislations therefore allegedly got to be ‘strengthened’ through the trial and relevant intra-party regulations were applied to ensure that national organs exercised their power within the boundary of laws[5]. In the President’s words, the Bo Xilai judgement essentially helped in proving that “Power in the Party was restricted by a cage of regulations.”[6]It at least helped implement the former’s lofty ideals of “winning people’s trust with concrete results by fighting corruption at every level, punishing every corrupt official and eradicating the soil that bred corruption” [7]

b) Adopting an open approach to governance: Bo Xilai’s trial was attended by 110 people in the courtroom in Jinan- a rarity in the PRC as “courts in China are often under the Party’s thumb.” Though reporters from foreign media houses were prohibited from entering the courtroom, the court’s very decision to release transcripts of the trial on the micro-blogging site Sina Weibo marked an unusual ‘openness’ in what is normally a closed, secret political/legislative process. Video footage and photographs released online ultimately helped the general public access an ‘insider’s view’ on the prosecution’s arguments and Bo’s “spirited defence”. Netizens could therefore express their support for the Chinese judicial process or even ‘dare’ to express some for Bo. Metaphorically put, the Bo Xilai judgement had helped the Xi government snare a massive ‘tiger.’

An image-boosting exercise

However, many have also argued that the above ‘anti-corruption’ measures were less about fighting corruption and more to make the party members toe the new leadership’s line. For instance, David Zweig from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has argued that, “The objective of Bo’s trial was not to uncover corruption, but to ensure he was silenced and that the ending of his political career has the broader aim of weakening the party’s left-wing elements.” [8] Zweig’s view has also been endorsed by Minxin Pei, Professor of Political Science at Claremont McKenna University, who stated that “Corruption might destroy the Party, but fighting corruption will definitely destroy the Party.” “Corruption is the lifeblood of the Chinese government…The Communist Party is a patronage machine and patronage by definition is corruption. Fighting corruption would require Chinese government officials to live like monks, and nobody joins the Chinese government in order to live like a monk.”, according to Pei. [9]

Thus, critics of Xi’s ‘anti-corruption’ policies argue that the Bo Xilai trial was more a response by the party to the looming threat of Bo’s radical Maoist policies as opposed to battling corruption. Media reports in China and abroad have talked extensively about the wealth collected and displayed by CPC officials though nothing much had ever been done about it previously. Analysts argue that the trial, therefore, cleverly gave the appearance of fighting corruption and proved to be a good image boosting exercise for the Xi Jinping government rather than helping it exercise any anti-corruption policies in practise.

China’s twitterati, too, has been rather vocal on the subject. With some Weibo users calling the judgement a ‘political battle ‘to ensure a smooth transfer of power to the new leadership’, few expressing their support for Bo and still others hailing the judgement, Chinese netizens are slowly forcing the Xi leadership to ensure that its ‘cage of regulations’ is tightly latched. With more public opinion coming to the fore, the Xi Jinping government ultimately needs to fling its ‘anti-graft’ net far across the Party to tackle both ‘tigers’ and ‘flies’ alike.

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