Xi Gives Bo Sentence the Seal of Approval. Now What?

Seeking to push through banking reforms at the upcoming Communist Party plenum, Xi Jinping has given the stamp of approval on the sentencing to life imprisonment of Bo Xilai.

Convicted of everything they could think of and then some, Bo is rumored to be spending the rest of his days locked up in Qinsheng Prison.  With his wife given a suspended death sentence for the murder of Neil Heywood and Wang Lijun and his former right hand man in Chongqing serving time for an assortment of disciplinary breaches, the major players in the scandal have been quite publicly silenced.  Unless Bo Guagua gets all Michael Corleone on the CCP that is.

Sending the message that dissent from the Party line isn't to be tolerated, the Global Times said that Bo's life sentence was anything but "empty talk", despite the fact that senior Party members haven't yet been formally investigated for their alleged roles in shifting large amounts of money from bank account to state owned company to offshore bank account (former Premier Wen, we're looking in your direction), the anti-corruption crackdown is continuing according to plan.  Take a sip of that luxury baijiu that was left unattended on reception.  Light up a Golden Panda cigarette (we're pretty sure they exist), help yourself to a 600rmb mooncake and think about the great job that you made of things.

Now think about how you're going to handle Zhou "The Bulldog" Yongkang.  His son was recently picked in Singapore after spending time in the US, desperate to evade extradition by hunkering down with his wife.  Conflicting reports of whether he actually got there or not have been circulating for some time, and there was a rumor that the senior Zhou would follow suit, but he has reportedly been placed under house arrest, while he helps the police with their inquiries.

Supporting Bo Xilai in his formative years hasn't served The Bulldog well, and now, pushing 70, he finds himself increasingly isolated, with official reports of his movements being scrubbed from state media.  Former cronies Jiang Jiemin, Jin Jianping, Li Chuncheng, Guo Yongxiang and a close "business associate" Wu Bing have all been taken into custody.

In the irony of ironies, Xi seems now to be embracing the Maoist throwbacks that the previous administration has sounded comdemned.  With all this talk of making sure that officials "pursue the mass line" and announcing at a recent PR event that Red China will never lose it's color, one can only imagine the trouble that he would be if he weren't the boss.  The leaked Document 9 shows how much they're battening down the hatches, and it can only be hoped that Xi's offensive defense isn't going to backfire on him anytime soon.

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Five Strangest Targets of the Anti-Corruption Campaign

Ridding the Party of hedonism and excess has given us a fairly sensible ban on lavish, expensive banquets held for minor guests of the state, and even veteran China watchers are feeling the pinch.  The nation's prostitution and liquor industries have been decimated. Rumblings from the lower echelons of the CCP hierarchy tell of daily Party directives detailing how multimillionaire politicians can act like a poor person are dispatched from Zhongnanhai (er, can we check this? Ed.).

Some of the items on the Do Not Buy List are a little odd to say the least, and one wonders how the princelings are really going to cope in this new age of austerity.  At best they provide an insight into actually how much officials got away with - one can only wonder what didn't make the list.

On the bright side, at least there's no danger of car pooling your teenage daughter with Lei Zhengfu.

The Myth of Xi Jin Ping's Corruption Crackdown

The aggressive corruption clean out is giving the Party a much needed spring clean, even some of the major movers and shakers have had their intimate circles delicately probed according to Chinese law.

Top officials have been falling left, right and center, and the Disciplinary Committee continues to investigate the biggest tigers and the smallest flies (providing they don't accidentally, brutally beat themselves to death whilst under interrogation).  Some of the more cynical among the China watchers might just wonder if the intentions of the anti-graft crackdown are completely honorable.

Writing in CNN, Jamie FlorCruz doesn't believe that initiative aimed at cleaning up the Party are all they are cracked up to be.

"Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, senior leaders, as a means of ensuring unity and continuity of Communist Party rule, have honored the agreement not to prosecute each other," [Gordon G.] Chang said. "If they can no longer be sure they are safe in retirement, politics will inevitably return to the brutishness of the Maoist era. Deng Xiaoping lowered the cost of losing political struggles. Xi Jinping is raising the stakes, perhaps to extremely high levels."

The point being that a fair number of flies might have been caught out breaking the 11th commandment, but very few of the higher ups have been targeted.  Even before the article was published, rumors that Zhou Yongkang was being investigated were quashed, and now he's just helping the police with their inquiries.

With widening gulfs between the super-rich, the rich and the impossibly poor in the country, a campaign that unifies the people behind a common has the double prizer of taking people's mind off domestic issues, and bolstering support for the CCP at a grassroots level.  The leaking of Document 9 shows just how much of a hardliner Xi can be, attacking western values and ideas, placating the old guard that still wields considerable power in the corridors of The Great Hall of the People.

Making sure that they play to "remember the bad old days?" dictum that has served them so well over the years, China has made sure to show that that aren't kowtowing to foreigners either.  Parading those on TV who dare to break Chinese laws sends a message to lowest common denominator that even though more economic reforms are planned. Clearly demonstrating that despite the influx of foreigners and foreign companies into China, there will be no repeat of the century of humiliation, the bitter memories of which still evoke strong reactionary pieces in state media.

For those with long memories, eradicating corruption has always been a stalwart in the arsenal of any Chinese administration.  Unlike his predecessor, Hu Jin Tao, who dallied and eventually became eclipsed by Granpa Wen's affection for comforting disaster victims, Xi Jin Ping seems to have a firmer grip on the PR that's needed to sell the Party to a new generation of wealthier Chinese.

The good news is that going after corrupt officials in China is pretty much shooting fish.  So long as a high profile case is dragged out every so often to let people know that they're still serious about it, this particular PR offensive has little chance of running out of steam.  Since there's little chance of him leveling senior officials that back his leadership in the Disciplinary Committee's sights, the only ones that are left are those who have outlived their usefulness.  With another ten years of Xi's rule ahead of us, it'll be a long time before we see any "Mission Accomplished" banners on Chinese aircraft carriers.

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Chinese Official Drowned During Corruption Interrogation

It seems that the even though the Chinese government have been trumpeting the anti-corruption trials and investigations as shining examples of truth, justice and fairness, not everyone has been listening.

In an attempt to extort a confession from Yu Qiyithe chief engineer of a state-owned company in the eastern city of Wenzhou, investigators held his head underwater in a bath of icy water.  They only stopped the torture when he stopped struggling.  He was rushed to a local hosipital where he later died.  The five investgators from the Party's disciplinary committee and one local prosecutor have been charged with intentional injury, although that allegation might be the least of their worries.

Held for questioning over a 38 day period, Yu's wife alleges that  "Yu Qiyi was a strong man before he was detained... but was skinny when he died," she said in an interview in a local newspaper, "He was bruised internally and externally during the 38 days (in detention). He must have been tortured in other ways besides the drowning exposed by the prosecution," she added.

A post-mortem showed he had been made to "imbibe liquids" that caused pulmonary dysfunction and eventually his death, according to a photograph of a forensic document carried by the newspaper.

It's not the first time that overzealous crusaders have been caught beating the life out of officials suspected of graft.  In June, Qian Guoliang, was killed during interrogation.  After convulsions and losing consciousness, he was taken to hospital where he too died after attempts to save him failed.

In both cases, these lower level officials have not been important enough to warranty the somewhat more comfortable treatment afforded to Bo Xi Lai, with investigators using the shady system of shanggui(double regulations) to question the "flies" accused of graft.  Speaking to the New York Times on the matter, Mr. Qian's lawyer, Shi Weijiang said

“The practice of shuanggui is above and outside the law, yet it is so commonly used.  It is highly dangerous. I’m afraid this death won’t be the last if this practice continues.”

It seems that even if you are going after tigers and flies, the tigers still manage to get to have their say in the dock more often than the flies.

TV Confessions Unnerve Top Execs

In throwback to the Mao-era public confession that defined The Cultural Revolution, the fashion for parading detained suspects, particularly high profile figures like Charles Xue might be good for Party propaganda but more lawyers are saying that the practice makes a mockery of the legal process.  Making an example of rumor mongers and those indicted on charges of corruption  send the required chilling effect through the business community and party cadres, coerced confessions do little to bolster confidence in rule of law.

“If involuntary to any degree, the admissibility of the confessions is in question,” said James Zimmerman, a managing partner at law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton and a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce China.

China commentators haven't been blinded to the idea that despite denouncing the Mao-era polices that Bo Xi Lai was criticized over in the last Party meeting seems now to have become de riguer .

Publicising confessions before a formal criminal process could reflect “a wider trend of returning to Mao-style criminal justice”, said Eva Pils, law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

 

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Bo Xi Lai: Optimism on Trial

Cynics get a bad press, and nowhere is cynicism more prevalent than in China.

Almost daily, stories of some government official or other taking backhanders in a property development, giving his son or daughter a job they’re woefully underqualfied to do, endless tales of sexual abuse, impropriety and an assortment of other scandals could wear down even the sunniest of optimists.

The brazen twofacedness of Chinese politicians could break the spirit of Lei Feng himself, the passive aggressiveness of Chinese foreign policy apparently does more to contribute to Chinese development that global development and does nothing to secure China as a the world power that it pretends it is.

China is a country with problems, it's very true, and the Party has done much to make sure that the idea that the Communist Party and only the Communist Party can solve these problems (given enough time) has become firmly ingrained in the psyche of the average Zhou.

Thus the message of the leadership is that Chinese people should be optimistic about their future, and the future of their country, because the Chinese Communist Party is doing everything it can to improve the country, raise the people out of poverty, and put them on the right path to a socialist Shangri-La. And it’s the mindless optimism is exactly what China's problem is.

During The Cultural Revolution, everyone was paid a set amount of money regardless of the work that they did, and farmers dutifully went out into the fields and did absolutely no work, leaving the crops to fail and being paid for the privilege. These days the Chinese have more food than they can stomach, but it’s a famine of innovation that is plaguing the country. Copyright laws are flaunted, and opportunistic snake oilers copy Western ideas and products, knocking them out under substandard quality control, selling them for half the price of their western counterparts, and running off with the cash.

Confident that things will improve by themselves, the optimist contributes little, relies on the status-quo, and retires, happy that a days work has meant a days pay, and that the family has been provided for. The cynic recognizes the problems, the delays and the obstacles and work hard to overcome them, confident that at the end of it, there’ll be a bigger pay off that the optimist could ever dream of.

Writing in The Guardian, Julian Bagnini espoused the virtues of the cynical,

Perhaps the greatest slur against cynicism is that it nurtures a fatalistic pessimism, a belief that nothing can ever be improved. There are lazy forms of cynicism of which this is certainly true. But at its best, cynicism is a greater force for progress than optimism. The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success. Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren't that bad and are bound to get better anyway.

China watchers have gotten a bad press during the trial of Bo Xi Lai, dismissing the whole thing as a scripted show trial that nothing good will come off.  It's easy to take the side of cynic with this one.  After writing a few self-criticisms and saying that they were really quite sorry for what happened, many of them have been let off the hook.  A few token sackings have been issued to keep the junior officials on their toes, but, by and large, the scandal has been limited to a few key players, with nothing of the reform that many believed would take place under Xi Jin Ping's governance.

One of the key factors in this almost universal dismissal is that the trial really isn't aimed at Chinese people.  To a certain degree, the whole thing is a PR event, you would be something of an optimist to believe that anyone is getting a fair trial in China, one just has to look at the ongoing debacle surrounding Li Tianyi's rape case to see that.

Bo's trial serves the Party in two ways.  In the first, it is intended to show-off the transparent nature of the usually opaque Chinese legal system to the outside world.  News coverage has been to tightly controlled to allow anything beyond the terse courtroom transcripts being published in the Chinese media.  Even though the proceedings were being tweeted via the Jinan court's Weibo account, no discussion was allowed, and comments on the news feed have been disabled.  Rule of law has been notoriously difficult to come by in China, and foreign companies love complaining about how difficult it is to do business.

By showing that not even high level officials like Bo are above the law (although when news broke of Wen Jia Bao's wealth in the New York Times, the newspapers website was promptly blocked in the mainland) the Chinese government seeks to placate investors wary of ploughing money into something that might get spirited away in some dodgy pyramid scheme involving property in Monaco.  Venture capitalists take risks for a living, but in a place that seems to offer no legal protection, not a penny will be spent on expanding a western brand into China.

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Secondly, the trial is intended to send the message to party cadres that corruption is a problem, and if you're in the wrong place at the right time, then you could end up in the dock.

Editorials from state-run media in China have been suggesting that eradicating graft entirely isn't possible, promoting the idea that the "level of corruption" should be brought down to a level acceptable to the public.  The Global Times editorial that drew most fire from China watchers was called (after a couple of revision by QQ.com to sex it up a little) The Public Should Understand that China Must Permit Moderate Corruption:

There is no way in any country to “root out” corruption. Most critical is containing it to a level acceptable to the public. And to do this is, for China, especially difficult.…  The public must also understand … the objective fact and reality that China has no way of entirely suppressing corruption without sending the whole country into pain and confusion. Fighting corruption is a difficult task in China’s social development. But its victory relies at the same time on the elimination of other obstructions in other areas of battle. China can’t conceivably be in a situation where it is a country behind in all other areas, but where its officials are really clean. Even if that were possible, it would not be sustainable.

Threatening the general public with the idea that graft is the lifeblood of China, and without it a return to the bad old days of civil war, famine and rule by warlords didn't win any popularity competitions with the Chinese people on Weibo either. Some users wryly noted that after moderate corruption receives the stamp of approval from the Politburo, moderate murder will be next.

Shanghai based journalist Adam Minter ended his analysis of the furor that followed the publication of the editorial by pointing out that no one had actually defined what "moderate corruption" was, leaving plenty of wiggle room for any politicians unfortunate enough to have people like Wang Li Jun as friends.

That the trial has apparently drawn so much in the way of cynical coverage is a testament to the international misfires of the Chinese government when it comes to promoting itself overseas.  While they've had plenty of practice selling the idea of Communist leadership pretty successfully to the Chinese, by their nature, western journalists are cynical.

Given enough prodding, some politicians will end up in front of a judge, there are a myriad other failings that the Chinese government is yet to even admit to.  Getting a politician like Bo Xi Lai to admit to taking backhanders while parents in Sichaun and still trying to get a straight answer out of officials who sanctioned the tofu building that so quickly collapsed with a massive earthquake hit the province in 2008 is quite simply too little, too late.  The failures of leadership and and the repeated lack of accountability by the CCP, accompanied by Soviet-era references to Marxism, Maoism and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics has done little to engender trust between foreign journalists and Chinese officials, and even less to bolster the image of the Chinese abroad.

The Chinese are past masters as manipulating fears and propagating their own noble crusades against unseen enemies that, according to them, seek to destroy the core values that every patriotic Chinese person holds dear.

Previously, the CCP has sought legitimacy by reminding people that things are much better these days than they were before.  Exploiting the bitter memories many have of the invasion by the Japanese and other foreign powers, while at the same time, making sure that everyone knows who it was that lifted the Chinese people out of abject poverty to become the world's second largest economy.  Embracing propaganda campaigns that are more borrowed from George Bush and his neoconservatives than from Mao, represent a more cynical move forward than the pessimistic step backward that many of Bo Xi Lai's supporters would've approved of.

 

Chinese Dream Still Within Reach

Whatever the Chinese Dream is, and it doesn't seem that anyone knows for sure, the good news is that it's within reach for most Chinese, so say the good folk of the South China Morning Post.  Asking no less that six (or, possibly, seven) key questions, concluding that

Although there are still many difficult mountains to climb, if China succeeds in delivering a new social contract to its people and a new custodianship in the global commons, China's real renaissance could well be just around the corner.

Although there's no mention of how this renaissance is to be achieved, it only buries a brief contemplation of how social governance and corruption can be managed.  While the Chinese government has done an excellent job of selling the idea of reform to western news media, Xi Jin Ping wants both liberals to power a new age of reform and innovation, at the same time, he is honoring the ghost of Mao by having his state security goons placing a good number of activists, protestors and dissidents under house arrest.

Last but not least, we should ask whether China, a rising world power, could learn to be at peace with itself and the world. In recent years, China has become the largest contributor of peacekeeping forces among permanent members of the UN Security Council. It also chairs an anti-piracy co- ordination committee, plays a crucial role in six-party talks on North Korea, and most recently hosted separate meetings in Beijing with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. A rising China is thus likely to embrace a greater role in maintaining world order. What remains unclear is how it will respond to rising domestic social and political aspirations.

China does seem to be more interested in it's position as a superpower, although meddling in the issues of other countries puts it in an embarrassing position when news of it's own crackdowns and political missteps eventually leaks out.

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Gordon G. Chang: Does China Need a "Jin Ping The Great"?

Still predicting the fall of China several years on from the book that made his name Gordon G. Chang writes more about why China will never be awesome.  Again.

Xi’s changes have been noticeable. Chinese officials no longer talk about “harmony,” the theme of Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. They now lavishly praise Xi’s “China Dream.” Beijing is big on show campaigns, like the one against displays of official extravagance. Disturbingly, Xi has been responsible for a resurgence of Maoist imagery. Cadres these days are fond of talking about the “mass line,” for instance. The crackdown on human rights has intensified, and the atmosphere at this moment is even worse than it was during the dismal years over which Hu presided. And Xi has played to the military, allowing flag officers to engage in a series of provocations against China’s neighbors to the south and east, especially India, the Philippines, and Japan.

That Deng presided over sweeping reforms and civil liberties simply isn't true. Deng approved the military action in Tienanmen Square in 1989, and that there wasn't really much of a "reform and opening up", the CCP just stopped interfering with people's lives so damn much.

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Did Xi Jin Ping Recieve "Help" At University?

An interesting report on The Australian a couple of days ago says that Xi Jin Ping may have cheated been "helped" while he was writing his final dissertation.  Also, the actual content didn't have that much to do with the actual degree that he was studying for.  While Xi was allegedlystudying for his law degree, the thesis he submitted was entitled "A Tentative Study on China's Rural Marketisation".

In the text, Mr Xi thanks three academics and a researcher "for giving me great help while I was writing the paper". It cites as sources 97 books in Chinese and 26 in English. Mr Xi's official biography says the degree was granted through an "on the job" programme in Marxist theory and ideological education for work done between 1998 and 2002.

Given the huge amount of cheating helping that goes on during the insanity that is gaokao week, it's probably not much of a surprise that the leader of this great nation (China, in case you're wondering) did a bit of cut and pasting from Wikipedia in his younger days too.

Xi was not alone in having trouble fitting in his studies, since he was also working at the governor of Fujian, and earning pocket money as deputy leader of the province's Communist party.  It a wonder that he found time to attended lectures at all...

Literary scholars found several areas in the 161-page dissertation that would raise academic eyebrows - among them what seemed a lack of original research by Mr Xi.

They said it appeared to combine extracts from government reports with translations from foreign works in a leaden Marxist style, suggesting it was drafted by a group and finalised by the author.

Well, that's what communism is, right?

A Risky Business: Whistleblowing in China

In a bid to bolster it's image in China and abroad, Xi Jin Ping is leading a crackdown on corruption, but the consequences that some whistleblowers face might take the wind out of the CCP's anti-graft sails. 

The English voice of Chinese party propaganda, The China Daily, could hardly contain itself when Ed Snowden went public with details of the NSA’s PRISM project.  “This is not the first time that U.S. government agencies’ wrongdoings have aroused widespread public concern,” it bellowed.  Certain that political Armageddon would follow, “experts” painted a picture of “strained” US-Chinese ties, with the reassurance that hardworking Chinese diplomats would once again ensure world peace.

The news came after a testing time for the Chinese.  A PLA backed hacker group had been identified and publicly exposed by US cybersecurity analysts, Google accused the Chinese of hacking into it’s servers, and Hilary Clinton had singled out China especially her Internet freedoms tour.  Thankfully, news of the NSA spying on it’s own citizens, using services that had long been demonized in the Chinese press, broke in the nick of time.  Fueling the fire further, the whistleblower had sought refuge in Hong Kong, prompting a slew of amusing tweets, one noting that a freedom of speech hacktivist seeking asylum in China would be akin to a religious rights activist seeking refuge in Tibet.  State media wasted no time in using the story to reiterate China’s commitment to cybersecurity, while neatly sidestepping any suggestion that it’s government actively censors Internet content and selectively blocks sites based outside of China.

Blocking social media sites in China has a number of benefits for the country’s ruling Communist Party.  First, there’s little chance of a copycat Jasmine Revolution, Facebook being blamed for everything from Tibetan self-immolations to riots in Xinjiang.  Secondly, and possibly more importantly, the Chinese start-ups that would ordinarily face competition from the likes of Twitter, Youtube and Facebook are free to flourish with millions of users being served millions of ads.  The systems operate within Chinese cyberspace, and are therefore subject to the filtering, deletion and blocking that is part and parcel of Internet life these days in China.

Chinese spokespeople repeatedly cower behind a variety of excuses to justify it’s blocking of “harmful content”.  The Internet in China isn’t censored, it’s carefully managed “in accordance with relevant laws and regulations” - dissenting voices are quietly shut down, and unfavorable news coverage from overseas is blocked by what has become known as The Great Firewall of China.  When an investigation by the New York Times revealed former Premier Wen Jia Bao had a personal fortune of $120million, the entire NYT website was blacklisted and blocked lest his incredible wealth become common knowledge amongst the Chinese.

Tackling corruption, especially with Bo Xi Lai’s trial looming, is top of the CCP’s agenda.  It’s not the first time that the government has tried to get a grip on backhanders in the People’s Republic.  In 2009, the government set up a website that allowed citizens to report anyone suspected of graft, traffic was so high that hours after it was officially launched, it crashed, unable to cope with the huge volume of traffic.

Events took a more sinister turn earlier in the July of this year, when a well known anti-corruption crusader, Li Jian Xin was attacked, kidnapped and doused in acid.  After being hacked at with knives, he was left in a pool of his own blood to be discovered by a local woman in a park several hours later.  Using the pseudonym “Uncle Ou of Huiyang”, Li had posted several reports on a website that embarrassed local officials.  Li was left blind in one eye and had to have two skin grafts in Huizhou Municipal Hospital following the attack.

Despite publicly calling for more whistleblowers like Li to report cases of corruption, and the technical provision of whistleblower protection established, the law doesn’t provide adequate protection when it comes to revenge crimes.  The maximum sentence that can be handed down in such a case is seven years.  As is common in China, the law exist, but they’re just not enforced by anyone.  Those who make legal challenges are often hounded and victimized.  Earlier last month, after signing an open letter that demanded certain officials disclose their assets, eight people were placed under house arrest in Beijing.  Their lawyer, Xu Zhi Yong had his computers and mobile phone confiscated.

Journalists who try to expose the misdeeds of the Party elite.  Lei Zhengfu, a cadre in Bo Xi Lai’s former stomping ground of Chongqing was filmed having sex with his 18-year-old mistress and was subsequently arrested, imprisoned and kicked out of the Communist Party.  The blogger and amateur muckraker Zhu Rui Feng who came into possession of the Lei’s sex tape.

Not counting a couple of death threats that were probably made by disgruntled associates of Lei, Zhu was didn’t attract the attention that had traditionally accompanied such high profile exposes.  In an interview with the Washington Post, he reflected, “In the past, I’ve encountered a lot of threats, censorship and even kidnapping, but this time, my Web site wasn’t shut down. There was no blocking or attack.  I think maybe the sky really is changing.”  Two months later, the police, claiming to be from the Beijing Security Bureau were knocking on his door.  Worried that he might be “disappeared” by the authorities in Chongqing, Zhu has sent copies of other, unreleased sex tapes to friends overseas, with instructions that should he go missing, the tapes should be released.

The extramarital exploits create another, more unlikely, breed of whistleblower - the jilted lover.  Fan Yue, a deputy director at The State Administration of Archives, was due to marry a 26-year-old, Jin Yang Nan.  When she discovered that he had married long before they even met, Jin took to the Internet to get her revenge, posting photos and a detailed shopping list of the luxury goods that Fan had showered her with - luxury items that he shouldn’t have been technically able to buy on his “modest” government salary.

The first time “they went shopping, Ji said, the couple went to Prada and paid $10,000 for a skirt, a purse and a scarf. A month after they met, Fan rented an apartment for them that cost $1,500 a month and spent more than $16,000 on bedsheets, home appliances, an Apple desktop and a laptop, according to Ji. Then he bought her a silver Audi A5, priced in the United States at about $40,000, she said. ... 'He put cash into my purse every day,' said Ji in a letter to the Communist Party complaining about Fan's behavior," the story was originally that carried on The Washington Post revealed.

The photos, which spread across the Internet faster than Chinese censors could delete them show the kind of life that one can lead in the upper echelons of government.  After they had been engaged for a year, Ji repeatedly asked why they hadn’t started planning their wedding, and details of his existing marriage soon emerged.  Determined to get even, Ji published the photos on the Internet, and started handing out videos on DVD at the gates of Zhong Nan Hai - the secretive government compound in Beijing.

It’s apparent that the anti-corrupt campaign is nothing more than another PR stunt by the Chinese Communist Party.  When it was announced that Xi Jin Ping would be cleaning up the Party’s reputation, a number of anonymous editorials suggested that wiping out corruption completely would be impossible and that it would be best to focus on reducing it to a level that would be acceptable to the general populous.

State media has pounced on the court cases, proclaiming them China’s watershed moment, where the rule of law actually does mean rule of law.  Xinhua, the state run media organization reported on the trial of form Ministry of Railways chief, Liu Zhi Jun saying “The sentencing shows on one hand the judicial system and top leaders' resolve to target both high-ranking "tigers" and low-ranking "flies" in its anti-corruption efforts, and on the other hand the judicial spirit of everyone is equal before the law,” adding that the Party was “Ringing a renewed alarm to the 85 million Party members, especially officials, Liu's case reflects the CPC Central Committee's determination to investigate each graft case and punish any corrupt official.”  An editorial by the China News Service said that the indictment of Bo Xi Lai "tells the whole party and the entire society that in a country ruled by law," it said. "No matter who you are, no matter how high your ranking is, you will be seriously investigated and severely punished if you violate party discipline and state law."

Even officials who are standing trial for bribery and corruption, the off-center wonderland of Chinese politics means that despite earning illicit millions, many still have the support of the public. Neatly turning something that highlights the very worst in a corrupt, one party state, the crackdown on graft turned the murder of Neil Heywood and the imprisonment of Gu Ku Lai for his poisoning became the flagship of the "no one is above the law" rhetoric that the Party is so desperate to impress on the Chinese people.  However, given the actual good that Bo Xi Lai did in his home city of Chongqing, he still has his fans.

In a Marketplace China report last year, the housing plans and school reforms that we enacted under Bo’s leadership of the city meant that even after he was placed under house arrest, many Chongqing residents didn’t believe that he’d been arrested.  Indeed, there are plans for some of his more fervent supporters to protest outside the courthouse in Jinan when the trial begins.  Even in one of the most high profile (and damaging) anti-corruption cases, the whistleblower who blew the lid off the whole thing, Bo's former partner in crime, Wang Li Jun is serving a 15 year sentence for abuse of power.

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