After the Bo Xilai Trial: Does Corruption Threaten China's Future?

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After the Bo Xilai Trial: Does CorruptionThreaten China's Future?Roderic Broadhurst & Peng WangPublished online: 23 May 2014.

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Corruption associated with toxic food, bogus medicines, grave abuses of power and criminal ‘black societies’ has produced a series of public scandals in China. Without reform, further occurrences could rapidly erode the legit-imacy not just of the police and other judicial organs, but also of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The recent trial of Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party secretary and member of the party’s elite 25-member Politburo, showcased the kind of corruption that China’s past president Hu Jintao warned could lead to ‘the collapse of the Party and the downfall of the state’.1 In 2011, the Bank of China inadvertently reported that between 1994–2008 as many as 18,000 corrupt officials had fled the country for destinations in Europe, America and other parts of Asia, plundering an estimated $120 billion from state-owned enterprises and other criminal activities.2 The costs of maintaining domestic public order have also grown rapidly, and, for the first time, domestic security outlays approved by the 2012 National People’s Congress (NPC) exceeded defence, in part over concerns about the growth of mass protests, fraud, corruption and organised crime, and the need to strengthen weiwen (stability) and social harmony.3

Fighting corruption has become a top priority for the new leadership. At the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CCP Central Committee in November 2013, Xi Jinping, the newly appointed president and general secretary,

After the Bo Xilai Trial: Does Corruption Threaten China’s Future?Roderic Broadhurst and Peng Wang

Roderic Broadhurst is Professor of Criminology at the Australian National University, College of Arts and Social Sciences, and Fellow at the Research School of Asia and the Pacific. He is also Associate Fellow of the Australian Institute of Criminology, and was formerly Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong. Peng Wang is Assistant Professor of Criminology at the University of Hong Kong.

Survival | vol. 56 no. 3 | June–July 2014 | pp. 157–178 DOI 10.1080/00396338.2014.920148

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158 | Roderic Broadhurst and Peng Wang

highlighted the risks posed by corruption to the legitimacy of the party and to China’s economic reform, stressing the importance of strengthening anti-corruption systems.4 A year earlier, in the wake of the Arab Spring, he described corruption as ‘worms breeding in decaying matter’, continuing:

In recent years, some countries have stored up problems over time leading

to seething public anger, civil unrest and government collapse. Corruption

has been an important factor in all this. A great deal of facts tells us that

the worse corruption becomes the only outcome will be the end of the

party and the end of the state! We must be vigilant! … Recently, our party

has had serious discipline and legal cases of a despicable nature [which

have] had a bad political effect and shocked people.5

He has frequently vowed to crack down on both ‘tigers’ and ‘flies’ – that is, powerful leaders and lowly bureaucrats alike – in order to keep power ‘restricted by the cage of regulations’.6

So far, one of the highest-ranking tigers to fall from grace is Bo Xilai. His dramatic fall represents China’s foremost political scandal since the purge of Zhao Ziyang, the former CCP leader, in 1989.7 The case did more than expose the prevalence of corruption among government officials, however. It also showed how anti-corruption drives can be selectively used to target political rivals. It seems customary in Chinese politics for new leaders to crack down on corrupt senior officials at the beginning of their reign, and President Xi has been no exception. A yanda (strike hard) anti-corruption strategy can help new leaders to establish their authority throughout the country, but such campaigns have not, in the long run, curbed corruption, advanced transpar-ency or heightened legitimacy within the Chinese state. Rather, a tendency to use such campaigns to achieve short-term political goals by neutralising rivals risks further tension among China’s leadership and could subvert the evolution of China’s democratic processes, especially within the CCP.

The Chongqing modelSince 2010, policy debates between conservatives and reformers within the CCP had centred on how to balance economic development with the dis-

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After the Bo Xilai Trial: Does Corruption Threaten China’s Future? | 159

tribution of wealth. Two different approaches emerged in 2011 during the so-called ‘cake theory’ dispute between Bo Xilai and Guangdong party sec-retary Wang Yang. (Wang, today one of the four vice premiers of China, had served as Chongqing party chief from 2005–07). The liberal Wang empha-sised the importance of continued economic development by stressing that ‘one must bake a bigger cake first before dividing it’. Bo, in response, argued that Wang’s solution ‘is wrong in practice. If the distribution of the cake is unfair, those who make the cake won’t feel motivated to bake it.’8 Reformers within the party tended to side with Wang Yang, agreeing that ‘baking a bigger cake’ should take priority, while conservatives took the view that ‘dividing the cake’ was more likely to foster development.

At the time, Bo Xilai, a son of Bo Yibo (one of the ‘Eight Immortals’ or elders of the CCP), was widely recognised as a promising ‘second red generation’ leader. He was also perceived as the putative figurehead of the ‘new left’, an amorphous movement characterised by nostalgia for the leadership of Mao Zedong. Bo’s ambition, like that of many so-called ‘princelings’, was to rise to the highest levels of power, which meant mem-bership of the Politburo Standing Committee. Decisions about who will attain leadership positions at that level are often made a decade in advance, so at the 16th Party Congress in 2002, promising party members were identified and groomed for the handful of senior posts expected to become vacant in 2012. Bo Senior personally launched a campaign to support his son’s candidacy, but Xi Jinping, another ‘princeling’ who, like Bo Xilai, survived the tumult of the Cultural Revolution, gained more support, and Bo failed to be elected to one of the prized posts. Bo’s father still sought a seat for his son on the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee at the 17th Party Congress in October 2007, but his death in January 2007 reduced Bo’s political capital. Although Bo did manage to gain a seat on the 25-member Politburo, becoming the party chief of Chongqing, this was in some ways a setback: becoming a party chief in a remote area nor-mally reduces a junior Politburo member’s chances of returning to Beijing and serving on the Politburo Standing Committee. Yet Bo Xilai was deter-mined to use his new position as a springboard for promotion and return to Beijing.9

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The ‘Chongqing model’ that Bo was to champion during his time as the city’s party chief was based on social and economic policies designed to tackle the challenges confronting China’s rapidly expanding cities, includ-ing poor public services, crime and corruption, bleak living conditions and the high costs of transport. Two major campaigns, known as ‘singing red’ and ‘smashing black’, were launched with the media panache for which Bo was to become famous, enabling him to establish a cult-like base of support among the masses.10 The ‘singing red’ campaign (promoting revolutionary songs and ‘red culture’ more generally) was launched in Chongqing in June 2008 to celebrate the CCP’s 90th birthday. The campaign was subsequently adopted by many other cities.11

Criminal organisations are known as ‘black societies’ in China, so Bo and police chief Wang Lijun dubbed their ruthless crackdown on organ-ised crime dai hei (smashing black). Because the campaign exposed collusion between officials (‘umbrellas’) in the Public Security Bureau, courts and the city’s crime groups, Bo specifically targeted ‘red–black collusion’ (mutually beneficial networks between gang bosses, police officers and other officials) and wealthy businessmen who monopolised markets through the use of threats and violence.12 This campaign achieved national prominence for its success: from October 2009 to November 2011, 5,618 suspects were arrested and over 550 criminal groups were suppressed. Seventy-seven government officials, some at senior levels (including Wen Qiang, Chongqing’s former director of the municipality’s justice bureau and deputy police chief), were arrested for allegedly protecting local criminal groups and law-breaking entrepreneurs.13

While these campaigns were under way, Chongqing became one of the fastest-growing province-level regions in China: by 2011, it had achieved an impressive 16.4% year-on-year growth.14 The government allowed peas-ants to register as urban residents and launched a large-scale public housing project, which improved the material circumstances of thousands of people.15 Because it was seen as offering a way to balance economic growth with social equality at a time of increasing social tension, the Chongqing model was widely supported by the masses. The anti-crime and anti- corruption campaign made Bo a hero of the country’s ‘new left’.

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Yet the model was not without its critics, particularly outside Chongqing. The ‘smashing black’ campaign was condemned because it used torture and falsified evidence against political enemies and crime groups alike.16 Tong Zhiwei, a leading law scholar, criticised the trials of Chongqing gang members for neglecting due process and discriminating against local private businesses.17 Chinese liberals soon characterised Bo’s ‘red colour movement’ as a ‘Maoist revival’.18 Zhang Ming, a political scientist at the People’s University of China, noted that ‘red songs are mostly about revo-lution and the violence. Now they only use red songs to praise the party and the party members, so it’s pointless.’19 Wang Yang himself criticised the Chongqing model by suggesting that people ‘study and review CCP history rather than just singing of its brilliance’.20 (Of course, Bo’s campaign against organised crime also contained an implicit criticism of Wang Yang’s period at Chongqing, suggesting that he had tolerated organised crime; and it has been suggested that the model was at least partly intended to eliminate him as a rival for a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee.21) Moreover, Bo’s charismatic leadership style and close ties to officials within the People’s Liberation Army and the party hierarchy could have provoked a challenge to China’s collective leadership system, which discourages charismatic per-sonalities, fearing cults of personality.22 As Francis Fukuyama argued:

Bo Xilai was really a potential bad emperor – he was the only one in the

elite circle with the charisma to break out of the post-Mao consensus …

If Bo had been promoted, he could have upended the system and broken

all the rules.23

Ultimately, the conviction of Bo Xilai was vital for Xi Jinping to cement his formal transition to power and ensure the continued support of the depart-ing leaders.

Bo’s downfallThe trigger for China’s most high-profile scandal since 1989 was the arrest of Wang Lijun, then deputy mayor and police chief of Chongqing. On 24 September 2012, Wang was sentenced by the Chengdu City Intermediate

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People’s Court to 15 years in prison for bending the law for selfish ends, defection, abuse of power and bribe taking.24 More specifically, he was found guilty of abusing his power to cover up the murder of British busi-nessman Neil Heywood by Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai’s wife, and a family aide, Zhang Xiaojun. Before his arrest and conviction, Wang Lijun had secretly reported the involvement of Gu Kailai in the Heywood murder case to Bo, apparently hoping to trade this information for a promotion, or at least to escape an investigation into his own alleged corruption. Instead, he was allegedly slapped, punched and threatened.25 In February 2012, a fearful Wang fled to the US consulate in Chengdu, despite the risk of being labelled a traitor for his actions. Inside the consulate, Wang offered evidence implicating Bo’s family in the Neil Heywood case. His request for political asylum was denied and he was taken into custody by China’s state-security ministry.26 The Wang Lijun incident led to a thorough inves-tigation of Bo’s associates, including his wife. Bo was removed from his party posts soon after.

At the trial of Gu Kailai on 9 August 2012, Gu admitted to poisoning Heywood, claiming that a business dispute between them led Heywood to utter threats against Gu’s son, Bo Guagua. On 20 August 2012, Hefei inter-mediate court sentenced Gu to a suspended death sentence, which, subject to good behaviour, should be commuted to life imprisonment after two years. A year later, on 22 September 2013, Jinan Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Bo Xilai to life imprisonment for taking RMB20 million ($3.3m) in bribes, the embezzlement of about RMB5m ($817,000) dating back to his time as mayor of the city of Dalian, in 1993–2000, and the abuse of power related to his role in covering up the murder of Heywood. The court also deprived him of his political rights for life and confiscated all of his property.27

The response of the CCP leadership to the Bo Xilai case was to depict it as a simple criminal matter rather than a political struggle.28 Bo’s sentence, according to China’s state media, was a victory against corruption.29 The ‘throat and tongue’ of the CCP, the People’s Daily, concluded in an editorial that ‘the resolute punishment of Bo Xilai according to law has fully shown that there are no exceptions in the face of party discipline and state laws’.30 The live micro-blogging of witness statements during Bo’s trial was also

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said to have reflected ‘historic transparency’ and ‘historic progress for the rule of law’ in China.31

Some have questioned this interpretation, however. Zhang Zhi’an, a journalism professor at Sun Yat-Sen University in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has argued that the micro-blog posts were selective and not genuinely available in real time.32 Other concerns have been raised about the details of the Bo family’s connections with the murdered Heywood and the extent and nature of Bo’s own corruption.33 The Chongqing trials were also the first ‘black society’ cases, exposing the systematic use of telecommuni-cations surveillance by government officials, not just to uncover criminal wrongdoing but also, apparently, to monitor political rivals.34

Many Western analysts speculated that the severity of Bo’s sentencing was due to the way he offered a spirited defence during his trial rather than expressing contrition, which angered party leaders.35 Some Western media have suggested that, Heywood’s murder and Wang’s cover-up notwith-standing, Bo is little more than a scapegoat in a political purge: as Minxi Pei put it, ‘Bo’s ambition, aggressiveness and ruthlessness threatened his rivals and constituted his real crime.’36 Yet there is ample reason to believe the charges against Bo had genuine merit. Although they excluded the worst abuses of the ‘smashing black’ campaign, details of Bo’s corruption emerged when his wife, Gu Kailai, testified about how the Bo family main-tained close links with the entrepreneur Xu Ming, who allegedly bribed them to obtain commercial favours.37 Bo’s defence claimed that his wife and Wang were intimates, and that this explained their actions in the Heywood case, but this also provided a motive for Bo to do all he could to stop any resulting scandal.

Structural and symbiotic corruptionAs China specialist Kerry Brown has noted, Bo’s case raised questions about ‘why the party authorities had not known or not acted on his supposed larceny from over a decade ago, but managed in fact to allow him further promotion’.38 Indeed, Bo’s career was an example of how corrupt officials in China often achieve repeated promotion without any apparent fear of criminal investigation.39

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The phenomenon of promotion despite corruption originates in China’s distinctive Confucian bureaucratic culture, which centres on the rule of man rather than the rule of law. The notion of guanxi, which refers to the reciproc-ity of personal relationships, has long shaped the behaviour of the party elite. As Xuezhi Guo has observed, ‘[in theory], the Party relied heavily on Leninist discipline and Communist ideology to control the actions of its members, but in practice these standards were enforced through personal-ized relationships.’40

Through their analysis of a biographical database of Central Committee members, political scientists Victor Shih, Christopher Adolph and Mingxing Liu found that, in the post-reform era, factional ties with senior party leaders, educational qualifications and provincial revenue collection were more important than performance in determining a candidate’s suitability for promotion.41 This suggests that the ‘hidden rule’ of China’s promotion system is the cultivation of personal connections and revenue.

Political factions in China usually form around senior officials’ interpersonal networks. Factional ties can be formed on the basis of having worked in the same region (an example of this is the ‘Shanghai faction’ led by Jiang Zemin42) or in the same work unit (such as the ‘Tuanpai’ or CCP Youth League faction headed by Hu Jintao43). In a guanxi network, members faithfully follow the informal rules of reciprocity and equality. These unspo-ken rules encourage, and sometimes even require, high-ranking officials to distribute opportunities and promotions among those close to them in the network. At the same time, low-level bureaucrats and entrepreneurs usually obtain promotions or business opportunities through bribing senior offi-cials.44 As Yang Jisheng put it,

power itself is traded as a scarce commodity. In China, power trades for

money, power trades for power, and power trades for sex. This has perme-

ated into every field of life including education, human resources and the

law. In today’s China, if you want to achieve something, it doesn’t matter

how talented you are but whether you are connected with people in power.

Those in close relationships with government officials, such as their sons

and daughters, secretaries, drivers and lovers, become power brokers.45

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Given that China’s political system lacks transparency and effective checks and balances, the cultivation by government officials and party members of their own guanxi networks has resulted in widespread corruption in China. Money–power exchanges among network members are considered normal or even necessary, even though these interpersonal activities may fall within the sphere of corruption and nepotism when viewed from the perspective of criminal law. The unwritten rules of guanxi relationships pose fundamental challenges to the anti-corruption efforts of China’s hybrid party–state institu-tions.46 Cracking down on corrupt senior government officials requires that the government destroy the guanxi networks that may shield these officials from legal punishment. Yet the principle of reciprocity and the importance of mianzi (face) among network members often result in attempts to divert punishment onto individuals who are outside the network. In Chinese poli-tics, if an anti-graft campaign targeted a campaign leader’s allies, this would damage the leader’s reputation and cause him or her to lose face within the network. Thus, guanxi networks have proved resilient, despite repeated attempts to crack down on official corruption.

Anti-corruption campaigns: solution or threat?Corruption is widely viewed as a social evil that impedes economic devel-opment, creates political instability, undermines the legitimacy of public institutions and lowers the moral standards of the entire society.47 The ability of the country’s new political leaders to curb corruption is, therefore, fun-damental to China’s future. From the perspective of many ordinary Chinese citizens, corruption is a local problem, which is closely linked to low- and mid-level government officials. The trial of Bo Xilai, however, revealed ‘the rottenness at the heart of Chinese politics’, as the Economist put it.48 Bo’s abuse of authority led to the investigations of other top officials, includ-ing Zhou Yongkang, former secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (also known as ‘second centre of power’ in the CCP) and once a resolute supporter of Bo Xilai.49 (Western media and Chinese-language newspapers outside China have linked Zhou to corruption investigations involving Jiang Jiemin, who headed the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, and four top executives of PetroChina.50)

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The exposure of corruption cases like these can only damage public confidence in the CCP and the state more generally, a prospect the party takes seriously.51 The report submitted by the CCP’s integrity agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), to the 18th National Party Congress stated that 668,429 people had been given ‘party or admin-istrative punishment’ in the past five years. Of the cases investigated by the agency, 24,584 individuals were handed over to judicial authorities. Little is known about the impact of the CCDI on the scale and scope of corruption, though it is clear that many more high-ranking party members (at the xian or chu levels) have been targeted by CCDI investigations than in the past. For example, in the early 1990s, only a handful of members at these levels or higher (sheng or bu) were investigated, but by 2008 this had grown to a few dozen at the higher ranks and to nearly 5,000 among the mid-level ranks.52 A

United Nations study of crime against Chinese busi-nesses showed that corruption was a significant risk to many businesses, but possibly not as extensive as in Eastern Europe or other places undergoing rapid change.53

Yet anti-corruption campaigns, even when osten-sibly successful, can sometimes mask other motives,

signalling, for example, a political purge or an internal power struggle.54 Indeed, anti-corruption drives are a proven political and disciplinary weapon within the CCP. The threat posed by anti-corruption activities enables leaders to achieve internal control: party members who oppose current CCP policy or threaten the interests of party bosses are vulnera-ble to corruption charges. For example, Chen Xitong, a former Politburo member and mayor of Beijing, was dismissed from office in 1995 and sen-tenced to 16 years in prison for corruption and dereliction of duty in 1998. Chen’s removal from power was perhaps as much due to his public con-frontation with Jiang Zemin as to his greed.55 Another Politburo member removed from his position was Chen Liangyu, the former party chief of Shanghai, who was sentenced to 18 years in jail for his involvement in graft and misuse of Shanghai’s social-security funds. His arrest occurred after he challenged then-president Hu Jintao.56

The rule was designed to ensure solidarity

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Like those of previous leaders, Xi Jinping’s campaign is open to political opportunism. After all, the greatest beneficiary of Bo’s demise is arguably Xi himself: not only does cleaning up the party serve to legitimate his tenure as China’s new president, but all the ‘tigers’ that have been investigated or prosecuted thus far seem to be Xi’s political rivals.57 Yet this approach risks undermining the solidarity among the elite and could subvert the prospects of advancing democratic reforms both within the party and China’s public institutions more broadly.58 If Xi’s ‘tiger hunting’ expedition succeeds in bringing down Zhou Yongkang, for instance, this would break an unwrit-ten rule, devised by Deng Xiaoping after the Cultural Revolution, requiring that past and present members of the Politburo Standing Committee not prosecute each other.59 The rule was designed to ensure solidarity within the party and lower the cost of losing a political struggle. Any move against Zhou or others like him could amplify divisions amongst China’s leader-ship, thus threatening the state’s ability to carry out vital reforms. At the same time, if Xi’s campaign is seen to be partial or incomplete, particularly if he is judged to have spared members of his own guanxi network, this will only serve to further undermine the legitimacy of the CCP and deepen the public’s disillusionment.60

One indicator of a genuine will to suppress corruption would be the further development of the unexplained-wealth laws added to China’s criminal code in 2009 (cf. Article 395 PRC Criminal Code).61 Another would be the rapidity with which public asset-disclosure laws for officials are implemented. The successful application of China’s new criminal- procedure law will also be important, though the law does authorise shuang-gui (special imprisonment and interrogation exempt from due process) in cases of serious corruption and national-security offences.62 However, oli-garchic interests may impede the implementation of these and other urgent reforms. In October 2012, the New York Times reported that Wen Jiabao (China’s prime minister during 2003–13) and his family possessed, through complicated holdings and investments, a $2.7-billion fortune, yet no investi-gation was carried out into the legality of the family’s assets.63 Wen himself responded to the report with a rebuttal based on his own personal frugality, but the wealth amassed by his family suggests that, notwithstanding the

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integrity of any given individual, family members and others close to senior leaders may still benefit from undue influence among the CCP’s elites.

Xi Jinping’s family is also said to possess a large fortune. In June 2012, Bloomberg reported that,

as Xi climbed the Communist Party ranks, his extended family expanded

their business interests to include minerals, real estate and mobile-phone

equipment … Those interests include investments in companies with total

assets of $376 million; an 18 percent indirect stake in a rare-earths company

with $1.73 billion in assets; and a $20.2 million holding in a publicly traded

technology company.64

Although Bloomberg websites were promptly blocked by the Chinese government after these details were published, the question of how best to handle links between senior leaders and powerful business interests remains.65 In the absence of transparent and rigorously implemented asset-disclosure practices, it is virtually impossible to know who is guilty of a conflict of interest and favouritism, and who is not.

* * *

After three decades of economic reform, China has transformed itself from a centrally planned economy to a socialist market economy in which power and money are widely exchanged. China has also entered a new transitional phase with rising labour costs, decelerating economic growth, a widening rural–urban divide, increasing income inequality, worsening environmen-tal problems and deepening social differences. These tensions, combined with inadequate social security, continue to undermine social stability.66 The Chinese government and citizens alike are seeking alternative models of development to tackle these challenges while preserving democratic centralism. At one time, Bo Xilai’s Chongqing model, with its emphasis on fostering state-led capitalism and cracking down on organised crime, appeared to exemplify the CCP’s determination to enhance public stability through clean government.67 Bo’s downfall suggests that intra-party dis-

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putes over how the CCP should undertake economic and political reform are still going on at the highest levels, and that anti-corruption campaigns are as much an instrument of personal power as of good governance. This is nothing new: the memoirs of Zhao Ziyang (China’s state premier and general secretary of the CCP until the 1989 Tiananmen incident) show that the acceptance of ‘gifts’ by senior officials during his time in office was such that no official was ‘clean’ and therefore that everyone was vulnerable to charges of corruption when political and policy disputes become person-alised.68 The difference in Bo’s case was that it revealed to the public that corruption was as extensive among the most senior officials as it was among the lowest.

China’s exceptional economic growth has occurred despite the cor-rosive effects of high levels of corruption. The notion of ‘authoritarian resilience’ has been offered as an explanation for the success of the Chinese state despite the weaknesses associated with a preference for personal power over institutional norms, coupled with a reliance on coercion and centralised decision-making.69 Indeed, a centralised approach is arguably necessary as local authorities lack the capability to suppress the symbiotic forms of corruption that led to the systemic corruption illustrated by the Bo Xilai scandal. Still, there is concern that corruption is become increas-ingly predatory and institutionalised, and there are signs that the party is attempting to contain, if not control, corruption through a series of anti-corruption initiatives centring on the rule of law, transparency and tentative steps toward more open government. Indeed, Fu Hualing believes that ‘the Party has done more than it is willing to admit in creating institutions that may in the long run pose serious challenges to its rule.’70

As Samantha Hoffman has pointed out, however, this anti-corruption focus does not suggest ‘a CCP leadership that is receptive to grassroots movements, nor was this ever an implied intention. In fact, anti-graft measures appear to respond as much to internal CCP dynamics as public concerns, meaning that the public remains an audience, and not an active participant’.71And it seems unlikely that pragmatists such as Xi Jinping will seek to achieve transparency, constitutionalism and democracy at the risk of stability or a loss of power. Indeed, it has been suggested that Xi at least

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flirted with the Chongqing approach, and may still see some benefit in a revised version.72 Although former premier Wen criticised Bo Xilai’s ‘singing red’ and ‘smashing black’ campaigns as evocative of the historical tragedy that was the Cultural Revolution, Xi, since taking power, has relaunched the Maoist model of ‘rectification’ (self-purification, self-improvement, self-innovation and self-awareness) to tackle the evils of the ‘Four Winds’ (formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and waste).73 Compared with Bo’s neo-Maoism, which was used to mobilise the masses, Xi’s Maoist-like revival focuses primarily on the party and the People’s Liberation Army.74 This apparent turn towards Maoism may be primarily symbolic, intended to reaffirm the traditional values of the CCP, but it also suggests that Xi will continue to employ anti-corruption initiatives as a way of dealing with resistance within the party. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CCP Central Committee signalled a readiness for deeper reforms, including establishing efficient anti-corruption systems and building a cleaner gov-ernment. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has received support from the public, but there seems no hope of eliminating corruption without citizen engagement and equal application.

Xi may have positioned himself as a ‘tiger-fighting hero’, but tigers are dangerous creatures, and stability remains the key priority. Much may depend on how well the sixth-ranked Politburo Standing Committee member, Wang Qishan, an experienced finance expert, can manage to trans-form the CCDI by improving the transparency of its processes, thereby enhancing confidence in the CCP. The recent secondment of experienced police investigators to assist the CCDI in complex and sensitive cases, such as those associated with the investigation of Zhou Yongkang, may presage the strengthening of anti-corruption efforts and a recognition of the impor-tance of a professional investigative capability, despite the CCP’s inherent distrust of independent police, procurators and judges.75 The CCP is unlikely to survive, let alone thrive, in a climate of repression; rather, further institu-tional adaption, democratisation and openness within the party are needed. An important step would be to strengthen the independence of the judicial system by reforming the role and function of political–legal committees at all levels. Pressing financial and economic reforms aimed at reducing the

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distortions in resource allocation to state-owned enterprises and banking risks are also crucial to retaining legitimacy with the growing middle class, whose members are no longer content with assertions of democratic central-ism and campaigns against corruption.76

President Xi’s emphasis on the threat of corruption and his marshalling of another anti-corruption drive may serve to conceal the real problem the CCP confronts, which is the failure of the party–state political system in an environment increasingly characterised by economic and social interde-pendence and opening up. Elite corruption is a by-product of this political system as much as it is the product of the usual criminal motives, and while anti-corruption campaigns can act like a dose of ‘antibiotics’, shoring up solidarity in the short term, this approach can also lead to resistant strains of bacteria. It remains unclear whether the current generation of leaders will be prove capable of ‘moving heavy things as if they were light’, as Deng Xiaoping put it, by carrying out the transformation of China’s political insti-tutions necessary to sustain its extraordinary resurgence.

Notes

1 Tania Branigan, ‘China’s Hu Jintao Warns Congress Corruption Could Cause Fall of State’, Guardian, 8 November 2012, http://www.the-guardian.com/world/2012/nov/08/china-hujintao-warning-congress-corruption.

2 Leo Lewis, ‘Mistakenly-released Report Reveals Embarrassing Extent of Chinese Corruption’, Australian, 17 June 2011, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/accidentally-released-report-revealsembarrass-ing-extent-of-chinese-corruption/story-e6frg6so-1226076938605.

3 Liping Sun et al., ‘Tsinghua Report – New Thinking on Stability Maintenance: Long-term Social Stability via Institutionalised

Expression of Interests’, Lingdao Zhe, no. 33, 2010, pp. 11–24; Chris Buckley, ‘China Domestic Security Spending Rises to $111 Billion’, Reuters, 5 March 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/05/us-china-parliament-security-idUS-TRE82403J20120305; Susan Trevaskes, Policing Serious Crime in China: From ‘Strike Hard’ to ‘Kill Fewer’ (London: Routledge, 2010), especially pp. 1–13.

4 ‘Commentary: China Embarks on Era of Key Reforms’, Xinhua, 5 December 2013, http://news.xinhuanet.com/eng-lish/indepth/2013-12/05/c_132943741.htm.

5 Ananth Krishnan, ‘Corruption May Lead to Unrest: Xi’, Hindu, 19 November 2012, http://www.

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thehindu.com/news/international/corruption-may-lead-to-unrest-xi/article4112139.ece.

6 Ding Lin, ‘Xi Jinping Vows “Power Within Cage of Regulations”’, Xinhua, 22 January 2013, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-01/22/c_132120363.htm.

7 Jaime A. FlorCruz, ‘From Gang of Four to Bo Xilai: Reporting from China’s Show Trials’, CNN, 28 August 2013, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/28/world/asia/china-gang-of-four-trial-florcruz/index.html; ‘Bo Xilai’s Trial: Pacifying the Maoists’, Economist, 19 August 2013, http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2013/08/bo-xilai-s-trial.

8 Jaime A. FlorCruz and Peter Shadbolt, ‘China’s Bo Xilai: From Rising Star to Scandal’, CNN, 23 September 2013, http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/08/world/asia/china-bo-xilai-profile/index.html.

9 Dan Steinbock, ‘The Real Bo Xilai Story’, Asia Times, 17 September 2013, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-170913.

10 Zachary Keck, ‘With Bo Xilai on Trial, China Adopts Chongqing Model’, Diplomat, 21 August 2013, http://thediplomat.com/2013/08/with-bo-xilai-on-trial-china-adopts-chongqing-model/.

11 Jaime A. FlorCruz, ‘Red Culture Campaign Sweeps China’, CNN, 1 July 2011, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/30/china.red.cam-paign/index.html.

12 Jaime A. FlorCruz, ‘The Rise and Fall of China’s Bo Xilai’, CNN, 16 March 2012, http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/16/world/asia/florcruz-

xilai-china/index.html; Roderic Broadhurst, ‘The Suppression of Black Societies in China’, Trends in Organized Crime, vol. 16, no. 1, 2013, pp. 95–113.

13 Peng Wang, ‘The Rise of the Red Mafia in China: A Case Study of Organised Crime and Corruption in Chongqing’, Trends in Organized Crime, vol. 16, no. 1, 2013, pp. 49–73; Andrew Wedeman, ‘The Challenge of Commercial Bribery and Organized Crime in China’, Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 2, no. 79, 2013, pp. 18–34.

14 ‘Models of Development: Chongqing Rolls On’, Economist, 28 April 2012, http://www.economist.com/node/21553495.

15 William A. Callahan, China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 84.

16 Michael Bristow, ‘Torture Claims Emerge in China’s Bo Xilai Scandal’, BBC, 21 April 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17790632; Vincent R. Johnson and Stephen C. Loomis, ‘The Rule of Law in China and the Prosecution of Li Zhuang’, Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, vol. 1, no. 1, 2013, pp. 66–83.

17 Tong Zhiwei, ‘Chongqing Daheixing Shehui Guanli Moshi Yanjiu Baogao’, 21ccom.net, 20 February 2012, http://www.21ccom.net/articles/zgyj/ggzhc/article_2012021353482.html.

18 Willy Lam, ‘The Maoist Revival and the Conservative Turn in Chinese Politics’, China Perspectives, no. 2, 2012, pp. 5–15.

19 Edward Wong, ‘Repackaging the Revolutionary Classics of China’, New York Times, 29 June 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/world/asia/30redsong.html.

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20 Louisa Lim, ‘Cake Theory Has Chinese Eating up Political Debate’, NPR, 6 November 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/11/06/142047654/cake-theory-has-chinese-eating-up-political-debate. Wang Yang is currently serving as vice-premier of China.

21 ‘Chinese Politics: The Sacking of Bo Xilai’, Economist, 17 March 2012, http://www.economist.com/node/21550309.

22 ‘China: Bo Xilai Affair Could Provoke Challenge to Entire System’, Democracy Digest, 16 March 2012, http://demdigest.net/blog/china-bo-xilai-affair-could-provoke-challenge-to-entire-system/.

23 Jamil Anderlini, ‘China Seeks to Erase Bo Xilai Influence’, Financial Times, 23 September 2013, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9c8d264-243c-11e3-a8f7-00144feab7de.html#axzz2yrwmYHhU.

24 ‘Wang Lijun Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison’, Xinhua, 24 September 2012, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-09/24/c_131868689.htm.

25 ‘Did Bo Xilai Slap or Punch Wang Lijun?’, Wall Street Journal, 23 September 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/09/23/did-bo-xilai-slap-or-punch-wang-lijun.

26 Jamil Anderlini, ‘China Jails Wang Lijun for 15 Years’, Financial Times, 24 September 2013, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dddc7e84-05ea-11e2-bce8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2yrwmYHhU.

27 ‘Bo Xilai Gets Life in Prison’, China Daily, 22 September 2013, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-09/22/content_16984347.htm.

28 ‘China Voice: Why Do Rumors Repeatedly Arise in Bo Xilai Incident?’, Xinhua, 29 April 2012,

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2012-04/29/c_131560026.htm.

29 ‘Unremitting, Lawful Effort Against Corruption: People’s Daily’, Xinhua, 22 September 2013, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-09/22/c_125426185.htm.

30 ‘Jianchi Fazhi Fanfu, Jianshe Lianjie Zhengzhi’, People’s Daily, 23 September 2013, http://opinion.people.com.cn/n/2013/0922/c1003-22994604.html.

31 Zheng Haijian, ‘Cong Bo Xilai Gongshen Ganshou Fazhi Zai Zhongguo de Liliang’, People’s Daily, 22 August 2013, http://opinion.people.com.cn/n/2013/0822/c1003-22664003.html.

32 Qiang Zhang, ‘Microblogging the Bo Xilai Trial: Transparency or Theatre?’, BBC, 23 August 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23806657.

33 Kerry Brown, ‘Former Diplomat Kerry Brown Discusses the Fate of Bo Xilai on The World’, ABC News, 21 August 2013, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-21/former-diplomat-kerry-brown-dis-cusses-the-fate-of/4903840.

34 Jonathan Ainsfield and Ian Johnson, ‘Ousted Chinese Leader is Said to Have Spied on Other Top Officials’, New York Times, 25 April 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/world/asia/bo-xilai-said-to-have-spied-on-top-china-officials.html.

35 ‘The Bo Xilai: End of the Road?’, Economist, 28 September 2013, http://www.economist.com/news/china/21586884-tough-sentence-popu-lar-leader-end-road.

36 Minxin Pei, ‘The Legacy of Bo Xilai’, Diplomat, 25 September 2013,

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http://thediplomat.com/2013/09/the-legacy-of-bo-xilai/.

37 ‘Bo Xilai Rejects “Insane” Wife Gu Kailai’s Testimony’, BBC, 23 August 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23806575.

38 Kerry Brown, ‘After Bo, China’s Political Dysfunction Just as Opaque’, South China Morning Post, 24 September 2013, http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1316103/after-bo-chinas-politi-cal-dysfunction-just-opaque.

39 Corruption charges against Bo Xilai date back to 1999, when he was the mayor of Dalian. For more details, see Sun Xi, ‘Bo Xilai: Anti-corruption Failure in China’, Worldpress, 31 August 2013, http://www.worldpress.org/Asia/3980.cfm.

40 Xuezhi Guo, ‘Dimensions of Guanxi in Chinese Elite Politics’, China Quarterly, no. 46, 2001, pp. 69–90, 70.

41 Victor Shih, Christopher Adolph and Mingxing Liu, ‘Getting Ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee Members in China’, American Political Science Review, vol. 106, no. 1, 2012, pp. 166–87.

42 The ‘Shanghai faction’ is a term used by political observers to represent an informal group of officials who rose to prominence in connection with the Shanghai municipal admin-istration under former CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin. For more on the Shanghai faction, see Cheng Li, ‘One Party, Two Coalitions in China’s Politics’, East Asia Forum, 16 August 2009, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2009/08/16/one-party-two-coali-tions-in-chinas-politics.

43 The ‘Tuanpai’ or Youth League fac-tion refers to governmental officials in the CCP who emerged from the Communist Youth League. For more on the Tuanpai, see ‘Viewpoint: The Powerful Factions Among China’s Rulers’, BBC, 6 November 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20203937.

44 Ling Li, ‘Performing Bribery in China: Guanxi-practice, Corruption With a Human Face’, Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 20, no. 68, 2011, pp. 1–20; Jing Vivian Zhan, ‘Filling the Gap of Formal Institutions: The Effects of Guanxi Networks on Corruption in Reform-era China’, Crime, Law and Social Change, vol. 58, no. 2, 2012, pp. 93–109.

45 Yang Jisheng, ‘Taking on the Power Brokers’, Financial Times, 20 September 2013, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8c6375c2-1f42-11e3-b80b-00144feab7de.html.

46 Yadong Luo, ‘The Changing Chinese Culture and Business Behavior: The Perspective of Intertwinement Between Guanxi and Corruption’, International Business Review, vol. 17, no. 2, 2008, pp. 188–93.

47 See, for example, Zengke He, ‘Corruption and Anti-corruption in Reform China’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 33, no. 2, 2000, pp. 243–70.

48 ‘Chinese Politics: The Sacking of Bo Xilai’, Economist, 17 March 2012, http://www.economist.com/node/21550309.

49 Huang Wenguang, ‘China’s Corruption Purge Continues Against Zhou Yongkang’, Daily Beast, 2 September 2013, http://www.the-dailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/02/

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china-s-corruption-purge-continues-against-zhou-yongkang.html.

50 Chris Buckley and Jonathan Ansfield, ‘Senior Chinese Official Falls Under Scrutiny as Some Point to Larger Inquiry’, New York Times, 1 September 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/world/asia/senior-chinese-official-is-investigated-for-graft.html; ‘Net Closes on Former China Security Chief’, Financial Times, 11 October 2013, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9540d4e2-3265-11e3-b3a7-00144feab7de.html.

51 Jamil Anderlini, ‘China Corruption Trials Risk Erosion of Party Legitimacy’, Financial Times, 25 September 2013, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3b3a5c50-25d8-11e3-aee8-00144feab7de.html#axzz2yrwmYHhU.

52 Personal communication with Fu Hualing, 8–9 November 2012.

53 Roderic Broadhurst, Brigitte Bouhours and Thierry Bouhours, ‘Business and the Risk of Crime in China’, British Journal of Criminology, vol. 53, no. 2, 2013, pp. 276–96.

54 Willy Lam, ‘Hu Draws Blood in Wang Lijun Scandal’, China Brief, vol. 12, no. 5, 2012, pp. 1–3; Yawei Liu, ‘Bo Xilai’s Campaign for the Standing Committee and the Future of Chinese Politicking’, China Brief, vol. 11, no. 21, 2011, pp. 8–11.

55 ‘Chen Xitong: Timely Passing’, Economist, 5 June 2013, http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2013/06/chen-xitong.

56 Jonathan Watts, ‘Shanghai’s Communist Party Chief Sacked in Corruption Purge’, Guardian, 25 September 2006, http://www.the-guardian.com/world/2006/sep/25/china.jonathanwatts.

57 ‘A Chinese Power Struggle: Hunting Tigers’, Economist, 7 September 2013, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21585004-cracking-down-corrupt-officials-xi-jinping-must-not-forget-fundamental-reforms-hunting.

58 Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 390.

59 Jaime A. FlorCruz, ‘Is China’s Corruption Crackdown Really a Political Purge?’, CNN, 5 September 2013, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/05/world/asia/china-corruption-crackdown-florcruz/index.html; Heather Timmons, ‘Is Zhou Yongkang China’s Next Bo Xilai?’, Atlantic, 28 August 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/08/is-zhou-yongkang-chinas-next-bo-xilai/279139; Jonathan Ansfield and Chris Buckley, ‘China Focusing Graft Inquiry on Ex-Official’, New York Times, 15 December 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/world/asia/china-presses-corruption-inquiry-of-powerful-former-security-official.html.

60 Yuhua Wang, ‘Bo Xilai and the Dilemma of China’s Anti-corruption Campaign’, CNN, 25 September 2013, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/24/opinion/bo-xilai-china-corruption-yuhua-wang/index.html.

61 Article 395 (2009) strengthens the punishment for state functionaries who hold undeclared overseas bank accounts, but the law’s provisions do not extend to private or corporate suspects, and are relatively new (and ill defined): ‘Where the property or expenditure of any state functionary

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obviously exceeds his lawful income, and the difference is large, he shall be ordered to explain the sources. If he fails to do so, the difference shall be determined as illegal income, and he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years or criminal detention; or if the difference is extremely large, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprison-ment of not less than five years but not more than ten years. The difference of the property shall be recovered’. Emphasis added.

62 The new criminal-procedure law was passed at the fifth meeting of the 11th National People’s Congress, on 14 March 2012, as the ‘Amendment of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China’ (Order No. 55 of the President of the People’s Republic of China) with effect from 1 January 2013.

63 David Barboza, ‘Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader’, New York Times, 25 October 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen-jiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html.

64 ‘Xi Jinping Millionaire Relations Reveal Fortunes of Elite’, Bloomberg News, 29 June 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/xi-jinping-millionaire-relations-reveal-fortunes-of-elite.html.

65 ‘Bloomberg Sites Blocked in China days after Xi Family Wealth Story’, Reuters, 4 July 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/04/us-china-censorship-bloomberg-idUS-BRE86306820120704.

66 Jane Golley and Ligang Song, ‘Chinese Economic Reform and Development:

Achievements, Emerging Challenges and Unfinished Tasks’, in Garnaut Ross, Golley Jane and Song Ligang (eds), China: The Next Twenty Years of Reform and Development (Canberra: ANU EPress, 2010), pp. 1–18.

67 Willy Lam, ‘The CCP’s Disturbing Revival of Maoism’, China Brief, vol. 9, no. 23, 2009, pp. 2–4; Willy Lam, ‘Hu Draws Blood in Wang Lijun Scandal’, China Brief, vol. 12, no. 5, 2012, pp. 3–5.

68 Du Daozheng, Du Daozheng Riji:Zhao Ziyang Hai Shuoguo Shenme (Hong Kong: Cosmos Books Ltd, 2009), pp. 134–5; Zhao Ziyang (Adi Ignatious, Bao Pu and Renee Chiang, trans.), Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009); personal commu-nication with Professor Xia Ming, City University of New York, 12 November 2013.

69 Andrew J. Nathan, ‘Authoritarian Resilience’, Journal of Democracy, vol. 14, no. 1, 2003, pp. 6–17; see also Steven Heydemann and Reinoud Leenders, ‘Authoritarian Learning and Authoritarian Resilience: Regime Responses to the “Arab Awakening”’, Globalizations, vol. 8, no. 5, 2011, pp. 647–53.

70 Fu Hualing, ‘Stability and Anticorruption Initiatives: Is There a Chinese Model?’, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law Research Paper, 12 July 2013, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2293025.

71 Samantha Hoffman, ‘Power Vacuum – China Attempts to Clean Up Corruption’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, vol. 25, no. 11, 2013, p. 4. Emphasis added.

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72 John Garnaut, The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo (New York and London: Penguin Harmondsworth, 2013).

73 ‘The National People’s Congress: What Worries Grandpa Wen’, Economist, 14 March 2012, http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/03/national-peoples-congress-0; Russell Leigh Moses, ‘What to Make of Xi Jinping’s Maoist Turn’, Wall Street Journal, 21 June 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/06/21/what-to-make-of-xi-jinpings-maoist-turn/.

74 Zachary Keck, ‘Let’s Hope Xi Jinping’s a Maoist’, Diplomat, 28 August 2013, http://thediplomat.com/china-power/lets-hope-xi-jinpings-a-maoist. According to reports on social-media outlets such as Weibo, reactions among the ‘masses’ have tended towards ridicule and cynicism, while party cadres have

become fearful of another ‘anti-rightist’ purge. Amy Li, ‘Xi Jinping’s “Criticism Campaign” Triggers Online Parody and Sex Jokes’, South China Morning Post, 28 September 2013, http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1318921/xi-jinpings-criticism-campaign-trig-gers-online-parody-and-sex.

75 ‘Xi Jinping Sets Up Special Unit to Probe Zhou Yongkang Corruption Case’, South China Morning Post, 21 October 2013, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1336219/xi-sets-special-unit-probe-zhou-yong-kang-corruption-case.

76 Drysdale Peter, ‘Left, Right or Straight Ahead on Chinese Reform’, East Asia Forum, 14 November 2013, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/11/11/left-right-or-straight-ahead-on-chi-nese-reform/.

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After the Bo Xilai Trial: Does Corruption Threaten China's Future?

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