Government/Politics - 166. page

On November 18, 2015, several Chinese language media outside of Mainland China republished an article from The Trend Magazine in Hong Kong (November of 2015, print edition) on a gunshot fight between a military law enforcement team and corrupt military officers in the Shanxi Province Military Region Club.

According to The Trend Magazine, the General Staff Department and General Political Department of the People’s Liberation Army of China organized a Joint Military Inspection and Law Enforcement Team that made an unexpected visit to the Shanxi Province Military Region Entertainment Club to do a corruption inspection. When the law enforcement staff ordered those "having-good-time" military officers to present their IDs, the military officers resisted and surrounded the law enforcement staff. The law enforcement team then fired some warning gunshots which failed to scatter the officers who surrounded them. When the law enforcement team tried to take away a leading officer, who was inciting the other officers to reject inspections, the military officers on the scene attacked back with cold gunshots.

Since 1989, former top leader Jiang Zemin has been implementing corruption strategies to win the support and loyalty of the CCP gang members and of army generals. In the over 10 years that Jiang was in power, the corruption in the People’s Liberation Army spread rapidly across the entire nation. The phenomena of making money through smuggling; lust as a form of entertainment; exchanges involving power and sex, as well as power and money; murdering witnesses; and fleeing overseas with huge amounts of money became very rampant.

The article concluded that, clearly, in the end, the former CCP Central Military Commission Chairman Jiang Zemin is the real cause of all the corruption.

Source: Power Apple, November 18, 2015
https://www.powerapple.com/news/zhong-gang-tai/2015/11/18/2498556.html

Beijing-based Legal Daily published a commentary this Tuesday, November 17, on recent developments in overseeing interference in judicial systems. According to a press release that the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs (CPLA) of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee issued in early November, five officials and judicial personnel have been removed from their posts or given sanctions. 

This was the first time that the new regulations have been enforced since March 2015, when the Central Committee General Office and the General Office of the State Council published the "Provisions on Recording, Reporting, and Pursuing the Responsibility of Leading Cadres for Interfering with Judicial Activities or Tampering with the Handling of Specific Cases."

The Legal Daily commentary observed that the five officials publicly named were all from lower levels. The one in Shanghai was just a staff member in the Pudong New District Procuratorate who did not have the power to influence the handling of cases.

Based on past experience, the mentality and behavior of top officials and those who work within the judicial organs have a significant impact on the legal environment. To check such interference early and across lower levels is an important step.

The publication of the Provisions in March, the subsequent implementation plans detailed by the People’s Supreme Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and the recent naming of officials by the CPLA have sent a clear message to society that prohibiting interference in the handling of legal cases is being put into practice.

Of course, we must also realize that to establish the system to prevent tampering with any specific cases takes strict enforcement over time. Fundamentally it is to restrain power, leading toward the public and society being able to exert comprehensive supervision.

Source: Legal Daily, November 17, 2015
http://epaper.legaldaily.com.cn/fzrb/content/20151117/Articel07004GN.htm

Recently, the media in Mainland China exposed how officials in the Chinese Communist Party have gained huge profits using such illegal stock investment activities as embezzlement, accepting bribes, borrowing money from businessmen, and releasing unpublicized internal information to relatives or family members. Some examples follow.

Tao Liming, ex-president of the Postal Savings Bank of China, embezzled government bonds worth 340 million Chinese yuan (US $53.26 million) in speculating in the stock market for personal profit.

Yao Gang, vice-chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, was under investigation last week. His former secretary borrowed 10 million Chinese yuan (US$1.56 million) from a businessman to speculate in the stock market.

Xiao Peng, former China Southern Power Grid deputy general manager, gave insider information to a relative, helping his stock investment grow by 50 percent annually for eight consecutive years.

Sources: Sohu, November 18, 2015 & China News, November 18, 2015
http://news.sohu.com/20151118/n426825424.shtml
http://www.chinanews.com/sh/2015/11-18/7629861.shtml

On November 12, 2015, People’s Daily published a commentary regarding Lv Xiwen, a senior official in the Beijing municipal government who was taken into custody for corruption investigation on November 11, 2015. The commentary stated that, with Lv’s arrest, the full coverage (“tigers,” or senior corrupt officials, have now been taken into custody in every one of the 31 jurisdictional regions) is not the end but the beginning for more investigations. 

Voice of America (VOA) reported that CCTV, China’s state television, drew criticism from Chinese viewers for its coverage, or the lack thereof, of the November 7 meeting in Singapore between the leaders of Beijing and Taipei. 

Xinhua published an article on the third round of the tour that The Central Leading Group for Inspection Work conducted. The article highlighted five key features that are unique to this tour. 1) Among 31 companies or institutions to be inspected, 21 are financial institutions. Therefore the third round of the tour is also called the “Finance anti-corruption campaign.” 2) The head of the team members of the inspection group have extensive experience in both the discipline inspection work area and in their knowledge of finance. 3) The target of the inspection work is the Party organization and Party officials in the work unit and whether they carry out the directions that the central administration has issued. The focus is not on the operational part of the business. 4) Each inspection team will visit two companies and one inspection team will need to visit three companies. The inspection teams are expected to identify common issues and apply serious disciplinary measures to those who fail to deal with problems after they have been given advanced warnings. The effort is to show the determination of the central administration in dealing with disciplinary violations. 5) Those selected companies have expressed full cooperation with the inspection work and have issued statements to show zero tolerance for any violations while the inspection team is on site.

Source: Xinhua, November 6, 2015
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2015-11/06/c_1117067924.htm

According to an article published in The Paper, on November 3, 2015, Wang Xiaoling, the niece of Zeng Qinghong’s wife, no longer serves as a Guangzhou Municipal Standing Committee member and the Party Secretary of the City Commission for Discipline Inspection. Zeng Qinghong is the Chinese regime’s former vice chair and a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo Standing Committee. In the 1990s, Zeng was well known as a close ally and the right-hand-man of Jiang Zemin, the former CCP General Secretary and the Chinese regime’s former chairman.

According to Hong Kong Apple on July 22, 2015, Wang Xiaoling was promoted from her position as a nurse in the army and a clerk in a Trade and Industry Bureau to become the Guangzhou Municipal Deputy Mayor. Her position improved in just a few years because of Zeng Qinghong’s high ranking position. In the most recent two years, she was suspected in getting involved in corruption. Zeng Qinghong is also in trouble in the current CCP anti-corruption campaign. The Guangdong Provincial Committee has no intention of promoting Wang any further as she is 60 years old. According to the CCP’s rules, that is the age for a female cadre to retire if no more promotions are given. Zeng advised her to retire completely so as to avoid a “bad ending.”

Sources: The Paper, November 3, 2015; Hong Kong Apple, July 22, 2015
http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1392473
http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/realtime/china/20150722/54004420

State media Huanqiu reported that Zhang Yun, president of the Agricultural Bank of China has been taken into custody because of inquiries into corruption. The Agricultural Bank of China is one of the four State-owned commercial banks. The other three banks are the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, and the Bank of China.