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When Chinese president Xi Jinping vowed to crack down on both
senior leaders and low-level bureaucrats – or “tigers” and “flies”
as he put it (
laohu cangying yiqida
老虎苍蝇一起打) – after he
was elected to the post of CCP General Secretary in November 2012, few
could have thought that his words could grow into one of the largest cam-
paigns against corruption and petty officialdom in China’s modern history.
Since then, dozens of powerful leaders, along with many low-level officials,
have been put under investigation, indicted, or convicted, including former
Chongqing Party secretary Bo Xilai, a score of senior officials, and state-
owned enterprise executives connected to former security tsar Zhou
Yongkang, PLA Central Military Commission vice-chairman Xu Caihou, and,
more recently, the vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consul-
tative Conference (CPPCC), Su Rong. (1) For all its unprecedented scale and
intensity, to what extent can the anti-corruption campaign curtail wide-
spread corruption in the long run?
This article takes the view that Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive resembles
a party-building campaign for amassing political power amidst China’s frag-
mented power structure rather than a systemic remedy to cure endemic
corruption. Although the anti-corruption drive appears unswerving, given
its unceasing effort in probing high-ranking officials and its expansive scope
of investigation that has been spilling into formerly unchallenged sectors,
the campaign is likely to fall short of its claimed ambition. A closer look at
the campaign indicates that it relies heavily on the opaque Party disciplinary
mechanism rather than on the legal system to investigate and punish offi-
cials. In addition, the campaign catalyses the concentration of power among
Party agencies affiliated with Xi in the name of anti-corruption as opposed
to installing genuine checks and balances. Consequently, the campaign
might reinforce the authoritarian system that has engendered widespread
graft in the first place, and could sow seeds of future corruption.
A dramatic beginning
Xi Jinping’s extensive campaign against graft began with one of the most
unlikely and dramatic episodes in Chinese politics. In February 2012, Wang
Lijun, then head of Chongqing’s Public Security Bureau, fled to the US Con-
sulate in Chengdu in an alleged attempt to seek political asylum. After the
United States reportedly denied Wang’s request, his failed defection cracked
open a Pandora’s Box that exposed the biggest political scandal in the Chi-
nese Communist Party since the fall of former Shanghai municipal Party
secretary Chen Liangyu in 2006. It brought to light the alleged murder of
an English businessman by Gu Kailai, wife of then Chongqing Party chief
Bo Xilai, and triggered widespread rumours of a fermenting coup plot
against Xi Jinping involving both Bo and retired public security tsar Zhou
Yongkang. Within a month, Bo, once a likely candidate for promotion to the
elite Politburo Standing Committee, was dismissed for “serious disciplinary
violations” and was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery,
embezzlement, and abuse of power.
Bo’s political scandal, which followed a year-long probe into former Min-
ister of Railways Liu Zhijun, paved the way for Xi Jinping to make anti-cor-
ruption a centrepiece of his agenda right after he came to power. In his first
speech as Party General Secretary, Xi highlighted the importance of cracking
down on graft and corruption:
In this new environment, our Party is confronted with many severe
challenges. There are many pressing problems within the Party that
needs [sic] to be resolved urgently, especially the graft and corruption
cases that occurred to some of the Party members and cadres, being
out of touch from the general public, bureaucracy and undue em-
phasis on formalities – they must be resolved with great efforts. The
whole Party must be vigilant against them. To forge iron, one must
be strong. Our responsibility is to work with all comrades in the party,
to make sure the Party supervises its own conduct and enforces strict
discipline, effectively deals with the prominent issues facing the
Party, earnestly improves the working style of the Party and main-
tains close ties with the people. (2)
Failing to tackle corruption, as Xi emphasised in a subsequent speech, “will
inevitably lead to the downfall of the party and the state (
wangdang wang-
guo
亡党亡国).” (3) Strong rhetoric was accompanied by the imposition of
concrete rules. On 4 December 2012, Xi announced an “eight-point code”
to impose restrictions on official behaviour (
baxiang guiding
八项规定) at
a Party Central Committee meeting. The rules required government officials
to reconnect with the masses, banned the use of luxury cars, eliminated
lavish gifts, and reduced pomp, banquets, ceremony, bureaucratic visits, and
meetings. A catchy expression – four dishes and a soup (
sicai yitang
四菜一
汤) – which has been used by Party leaders since the Mao era to symbolise
No.2014/3 • china perspectives
41
1. The list of high-level officials under probe is frequently updated here: http://news.163.com/spe-
cial/luomagaoguan/ (accessed on 16 July 2014).
2. “Xi Jinping meets press,”
Sina News
, 15 November 2012, available at http://english.sina.com/
video/2012/1114/526824.html (accessed on 11 July 2014).
3. “China’s Xi Amassing Most Power Since Deng Raises Reform Risk,”
Bloomberg News
, 31 December
2013.
China pe r s p e c ti v e s
Current affairs
Disciplining the Party
Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign and its limits
SAMSON YUEN
cefc News Analysis
frugality, was cited to sum up the austerity measures. (4) In March 2013, a
few days after becoming China’s new President, Xi visited Lankao County,
Henan Province, where he urged rural officials to make “spicy” efforts to
“sweat” corruption out of their systems. (5) “The weapons of criticism and
self-criticism,” Xi stressed in the poor rural county, “should be well-wielded
with some spice to make every party official blush and sweat a little.”(6) In
June 2013, addressing a conference that inaugurated a year-long mass-line
education campaign, Xi called for the “thorough cleanup” of four undesirable
work styles (
sifeng
四風) – formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism, and ex-
travagance – in reference to the three ill winds – subjectivism, sectarianism,
and stereotyped Party writing – that Mao Zedong cited during the Yan’an
Rectification Movement in the 1940s.(7) The process will be painful and re-
quires courage, as Xi noted at the plenary session of the Communist Party’s
Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) in January 2014, like
“a man who severs his snake-bitten hand to save his life (刮骨疗毒、壮士
断腕).” (8)
Cracking down on big tigers and small flies
With immediate effect, Xi’s anti-corruption campaign swept across all
spectrums of the Party-state bureaucracy. In 2013, more than 180,000 of-
ficials were punished for disciplinary issues, compared with around 160,000
in 2012 and 140,000 in 2011 (see Graph 1). (9) In the same year, the Party
disciplinary agency reported more than 24,000 cases in violation of the
“eight-point code,” involving around 30,000 officials, of whom approxi-
mately 25% were given Party or state disciplinary punishment. (10) Although
the majority of them were low-level officials, one notable pattern has been
a substantial increase in the number of powerful leaders – or “tigers” as Xi
put it – accused of graft or power abuse. In the 492 days since the CCDI
announced the investigation into Li Chuncheng, a former deputy secretary
of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee, on 6 December 2012, the web-
site of the Commission has reported 285 high-level officials brought under
Party investigation. Some of them have been given disciplinary punishment,
with a portion of cases passed on to the courts. (11)
It must first be noted that anti-corruption is not something new to Party
leaders. As Graph 1 and 3 both indicate, the anti-corruption effort acceler-
ated in the late 1990s under Jiang Zemin and also from 2009 onward under
Hu Jintao. Although there has been a notable increase in Party disciplinary
investigations, one can say that Xi merely continued what Hu had started
towards the end of his term. However, one feature definitely distinguishes
Xi’s campaign – many of the senior officials probed in the course of the
anti-corruption campaign have either direct or indirect ties to retired Party
leaders. A key figure is the retired public security chief and former Politburo
Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang, who is widely believed to
have been placed under detention at the end of last year. Li Chuncheng,
one of the earliest officials detained under Xi’s campaign, was a protégé of
Zhou when the latter was in charge of Sichuan Province in the late 1990s.
In subsequent months, a score of Sichuan leaders with links to Zhou were
brought under investigation one after the other, including former deputy
42
china perspectives • No.2014/3
4. “China’s Luxury Fever and Curbing Official Ostentation,”
The China Story
, date unavailable, avail-
able at www.thechinastory.org/key-article/chinas-luxury-fever-and-official-ostentation/ (ac-
cessed on 11 July 2014).
5. Zhongyang yaoqiu renzhen xuexi guanche Xi Jinping Lankao diaoyan zhidu jiaoyu shijian huodong
zhongyao jianghua jingshen” (Central Government Instructions on the Important Speech on Se-
riously Studying and Implementing Xi Jinping’s Teaching in Lankao County), Xinhua, 24 March
2014, available at http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate /big5/news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2014-
03/24/c_119917843.htm (accessed on 14 July 2014).
6. “China’s Xi urges officials to ‘sweat’ corruption out of system,”
Reuters
, 18 March 2014.
7. “Jizhong jiejue ‘sifeng’ wenti” (Focus to solve the problem of four undesirable work styles),
People’s
Daily
, 25 June 2014.
8. “Shi jilü zhenzheng chengwei daidian de gaoyaxian” (Make discipline a high-voltage cable charged
with electricity),
Xinhua
, 14 January 2014, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2014-
01/14/c_118967450.htm (accessed on 14 July 2014).
9. The numbers are released by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and reported in
the media. See “2013 nian chachu shixian weiji weifa zhongguan ganbu 31 ren” (31 central gov-
ernment officials suspected of violation of Party discipline and the law in 2013),
Xinhua
, 10 Jan-
uary 2014, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics /2014-01/10/c_118914064.htm
(accessed on 14 July 2014).
10. “Sanwan yu ren yin weifan baxiang guiding jingshen bei chufen” (More than 30,000 were punished
for violating the spirit of the eight-point code), People.cn, 9 January 2014, available at http://pol-
itics.people.com.cn/n/2014/0109/c1001-24065013.html (accessed on 14 July 2014).
11. “Jiedu zhongyang jiwei ‘zui yiyue’” (Explaining the most aggressive month of the CCDI),
Xinhua
News
, 24 June 2014, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/2014-06/24/c_1111293938.htm
(accessed on 12 July 2014).
Current affairs
*For the year 2008, numbers are projected based on the released data from November 2007 to November 2008.
** For 2009, numbers are projected based on the data released for January 2009 to November 2009. It is thus expected that
the actual number for the full year is higher.
Graph 1 – Party disciplinary investigation into Chinese officials
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
140000
160000
180000
200000
2008* 2009** 2010 2011 2012 2013
No. of cases filed
No. of officials punished
governor Guo Yongxian and the former chairman of the provincial commit-
tee of the CPPCC, Li Chongxi.(12) The purge of Zhou’s associates soon radi-
ated from the Sichuan clique to other political circles, with the Party
announcing a probe into the former vice-minister of public security, Li
Dongsheng, and the former chief regulator of state-owned enterprises, Jiang
Jiemin. Foreign media have reported that more than 300 people with ties
to Zhou (including relatives and those who worked with Zhou) have been
questioned or arrested. (13) The long-anticipated investigation of Zhou was
finally announced by state authorities on 29 July 2014, the day when the
Politburo set the theme of the upcoming Fourth Plenum to be “governing
the country according to law.” (14) The announcement broke the unwritten
rule that retired members of the Politburo Standing Committee would not
be probed. Zhou, who was suspected of “serious disciplinary violations,” be-
came the most senior Chinese official to be investigated since the infamous
Gang of Four.
Another feature that distinguishes the current anti-corruption drive from
previous ones is its ever-expanding scope of investigation. The campaign
so far has not only implicated different ranks of officials spanning provin-
cial and central Party-state bureaucracy, but has also spilled over into nu-
merous economic sectors, many of which have been heavily dominated
by state-owned enterprises, as well as Party-state units that have re-
mained intact from previous corruption probes. The alleged probe into
Zhou Yongkang, for instance, has brought the campaign into the highly
lucrative oil industry. Jiang Jiemin, who was arrested after he became the
chief regulator of state-owned enterprises, rose through the ranks of the
oil industry to head China’s biggest oil giant, the China National Petroleum
Corporation (CNPC), of which Zhou was also a former head. Since Jiang’s
detention, dozens of top executives at the CNPC and its subsidiary
PetroChina have been placed under investigation. (15) The crackdown on
the state economy has recently spread to other big state-run conglomer-
ates. Song Lin, the former chairman of China Resources, a Hong Kong-
based trading company and one of China’s largest state-owned
enterprises, was accused of power abuse in corporate dealings, and was
arrested in April 2014. Other probe targets, to name just a few, include
other parts of the highly monopolistic energy sector, such as power com-
panies, the state broadcaster CCTV, where bribery in exchange for national
airtime is an open secret, and the poorly regulated healthcare sector,
where foreign companies have been active.
Perhaps the most ambitious move so far has been the ingress into the
powerful and largely secluded People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The PLA has
been a notorious breeding ground of corruption, but has never become a
serious target in previous crackdowns. (16) In January 2013, policemen sur-
rounded a massive mansion in Puyang, Henan Province, owned by Gu Jun-
shan, the former deputy head of the PLA General Logistics Department,
who managed the military’s resources, prized assets, and extensive land
holdings. Gu’s lavish lifestyle was exposed in an investigative piece pub-
lished by the Chinese magazine
Caixin
, which reported how investigators
uncovered crates of expensive
Maotai
liquor and a number of gold items,
including a wash basin and Mao Zedong statute, in his palace-like man-
sion. (17) Gu himself had been removed from office in early 2012, before Xi
came to power, amidst rumours that General Liu Yuan, son of Liu Shaoqi
and a close ally of Xi Jinping, had vowed to crack down on corruption in
the PLA. (18) As the most senior officer to be tried in a military court since
2006, Gu was charged in April 2014 with corruption, bribery, embezzle-
ment, and power abuse. The corruption crackdown that started with Gu
has since moved further up the ranks. General Xu Caihou, a former vice-
chairman of the Central Military Commission who was described as a
trusted ally of both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, was removed from office
and became the highest-ranking official to have fallen victim to the anti-
corruption campaign thus far. The expulsion of both Gu and Xu has sig-
nalled Xi’s determination to shake up the military. By singling out
high-profile “tigers” among corrupt army officials, these unusual moves in-
tend to demonstrate that even the powerful military is not immune from
the campaign, while also allowing Xi to tighten his grip on the army by in-
stating generals loyal to him. (19)
Nonetheless, the unprecedented scope, depth, and intensity of the cam-
paign as well as the selectiveness of its targets have raised speculation
that the effort is a camouflage for power struggle – a tool for President
Xi to remove his political opponents. The politically ambitious Bo Xilai,
for example, was a known rival of Xi Jinping who purportedly competed
with him for the top leadership position. As observers have further pointed
out, most of the officials removed from office have connections to pow-
erful Party leaders. Targeting Zhou and his allies, for example, is said to be
ultimately aiming for Zeng Qinghong, also a retired Party leader and close
ally of Jiang Zemin, who allegedly played a key role in bringing Zhou to
the top ranks. (20) Apart from associates of Zhou Yongkang and Zeng Qing-
hong, others targeted were officials and executives connected with other
retired Party leaders such as Li Peng and He Guoqiang, as indicated by
probes into the energy sector and into the chief of China Resources, re-
spectively. (21) Another observer has noted a purge against Hu Jintao’s
Communist Youth League (CYL) faction, based on the probe into Ling
Zhengce, vice chairman of the Shanxi provincial committee of the CPPCC
and brother of Ling Jihua, a former aide to Hu. (22) Regardless of whether
these are Xi’s personal purges, the anti-corruption campaign is certainly
aimed at clearing the way for deepening reforms (
shenhua gaige
深化改
革) and enhancing public faith in Xi Jinping’s leadership. It has long been
held that Party factionalism and vested interests, especially in the state-
owned sectors, have made the economic reforms proposed in the Third
Plenum of the 18th Party Congress difficult to implement. As
The Diplo-
mat
’s Shannon Tiezzi explained:
No.2014/3 • china perspectives
43
12. “Sichuan political adviser Li Chongxi investigated,”
South China Morning Post
, 30 December 2013.
13. Benjamin Kang Lim and Ben Blanchard, “China seizes $14.5 billion assets from family, associates
of ex-security chief: sources,”
Reuters
, 30 March 2014.
14. “CPC captures ‘big tiger’ in anti-graft campaign,”
Xinhua
, 29 July 2014.
15. Jeremy Page, Wayne Ma, Brian Spegele, “China Probes Former Oil Company Head,”
The Wall Street
Journal
, 1 September 2013.
16. Jonathan Ansfield, “Leader of China Aims at Military with Graft Case,”
The New York Times
, 31
March 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/world /asia/chinese-military-general-charged-in-
graft-inquiry.html?_r=1 (accessed 21 July 2014).
17. Wang Heyan, “How a PLA General Built a Web of Corruption to Amass a Fortune,”
Caixin
, 16 Jan-
uary 2014, available at http://english.caixin.com/2014-01-16/100630028.html (accessed on 14
July 2014).
18. Kathrin Hille, “Chinese general faces corruption probe,”
Financial Times
, 1 February 2012,
www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f727d84a-4cd9-11e1-8741-00144feabdc0.html#axzz36lb1I4sn (ac-
cessed on 21 July 2014).
19. Minnie Chan, “Xi Jinping promotes 10 more to PLA general, including two in Hong Kong,”
South
China Morning Post
, 4 August 2013; Keira Lu Huang, “PLA’s number 3 official, once promoted by
Xu Caihou, pledges loyalty to Xi Jinping,”
South China Morning Post
, 4 July 2014.
20. Raymond Li, “Zhou Yongkang’s rise to power fuelled by oil,”
South China Morning Post
, 31 August
2013.
21. Jamil Anderlini, “China Resources chairman in probe as anti-corruption net widens,”
Financial
Times
, 18 April 2014.
22. Willy Lam, “With Zhou’s Circle Down, Xi’s Purge May Turn to Hu,”
Jamestown Brief
, Vol. 14, No.13,
3 July 2014.
Samson Yuen – Disciplining the Party
The anti-corruption drive makes reform easier in a variety of ways. It lets
Xi promote pro-reformist allies to replace purged officials, but also cows
others into backing (or at least not opposing) more ambitious reforms.(23)
A Reuters report to which Shannon Tiezzi referred suggests that Xi is hop-
ing that “removing corrupt officials and those resisting change will allow
him to consolidate his grip on power and implement difficult economic,
judicial and military reforms that he believes are vital to perpetuate one-
party rule.” (24) It quoted well-connected sources that revealed Xi’s plan to
promote some 200 reform-minded officials from Zhejiang Province, where
he served as Party secretary from 2002 to 2007, to senior Party positions
in the coming years. Indeed, some observers have argued that the anti-
corruption campaign will allow Xi to accumulate political capital and pre-
pare for the next leadeship reshuffle in the 2017 Party plenum. (25) The
far-reaching campaign is not without internal resistance, however. Accord-
ing to the
Financial Times
, retired leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao have
reportedly urged Xi to rein in the anti-corruption campaign, warning him
not to “take on too many of the powerful families or patronage networks
at the top of the party hierarchy.”(26)
Heavy reliance on the Party disciplinary
mechanism
Whether the anti-corruption drive will make way for more aggressive eco-
nomic reforms is yet unknown, but it has certainly taken both social and
economic tolls. From January 2013 to April 2014, 54 Party-state officials
died of unnatural causes, with 23 reportedly committing suicide. Although
surveys have indicated that the pressure officials faced when wrestling with
the unspoken rules of the bureaucratic system (
guanchang qianguize
官场
潜规则) was the primary cause behind most suicides, the anti-graft cam-
paign is seen as a triggering factor. (27) A
People’s Daily
editorial published
in July 2014 specifically warned that “the current rectification movement
must avoid killing people” (
zhengfeng buneng zhengsi ren
整风不能整死
人). (28) On the economic side, the anti-graft investigations together with
the austerity measures have resulted in spending contraction in all sectors
of the economy, including restaurants, luxury products, automobiles, and
the real estate market.(29) A report issued by Bank of America Merrill Lynch
estimated that the anti-corruption campaign could cost the economy more
than US$100 billion in 2014.(30) It is difficult to know whether the austerity
measures will have long-term effect, or whether power can genuinely be
exercised within the cage of regulations (
ba quanli guanjin zhidu de longzi
li
把权力关进制度的笼子里), as Xi once said at the CCDI. (31) Commission
chief Wang Qishan has candidly acknowledged that the “shock and awe”
(
zhenshe
震慑) tactics of the campaign are mainly intended to treat the
symptoms so as to buy time to cure the disease (以治标为主，为治本赢得
时间). (32)
44
china perspectives • No.2014/3
23. Shannon Tiezzi, “What’s behind Xi’s anti-corruption campaign,”
The Diplomat
, 17 April 2014, avail-
able at http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/whats-behind-xis-anti-corruption-campaign (accessed
on 14 July 2014).
24. Benjamin Kang Lim and Megha Rajagopalan, “China’s Xi purging corrupt officials to put own men
in place: sources,”
Reuters
, 16 April 2014.
25. Ting Shi, “Xi’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Signals Power Play for 2017,”
Bloomberg
, 5 July 2014.
26. Jamil Anderlini and Simon Rabinovitch, “Ex-president Jiang urges Beijing to curb anti-corruption
drive,”
Financial Times
, 31 March 2014.
27. “Meiti jiexi shinian baiyu guanyuan zisha: fanfu bingfei zhuyin” (Media analyse the cause behind
the suicide of more than a hundred officials over the past ten years – anti-corruption isn’t the
main cause),
Nanfang Zhoumo
(Southern Weekend), 17 April 2014.
28. “Shenzhong chuzhi fan cuowu dangyuan ganbu Zhengfeng buneng zhengren” (Carefully handle
Party members and cadres who made mistakes; rectification must avoid killing people),
People’s
Daily
, 12 July 2014.
29. Andrew Jacobs, “Elite in China Face Austerity under Xi’s Rule,”
The New York Times
, 27 March
2013.
30. Jack Perkowski, “The Price of Fighting Corruption in China,”
Forbes
, available at
www.forbes.com/sites/jackperkowski/2014/06/05/the-price-of-fighting-corruption-in-china/ (ac-
cessed on 14 July 2014).
31. “Ba quanli guanjin zhidu de longzi li” (To lock power into the cage of regulations),
China News
,
22 January 2013, available at www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/01-22/4510583.shtml (accessed on
14 July 2014).
32. “Wang Qishan: dangqian fanfu yaoyi zhibiao weizhu, wei zhiben yingde shijian,” (Wang Qishan:
Current anti-corruption effort should focus on curing the symptoms to win time for curing the
disease),
Caixin
, 25 January 2013, available at http://china.caixin.com/2013-01-
25/100486367.html (accessed on 14 July 2014).
Current affairs
*For the year 2008, numbers are projected based on the released data from November 2007 to November 2008.
** For 2009, numbers are projected based on the data released for January 2009 to November 2009. It is thus expected that the actual number for the full year is higher.
*** The data released by the CCDI contains no information about the number of officials transferred to the judicial process in 2013.
Graph 2 – Discipline investigation outcomes***
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
2008* 2009** 2010 2011 2012 2013
No. of officials
Transferred to judiciary
Disciplinary punishment
What is clear, however, is that the anti-corruption drive has displayed
characteristics of a Party-building campaign. One distinguishing feature is
the heavy reliance on the Party disciplinary mechanism rather than the legal
system. The austerity measures, for instance, were introduced by the Party
Central Committee (not by the supreme lawmaking body, the National Peo-
ple’s Congress) as an additional set of Party disciplinary codes that make
Party-state officials and civil servants liable to punishment under the ex-
isting Chinese Communist Party discipline regulations (
Zhongguo
gongchandang jilü chufen tiaoli
中国共产党纪律处分条例).(33) To strengthen
Party discipline, local Party committees are launching self-criticism sessions
among officials as part of a mass line education campaign (
qunzhong luxian
jiaoyu shijian yundong
群众路线教育实践运动). These Party-led, so-called
“democratic life meetings” (
minzhu shenghuo hui
民主生活会), which were
first introduced in Yan’an in the early 1940s as a tool to strengthen Party
democracy by allowing people to voice their opinions about one another,
are now being revived across China for local officials to confess their mis-
takes and criticise one another so as to expose traces of the “four undesir-
able work styles.” (34)
The role of Party discipline is particularly salient in the investigation of cor-
rupt officials. Investigations are typically initiated by the Central Commission
for Discipline Inspection, and are subsequently reported on its website. The
majority of officials placed under investigation are described as “having vio-
lated both Party discipline and the law” (
weiji weifa
违纪违法).(35) But apart
from this and a few sentences about the position of the officials being
probed, there is often no other information released about which Party dis-
ciplinary code or law the officials have breached. Officials under probe are
mostly detained using the
shuanggui
(双 规 ) or “double designations”
process, which is an extralegal, inner-Party detention process requiring Party
members to be questioned for a designated duration at a designated place.
Although many see
shuanggui
as a powerful tool for capturing corrupt of-
ficials, others, including scholars, activists, and journalists, have criticised
the system for its brutality and total absence of transparency.(36) Once the
investigation is completed, Party members can be stripped of their Party
membership (
kaichu dangji
) and handed over to the judiciary organs, which
then ostensibly begin a legal investigation leading to a trial.
For officials convicted of their offences, the investigation process is often
followed by disciplinary punishment within the Party. Among the 180,000
officials punished for disciplinary violations, around 150,000 have been sub-
jected to Party disciplinary punishment, with the rest being punished by
state discipline (
zhengji
政纪) or both.(37) According to official statistics (see
Graph 2), only a small portion of high-level officials were transferred to the
formal prosecution system, and apart from high-profile arrests (i.e. top of-
ficials) who are almost certain to be handed over to the courts after the in-
vestigative period, others are more often given Party disciplinary
punishment rather than being transferred to the judicial process. More im-
portantly, it is often unclear what such punishment entails, and also what
determines if a certain case will be handed over to the courts. The reliance
on the opaque Party disciplinary mechanism instead of the relatively more
transparent legal system to punish corrupt officials is further indicated by
official statistics on filed court cases. As Graph 3 shows, although there has
been a pick-up in the number of filed cases by the People’s Procuratorate
on both corruption and malfeasance in 2013, the number of corruption
cases in particular is still way below the peak in 2000.
No.2014/3 • china perspectives
45
33. “Zhongguo gongchandang jilü chufen tiaolu” (Regulation of the Communist Party of China on
Disciplinary Actions), available at www.people.com.cn/GB/shizheng /1026/2346251.html (ac-
cessed on 14 July 2014); “Zhongjiwei zheng zhiding weifan baxiang guiding shiyong jilü chufen
tiaoli jieshi” (CCDI is drafting explanation of how violation of the eight-point code can result in
disciplinary punishment),
China News
, 31 May 2013, available at http://news.ifeng.com/main-
land/detail_2013_05/31/25942859_0.shtml (accessed on 14 July 2014).
34. Zhang Hong, “Sweating and on the verge of tears: Chinese officials carry out self-criticism on TV,”
South China Morning Post
, 28 September 2013.
35. In a round-up of 67 cases released between May and June 2014, Xinhua reporters found that 47
cases violated both Party discipline and the law, 17 cases violated Party discipline only, and three
cases violated the law only. See “Jiedu zhongyang jiwei ‘zui yiyue’” (Explaining the most aggressive
month of the CCDI), Xinhua News, 24 June 2014, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/2014-
06/24/c_1111293938.htm (accessed on 12 July 2014), or Larry Catá Backer’s blogpost:
http://lcbackerblog.blogspot.hk/2011/08/communist-party-and-state-discipline-in.html.
36. Gillian Wong, “In China, Brutality Yields Confessions of Graft,”
Associated Press
, 10 March 2014;
for more about the
shuanggui
system, see Flora Sapio, “
Shuanggui
and extralegal detention in
China,”
China Information
, Vol. 22, No.1, 2008, pp. 7-37. Also see the documentary filmed by the
recently arrested lawyer activist Pu Zhiqiang on the
shuanggui
case in Yongzhou, where Party of-
ficials were brutally tortured during the
shuanggui
process: www.youtube.com /
watch?v=XswaTKp-NCw (accessed on 28 August 2014).
37. State disciplinary actions are punishment given to civil servants. See http://baike.baidu.com/
view/4001897.htm (accessed on 28 August 2014).
Samson Yuen – Disciplining the Party
Graph 3 – Court cases filed for corruption and malfeasance
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
40,000
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Filed Cases
Corruption
Malfeasance
Centralising power as opposed to installing
institutional checks and balances
The dependence on Party discipline throughout the anti-corruption drive
has also fostered the centralisation of power in the CCDI, the Party’s top
disciplinary body. Although the Chinese government has established various
agencies to deal with endemic corruption, such as the National Bureau of
Corruption Prevention (
guojia yufang fubai ju
国家预防腐败局) under the
State Council and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (
fan tanwu huilu ju
反贪污贿
赂局) under both central and local People’s Procuratorates, the main re-
sponsibility for investigating suspected cases of corruption and malfeasance
within the Party ranks still falls on the CCDI and its provincial arms. How-
ever, unlike anti-corruption bodies such as Hong Kong’s Independent Com-
mission Against Corruption (ICAC) and Singapore’s Corrupt Practices
Investigation Bureau (CPIB), which are independent of the government ad-
ministration, the CCDI is an
internal
Party agency designed to install checks
and balances from within the Communist Party, relying on the removal of
corrupt officials as a necessary means to restore Party discipline and main-
tain one-party rule.
The success of the self-disciplinary system has been rather limited, how-
ever. One of the critical problems lies in the dual supervision system of the
provincial commissions for discipline inspection. According to this system,
which has been in place since 1980, local discipline inspection bureaus are
placed under the dual leadership of the upper-level Disciplinary Inspection
Commission and the same-level local Party Committee. In practice, how-
ever, the vertical line of supervision is often dwarfed by the territorial juris-
diction of the local Party committees. The latter maintain substantial
influence over the local disciplinary commissions by paying their budgetary
expenses as well as the wages and welfare benefits of discipline inspectors.
In addition, the career prospects of local discipline inspectors are greatly
dependent upon local Party committees. In order to stand better chances
for promotion, local discipline inspectors often need to cultivate good rela-
tionships with local Party committee members in order to secure their sup-
port in evaluation. This dynamic forms a strong disincentive for the local
disciplinary body to initiate investigations into local government officials.
In addition, as observers have pointed out, local discipline inspection bu-
reaus can even become a platform for power struggles between various
local factions, and the local disciplinary body and the local government
could collude in rent-seeking, exacerbating the corruption problems that
disciplinary inspectors are tasked to tackle. (38) All this has weakened the
power of the internal Party disciplinary mechanism.
To reduce the influence of territorial Party committees on local discipli-
nary bodies, one major part of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has been to
expand the power of the CCDI and strengthen vertical control over its local
units. To this end, the Third Plenum resolution announced in November 2013
introduced several measures to strengthen the supervision of local discipli-
nary bodies over same-level Party committees. The local discipline inspec-
tion commission is now required to report ongoing investigations not only
to the local Party committee but also to the supervising disciplinary body.
More significantly, the resolution adopted the system of vertical nomination
(
chuizhi timing
垂直提名), in which the upper-level disciplinary body regains
the power of appointment of lower-level discipline inspectors, making them
less dependent on local government officials.(39) While some observers see
the
nomenklatura
reform as a breakthrough, others are less positive because
the reform has not provided further details on the criteria for initiating an
investigation, and also because it has not addressed other possible means
of local political interference, such as the budgetary control local Party com-
mittees wield over local disciplinary bodies. (40)
Appearing not to intend to abolish the dual supervision system of the
local disciplinary bodies, the CCDI has instead chosen to expand its power
at the centre. CCDI chief Wang Qishan has vowed to maintain full coverage
of inspection at all levels of local governments, Party units, state ministries,
universities, and state-owned enterprises, using inspection tours (
xuncha
巡
查) and stationing (
jinzhu
进驻) as two main pivots to detect and report
corrupt practices. In addition, special inspection teams (
zhuanxiang xun-
chazu
专项巡查组) will be dispatched to selected Party-state units to con-
duct spot checks in addition to routine inspections. Efforts to expand the
power of the CCDI were further stepped up in 2014. The CCDI established
three new internal offices, including two discipline inspection divisions that
focus on local governments, bringing the total number of such divisions to
12, along with a division tasked with the internal supervision of discipline
inspection officers. Inspection tours to local governments and party-state
agencies will increase from two to three rounds, and three more special in-
spection teams will be formed. Provincial discipline inspection commissions
have also been expanded through a personnel increase of approximately
60%. (41)
The rapid empowerment of the CCDI raises a further question. While the
expansion of the top disciplinary body aims to strengthen internal Party
monitoring of its cadres and officials, it raises the concern that no other
agencies can effectively constrain its authority. Even though the CCDI has
recently set up an internal supervisory unit to monitor itself and has even
initiated graft investigations against its own inspectors,(42) these moves still
do not address the question of who else can monitor the CCDI. In fact, in
order for the anti-corruption campaign to achieve the effect of “shock and
awe,” the CCDI is likely to further expand its powers and demonstrate that
it has no limits in taking down powerful “tigers” and lowly “flies.” The ex-
pansion of central power has already led some to warn of Xi Jinping’s auto-
cratic turn. (43) Indeed, over the past two years, Xi has not only relentlessly
targeted “tigers” and “flies” alike, but has also begun a massive crackdown
on civil society and the Internet. Advocates calling for the disclosure of Party
officials’ assets, together with journalists, lawyers, civil society activists, and
social media celebrities, have all been subject to greater control and repres-
sion. Xi himself is believed to have secured firm power, as he has become
not only the head of the Party-state and the military, but now also chairs
the newly-established National Security Commission and Leading small
46
china perspectives • No.2014/3
38. Zhang Lin, “Zhongjiwei guoquan de lixiang yu xianshi” (Behind the expansion of power of CCDI:
Ideal and reality),
Financial Times Chinese
, 25 April 2014, available at
www.ftchinese.com/story/001055900 (accessed on 14 July 2014).
39. “Zhongjiwei timing shengji jiwei shuji, guan ganbu quanxian kuoda” (CCDI now nominates provin-
cial secretary of the discipline inspection commission, increasing its power of supervision),
Jinghua
News
, 29 March 2014, available at http://epaper.jinghua.cn /html/2014-03/29/content_
75613.htm (accessed on 14 July 2014).
40. “Jiwei kuoquan: pojie jiandu tongji dangwei nanti” (CCDI’s expansion of power: Solving the prob-
lem of monitoring same-level Party committee members),
Beijing News
, 20 November 2013,
available at http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html /2013-11/20/content_479034.htm?div=-1 (ac-
cessed on 14 July 2014).
41. “Difang jiwei kuoquan sanbuqu” (The three steps for provincial committee for discipline inspection
to expand power),
Jingji Guancha Wang
(Economic Observer), 29 June 2014, available at
www.eeo.com.cn/2014/0629/262703.shtml (accessed on 14 July 2014).
42. Chris Luo, “Communist Party anti-corruption watchdog investigates one of its own officials,”
South
China Morning Post
, 13 April 2014.
43. Jamil Anderlini, “Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive in China takes autocratic turn,”
Financial Times
,
23 June 2014.
Current affairs
group on economic reform. Confidence in the system of centralised author-
ity will likely further crowd out spaces for institutional checks and balances
as well as the prospects for rule of law.
Conclusion
Given its unprecedented scope and intensity, Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption
campaign is expected to rein in corrupt practices by discouraging extrava-
gant official spending and conspicuous power abuse. On the other hand, by
implicating scores of high-ranking officials and expanding into a wide range
of sectors, the campaign has sent out a clear signal that Xi and his allies
have now consolidated political power against rival factions, and that any
political opposition to Xi personally or economic reforms generally can be
ruthlessly removed. It must be remembered, however, that the anti-corrup-
tion drive, despite its promising rhetoric, is about rescuing the Party and
restoring public faith more than eradicating corruption. After all, corruption
has been intertwined in complex ways with China’s economic develop-
ment. (44) And as observers argue, the anti-corruption drive is intended only
as a means of smoothing the way for economic reforms.(45) In light of this,
the anti-corruption campaign will only be conducted to the extent that it
clears the way for reforms – without taking down too many high-ranking
officials to a degree that threatens the lifeline of the Communist Party. That
explains why the anti-corruption campaign has relied heavily on the cen-
tralisation of power within the Party disciplinary mechanism rather than
on using the legal system or installing institutional checks and balances, as
the disciplinary strategy allows the scope of the campaign to be carefully
scripted and controlled. In the longer term, however, this continuous ex-
pansion of government power in the absence of institutional checks and
balances and the rule of law contains the risk of backfiring, as it might en-
gender a whole new set of corruption problems that may be much more
difficult to solve.
zSamson Yuen is a PhD student in politics at the University of
Oxford and is a research assistant at the CEFC
(samson.yuen@sant.ox.ac.uk).
No.2014/3 • china perspectives
47
44. Andrew Wedeman,
Double Paradox: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption in China
, Ithaca, Cornell
University Press, 2012.
45. Liu Shengjun, “Zhongguo xu mingque muqian fanfu yu gaige de guanxi,”
Financial Times Chinese
,
16 June 2014, available at www.ftchinese.com/story/001056755 (accessed on 14 July 2014).
Samson Yuen – Disciplining the Party
CEFC News Analysis is compiled from the CEFC's fortnightly selection
of Press Highlights, available at www.cefc.com.hk.
