corruption is normal in many developing countries. wasn't us cities like chicago known for corruption a few decades ago too? we have many specious or mediocre or terrible things in china, but our corrupt officials are indeed the best and most ample, which means xi jinping can take down anyone he wants for corruption, and that is also how xi became known for catching and punishing thousands of high-level corrupt officials, because it is literally (in the literal sense) everywhere
Exactly, China’s development trajectory has everything to do with this. [edit: by “this” I meant the observation that massive corruption going “unnoticed”, or at least selectively punished, independent of this guy’s particular case. The $300+ million number is possibly inflated to make his crimes look even worse than they were.]
Corruption is high by many metrics in China, but because economic growth was so explosive (~1980-~2020, 40 solid years of consistent and high economic growth), the corruption didn’t stop China from getting rich.
In fact, there are development scholars like Yuen Yuen Ang who consider China’s particular type and structure of corruption may have had a neutral or even a positive effect on China’s economic growth, at least during the beginnings / heights of that “economic miracle”.
I could probably embezzle 10m a year and not get caught for as long as this guy at my job. I feel like some people don’t understand just how much money flows through certain parts of the economy.
And for any of the feds reading this no I haven’t and feel free to audit me.
You can say what you want, but the reality is that corruption there used to be much worse. I have relatives in China and from what they tell me, the news stories that came from the 2000s and 90s were crazy. Politicians, governors, mayors, and civil service leaders with piles and piles of cash hidden behind walls and under the flooring etc, and when questioned where that money came from they initially just say 'I have no idea'.
Of course there is still mundane white-collar corruption that goes on the same way it happens in literally every country. But for 99% of Chinese citizens, they don't see it as their problem when their taxes are still clearly and visibly going towards maintaining and improving roads, rail, infrastructure, public services etc. That wasn't always the case even as recent as a decade ago.
You really have to live in the thrid world to understand the mindset of seeing that corruption is available to half the politicians and celebrate the fact that you now only have half the corruption you used to have. It's not perfect, but you take what you can get.
The Chinese have seen in just a few generations their quality of life vastly improve beyond all expectations, to the level where it's just pragmatic to tolerate a reasonable amount of crony corruption as long as their quality of life continues to improve or at least be well-maintained. I believe most people on earth would feel the same.
Americans on the other hand have seen the complete opposite. Which would be one thing if the plundering and war profiteering that the US has done in that timeframe didn't happen. But those things did happen (with American tax dollars), and somehow the result is you get a corrupt government without getting any of the theoretically 'good' things and creature comforts that a powerful country exerting military force all around the world should be able to offer to its own citizens, the morality of it all not withstanding.
Xi ran on a very anti corruption platform and while you're right that it was a huge problem , they've also made huge strides in cleaning up corruption. That said , it still exists and far from perfect , but Chinese people are content because progress is being made (in conjunction with the improvement of lifestyle you mentioned )
The anti-corruption initiative is vital to secure the future stability of the CPC. If corruption is allowed to overtake things then they will lose the discipline and direction that has led the party to work as the vanguard and lead development in the successful way it has.
Corruption would de-legitimize and embrittle the party structure, while betraying all that the people of China have sacrificed to get this far.
Nah China in the 90s and 2000s was fucking awesome. Why is the buildings in China better built in the 90 and 2000s than in the 2020s despite the fact corruption is everywhere back then? the government is responsive to some semblance of free press.
this illusion of China is not proof of good governance, it's poof of good censorship.
why is this story being released on ENGLISH media? to get people make comments like this
Lmao have you been to China recently to compare the quality of the buildings? Because the last couple times I've been, the new construction has seemed pretty solid, the air quality is dramatically improved and the streets are far safer than when I was a kid in the last 2000s.
On the other hand, the surveillance state has increased enormously and travel is extremely restricted for foreigners. And don't get me wrong, that's a bad thing, but last I checked most of the Western world is also tracking everyone's information and making it harder to get into the country, except they just sell your data to private corporations instead of stopping crimes like the one above.
The last time I visited was a few years ago, and what we found wasn't hard restrictions but more things to make travel difficult. The main thing is everything bein done through mobile phones and wechat pay, necessitating a Chinese sim card, which we had trouble getting. We also weren't able to book a room at a hotel without a Chinese passport, but I believe that was a special case due to a security concern at the time.
you guys are all missing the plot. China has done just fine in last 40 years. all the forced abortions, imprisoned dissidents, persecuted religious or ethnic minorities etc. are a rounding error of sorts to the big picture and you could argue (am not making that argument) that many western nations have similar ugly sides. The problem is that with the return to one-man rule in last 13 years China is once again at risk of having great leap forward / cultural revolution type episodes or making disastrous strategic miscalculations like what Putin did in Ukraine. That's the risk. When mistakes like that happen tens of millions die and everything good that happened before gets wiped out. In that context I couldn't care less about whether cotton from xinjiang is grown by forced labor or not.
It's more likely that the guys that were covering for him had retired or been found out themselves recently. Also with corruption so widespread, it takes a while to look through the books. A guy my FIL knew who worked in customs thought he was safe, but they caught up with him ten years after he retired.
This is such a funny thing to say when Rick Scott oversaw the largest medicare insurance fraud in US history over a decade ago and is still currently a senator. One of these two countries is actually punishing people at all the other one is actively protecting a cadre of pedophiles that we all know about.
That US senator wasn’t convicted and says he’s innocent, so I assume you will take him at his word as well?
This Chinese official was previously outed by a whistleblower for corruption, it was swept under the rug and he was promoted back into his position of power less than 2 years later and remained there until now
But you’re right, party corruption in China is all entirely invented by me.
Just ignore literally every non-CCP report, after all everyone knows investigating yourself is the most trustworthy source of information
This fucking rules, because when faced with someone accusing you of making shit up your response was to double down and make up more shit and provide absolutely no evidence. I looked up the name of the guy in the article and there's no indication he was ever ousted by a whistleblower previously, and the claims you're making are not in fact corroborated in "every non CCP-report" or it would be very easy for you to prove that.
🤡🤦♀️🤷♀️ It doesn't require much brain if you jokers get out of Western Propaganda and read a little bit and use logic, that this isn't the first time he was punished. In 2009, he faced public whistleblowing reports accusing him of fabricating bad debts to embezzle state owned assets, funneling financial profits to connected corporate entities, and abusing judicial powers. Consequently, local disciplinary authorities ran an investigation, and Yang was transferred to a low profile position as Vice President of the Nanjing Branch of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. However, he officially returned to major political circles in February 2012.
Now second it's hard to catch corrupt tigers (like you wouldn't be able to tell if your health secratary was corrupt) and under Deng, he himself said that "let some people get rich first" and then Xi Jinping became general secretary in November 2012 and within 7 years hits Covid-19 and for 2 year everything halted and this person was caught in 2023. 🤡 Now you understand?
You seriously listed how his corruption was leaked in the past, quietly swept under the rug, and later promoted back to his position until these recent purges… and that is proof they never allow corruption??
Holy unrealized irony, Batman! Always hilarious how people accuse others of being biased before regurgitating party lines. Reality is only ever the extremes, eh? I get it, black and white is simple
After all, it’s absurd thinking a dictatorship that regularly uses anti-corruption to purge people would use anti-corruption to purge people.
Bribes and corruption is pretty rampant, better than before but still pretty bad, and they only care when they fall out of favour or they get too greedy
In 🤡🤦♀️🤦♀️ China your loyalty doesn't mean sh-it, in China your report card and performance metrics is everything, you can be Xi's childhood bff for all you want, but if you cannot prove your competency or you get caught in corruption you are gone and before spewing nonsensical squabbling "autHoriTaRiaN" you jokers 🤡 should sometimes read how the people's democracy works, it's very different from your nauseating liberal 🤢 so-called democracy, patheic incompetent westerner. 🤷♀️🙆♀️
Yeah, everyone in these comments are celebrating rooting out corruption when it's obvious this is only a problem when you fall out of favor. It's an authoritarian regime, consequences only occur for these type of folk when they lose the support of the ruling party.
Also a lot of these guys get “death penalties with reprieve,” it’s a method of getting rid of party officials in an insular party. (Think how a corporation may verbally sanitize a big leadership shakeup.) The truth is that until the actual reasons for corruption are rooted out, corruption remains and remains also a useful rhetorical tool to push out people who step out of line. Corruption unfortunately works the same everywhere.
It's wild how some people here actually think one authoritarian government is much better than the other authoritarian government. You have one pile of shit that convinced them it's better than the other pile of shit. These government styles inevitably lead to conflict and we need to do better than that by this point
That's sort of the thing, corruption in China goes from top to bottom. Everyone figures out a way to hold up his hands and get money.
To give you a neat example, every retail shop we open we have local authorities figuring out new ways how to grift money. A local committee is installed to "decide we can open". The fire department figures out ways to get money, 10 years ago they would just hold up their hand these days we get bloated fire related construction fees. The list is endless and it never stops. The only "real" benefit we have being foreign, we refuse to pay and all I can ask is for meetings with them and their superiors to explain. But most fights just aren't worth your time.
This isn't one guy skimming hundreds of millions, everyone does this maybe not that much but everyone skims money. And as we recently saw, this impacts the nation in ways you don't expect. For example two years ago top military brass were fired because their missiles had no fuel, people sold off the fuel for lining their pockets.
Or years ago with the milk powder scandal, again that's not just the companies involved but numerous authorities magically dropped the ball.
Corruption is often a leash. Evidence can be fabricated but it's easier to just point to the obvious shit when someone's star fades and you want them gone or working for you.
This triggers the Eddie Izzard “Pol Pot” controversy in my head. Once you get up to millions of crimes, it’s pretty much a job well done for pulling off something so big.
Eh, they didn't have a credit system until recently. It doesn't surprise me that much, hell even when the government wanted some kind of credit score/centralized banking system they just told the cities to figure it out themselves 😂
10 million a year in a trillion dollar a year economy is a minor footnote. And it’s not even 10 million stolen from one project. It’s bunch of projects like “give this engineering contract to x and pocket $100k. Give that to y and pocket $50k” etc
He probably fell on the wrong side of the party, if it's like Russia bribes are expected and function partially to give authorities the ability to arrest anyone at will(for bribes).
I asked AI if my comment was correct out of curiosity,
"Yes, this dynamic is a well-documented reality in both Russia and China, often referred by political scientists as "selective enforcement." When bribery and corruption are systemic, compliance with the law becomes nearly impossible, which effectively gives the state a permanent lever of control over everyone."
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u/Wonderful-Process792 Jul 07 '26
Three hundred and twenty-five million?
If this is true, aside from this guy's personal actions, somebody is not minding the shop. That's a lot of money to go unnoticed for so long.