Among the various challenges China’s society faces, corruption stands as the most critical aspects that threatens the country’s overall stability and development trajectory. Since taking charge as the General Secretary of the CCP as well as the President of the country, Xi Jinping has sought to prioritise his anti-corruption campaign. The campaign in itself has posed various challenges for the Party. By purging high-ranking officials under corruption cases, the Party cadre was rather intimidated to toe the Xi Jinping line instead of vary of corrupt practices.
Through these means of political purging, Xi Jinping has rather solidified his position instead of eradicating the actual root of corrupt practices. However, corruption in Chinese society is not a new affair. The CCP leadership has throughout its existence from 1949 to the present times have acknowledged the menace of corruption within the party, government and the country’s society as a whole. This acceptance has however not borne much fruit in terms of tangible results such as reduction in corruption cases.
The Party’s anti-corruption efforts gained significant momentum when Xi Jinping, the party’s newly appointed General Secretary in 2012 announced his political fight against the menace of corruption and officials who indulged in the same. His administration has since then launched an extensive and high-profile campaign against corruption, targeting both high-ranking officials and lower-level bureaucrats in its quest to crackdown on malpractices within the party cadres and government, both alike. The campaign has since then led to the investigation and punishment of numerous officials, including some at very senior levels.
The political purging of prominent party members since 2012 had led many analysts to believe that the case of corruption would have gradually gone down given the sense of fear that had surrounded high-profile cases of Bo Xilai and his apparent successor Sun Zhengcai. Moreover, the case of Zhou Yongkang set the tone to Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption plans when one of the highest-ranking officials was prosecuted under the new leadership’s campaign. Zhou, who was a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee and held the position of head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, was sentenced to life in prison for corruption, bribery, and abuse of power. The myth-like political purges of high-ranking officials in the party caused some stir within the cadre leading many to believe that corruption would indeed begin sliding downwards under the Xi era. However, the recent cases in the past year or so has once again reiterated the ill-fated character of many political stakeholders in the Party.
Xi Jinping’s authoritative control in the country has seen no accountable force due to lack of any form of opposition even within the Party. Many have deemed such repressive tactics, including the anti-corruption campaign as one that is leading to misguided judgements for the overall development of the Chinese state. If such an affair is to continue of prioritizing political gains instead of focusing on reducing the menace of corruption within the Party as well as the country, the party would certainly be heading for a disaster. Thus, it would not be wrong to assume that such assertions by the Party led by Xi Jinping himself are in consonance to the supremo’s desire of dominating and dictating the terms of his personal rise to power.
Least to state, far away from reducing corrupt practices within governmental and Party duties, Xi Jinping’s strategy has capitalised on upon the country’s longstanding ill-faced challenge and has converted it into his own advantage in terms of eliminating political opponents. Critics have argued that the purging of officials under the anti-corruption campaign has been selectively applied, with political rivals and dissenters often targeting opponents all the while loyalists to President Xi remain safe. Furthermore, the lack of transparency in the selection of targets has also fuelled these debates raising suspicions of political motivations behind the campaign, undermining its credibility and legitimacy.
Nonetheless, even after the failure of such a high-profile anti-corruption policy, China’s has followed the path of mis-informing the public. The propagandic arm of the CCP has been relentlessly claiming that the campaign has remained a success with rise in prosecution of corruption cases. However, with Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign there seems to be a false sense of respite by prosecuting the guilty. Much of this form of investigation has been focused on eliminating political dissenters and providing a false sense of success. The program has so far prosecuted very high-level state-level officials, deputy state-level officers, military commission members, dozens of ministerial-level officers, and hundreds of deputy ministerial-level officers; all of which have been deemed to be the present leadership’s political adversaries within the Party. Hence, one should read between the lines to understand the actual situation in China, for the anti-corruption campaign may be deemed to be a fruitful cause, its outcome has only been one of failure and individualistic ambitions. Thus, the larger rhetoric of implying that corruption has significantly reduced in China, is noting more than a hallow claim of veiling the Chinese leadership’s failure in mitigating against the crisis of corruption in the country.
Author
