China’s top anti-corruption agency has said that former Justice Minister Tang Yijun would be indicted on charges of corruption and misconduct after being accused of taking bribes and abused his power. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) has accused Tang of helping family members secure financial deals and accepting lavish gifts and travel expenses, in violation of the Communist Party’s code of conduct. While Tang’s case, like so many others shows continuance of the anti-corruption campaign by Xi Jinping, a new dimension has been recently added relating to ‘corruption of the mind’ and disloyalty to the Communist Party of China (CPC) by reading publications with “serious political problems”. This has become an increasingly common accusation levelled at disgraced officials by China’s CCDI, who cite it as proof of disloyalty.
While the anti-corruption campaign has targeted both corrupt officials in the past, the trend of showing so-called disloyalty by reading forbidden texts is reminiscent of Soviet Russia. While such reading bans are believed to date back several decades, the recent uptick in naming and shaming coincides with last year’s amendment to the party’s disciplinary regulations, which greatly expanded the clause relating to reading unapproved materials. For a moment though, let us return to the narrative about Tang, Yijun, who allegedly benefitted others in personnel appointments by accepting bribes and used his position to help family members secure business contracts. The CCDI in a statement alleged that he intervened in market activities and judicial matters. It claimed that Tang “exhibited a poor family ethos, neglecting his spouse’s conduct, and showed no regard for legal principles, treating public power as a means for personal gain.”
Consequentially, Tang was stripped of his party membership and public office. More importantly, he was removed from his representative role at the 20th National Congress, and the CCDI claims that it will confiscate the income and proceeds gained through violations of discipline! Details given by South China Morning Post reveal that that Tang served as a conduit for others seeking to navigate corporate hurdles, such as business operations, company listings and regulatory approvals, while unlawfully accepting substantial amounts of money. Like many other rising stars in the CPC, he started his career by ascending the political ranks in Zhejiang province. Notably, Chinese President Xi Jinping was provincial party secretary here for five years from 2002.
In 2016, he was appointed Mayor of Ningbo and became the city’s Party Secretary just three months later. Prior to this he had spent five years working in a local political advisory role. He was then promoted to Deputy Party Secretary of Zhejiang in 2017. Five months later, he became alternate member of the Central Committee and subsequently became Liaoning Deputy Party Chief. A year later he was appointed as Governor of Liaoning before being appointed Justice Minister in April 2020.
Thereafter his career stalled after he failed to secure a position on the Central Committee in October 2022 during the party’s 20th National Congress. For a key Chinese Minister to be left out of the top decision-making body was a sign that something was amiss. Tang served as Chairman of Jiangxi provincial political advisory body from January 2023 till he faced a corruption probe in April this year. Tang is not the only case of a Justice Minister being investigated for corruption. Previous ministers Fu Zhenghua (2022) and Wu Aiying (2017) were also dismissed on corruption charges.
Fu, previously one of the most influential police chiefs in China, faced accusations of being affiliated with a “political faction” led by former public security Vice Minister Sun Lijun. In September 2022, he was sentenced to life in prison for accepting 117 million yuan (US$ 16 million) in bribes and using his authority to shield his brother from prosecution. Wu, who had served as the Justice Minister from 2005 to 2017, was expelled from the party just four months after stepping down, when it was revealed that a high-ranking law enforcement official had been promoted through fake credentials.
However, these are examples of classic corruption cases, where the CCDI investigates and pronounces a guilty verdict for financial misappropriation or taking bribes while in office. Violating party discipline is a euphemism of being disloyal to the party. The situation is a little more complex when it comes to others who have been sacked or are under investigation for reading literature that is deemed to be anti-party. Take the case of Li Bin, a former Vice Director of the Municipal Legislature of Mudanjiang in northeastern Heilongjiang province. He was expelled in late September 2024 on suspicions of corruption. At the top of allegations made public was the accusation that he privately read an ‘illegal publication’ and which allegedly had content that would “jeopardise the unity of the party”. This the reason for which the first charge of disloyalty to the CPC is first listed.
A similar case surfaced when Cheng Zhiyi, 61, former party secretary of Chongqing’s Jiangjin district was accused of possessing and reading forbidden books. The CCDI revealed that Zhiyi was accused of “reading overseas books and periodicals with serious political problems”. Just how insecure the CPC apparatus is, becomes clear from a reading of the charges against Zhiyi. Also, in some cases the charge is implemented with retrospective effect and the individuals concerned are left wondering what hit them. Both Cheng and Li are amongst a growing group of officials who are being accused in public of reading publications not ‘endorsed’ by the CPC.
Zhang Zulin, former Vice Governor of southwestern Yunnan province, was accused on 12 September 2024 of possessing and reading forbidden books, according to the CCDI. The point is that Zhang, who is 65 and retired, has been accused of “losing his political ideals and aspirations, forming political cliques … and possessing and reading books, periodicals and audiovisual products with serious political problems”. Earlier, the anti-corruption watchdog in Jiangxi province accused Gan Chengjiu, a former general manager at Jiangxi Financial Holding Group Ltd, of bringing “reactionary books into the country” and reading them privately, along with other political disloyalty and corruption charges.
What defines a “forbidden book’ in Chinese parlance? This usually refers to overseas publications, mostly political in nature and smuggled into China for private circulation. They also include books that examine historical periods of the CPC which are ‘sensitive.’ These include stories about the struggle of the party and its leaders, for example during the Chinese Civil War and the anti-Rightist Movement of the 1950s. In the larger context, the Great Leap Forward; the Three Years of Hardship famine; the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 are instances of CPC crackdowns that are not to be discussed within China. The CPC and its state apparatus forbids publications on these matters and carrying them across the border into China is said to violate Chinese customs regulations. Simply put regime stability is of the utmost importance and therefore, anything that could even remotely create dissonance is treated as forbidden. According to the South China Morning Post, allegations of reading politically forbidden books have appeared in at least a dozen corruption cases so far in 2024, from around 7 last year. Note that accusation has been made by anti-corruption bodies in at least five other provinces this year. The significant thing is that if officials are under disciplinary investigation, it is often used as major evidence of disloyalty. The bottom line is that loyalty to the CPC is measured by one yardstick, loyalty to Xi Jinping. Beyond that anything, both current and in the past can be used to post charges of corruption. That is how the Chinese state apparatus keeps regime stability in place.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-62976845
