Growing CCDI Power Brings Questions of Politically-Motivated Purge
“There is no quota for the anti-graft
campaign, and there is no upper limit [regarding the rank of cadres to be
disciplined].” This is the latest instruction given by Chinese President Xi
Jinping on the clean-governance crusade that has shaken up the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) over the past two years (CCDI website,
January 11; People’s Daily, January 11). Undoubtedly, Xi has gone much
further than his predecessors, ex-presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, in
nabbing high-level miscreants in China’s labyrinthine party-state apparatus—and
there is clearly strong public support for Xi’s campaign against the “big
tigers.” Nonetheless, doubts have surfaced about the propriety and legality
with which the anti-graft movement is being conducted. Specifically, questions
are being asked about the status and mechanisms of the Central Commission for
Disciplinary Inspection (CCDI), the Party’s top graft-buster whose power has
dramatically expanded since the 18th Party Congress in late 2012.
At the Fourth Central Committee Plenum last October, the CCP leadership
vowed to “resolutely uphold the authority of the Constitution and the law” and
to “insist upon running the country and administration in accordance with the
law” (see China Brief,
November 20, 2014). On this and other occasions, Xi reiterated that “all
organizations and individuals must operate within the parameters of the
Constitution and the law.” The year 2015 has been designated as the beginning
of a “new epoch for the comprehensive implementation of rule of law with
Chinese characteristics” (Xinhua, October 23,
2014; Xinhua, February 24,
2013). However, the CCDI, which is a secretive Party organ outside the purview
of both the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the courts, seems to be an
extra-legal institution that derives its authority from just one person:
President and Commander-in-Chief Xi.
The CCDI’s Special Status and
Unprecedented Power
The CCDI is headed by Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) member Wang
Qishan, who is often considered the second most powerful politician in the
country. A former vice-premier in charge of finance and foreign trade, Wang is,
like Xi, a princeling (a reference to the offspring to top leaders) whose close
friendship with the president dates back to the early 1970s, when they were
“rusticated” to the same village in Shaanxi Province. The CCDI is the only
Party or government organ that has its own Organization and Propaganda offices,
which were set up in March 2013. This means, for example, that the CCDI
leadership can recruit cadres outside the established channels of the CCP
Organization Department, which has since 1949 been responsible for the Party’s
human resources-related operations (People’s Daily,
March 29, 2013; Xinhua, March 28,
2013).
The CCDI runs twelve Discipline and Inspection Offices (DIO), which are
responsible for uncovering graft and related offences in party and government
departments, state-owned enterprise (SOE) conglomerates as well as regional
administrative units. Four of the 12 DIOs were established in the past two
years (Chongqing Commercial Daily,
March 20, 2014; China News Service,
March 18, 2014). Starting late last year, the CCDI has stationed sub-offices in
a number of top Party and government units. These include the CCP Central
Committee’s General Office, the Organization Department and the Propaganda
Department. Special CCDI units have also been installed within the General
Office of the State Council (China’s cabinet), as well as the NPC and the
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country’s top
advisory organ. The CCDI is set this year to station anti-corruption cells in
all regional party and government units as well as in big SOEs (Xinhua, December 12,
2014; Southern Weekend [Guangzhou] December
12, 2014).
Moreover, the past two years have witnessed an unprecedented number of senior
CCDI personnel assigned to post-18th Congress Party organs with
responsibilities for economic, political and social reforms. Take, for example,
the Central Leading Group on Comprehensively Deepening Reforms (CLGCDR), which
has emerged as one of the most powerful policy-setting organs at the CCP’s top
echelon. This mammoth organization is headed by four PBSC members: President
Xi, Premier Li Keqiang, PBSC member in charge of ideology and propaganda Liu
Yunshan and Executive Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli. Five Deputy CCDI Party
Secretaries—Zhao Hongzhu, Huang Shuxian, Li Yufu, Zhang Jun and Chen
Wenqing—are among the 39 senior cadres with the rank of ministers or above who
sit on the Leading Group. While these five clean-government experts seem to be
charged with closing graft-related loopholes in the course of formulating new
policies, their presence on this high-level central leading group also means
that graft-busters for the first time are deeply involved in the country’s
overall administration—they are not present on similar Leading Groups for
foreign affairs or economics. Never has the CCDI, whose job used to be solely
related to clean governance, been involved so deeply in the country’s overall
administration (Beijing Youth Daily, March 13, 2014; Ta Kung Pao,
January 23, 2014).
Even more remarkable is the fact that CCDI cadres have “parachuted” into
regional administrations that are deemed disaster zones of misdemeanor. A case
in point is Shanxi Province, where at least a dozen or so senior cadres have
been put under investigation in the past year for alleged corruption. Shanxi happens
to be the home province—and power base—of two “big tigers,” the disgraced
former Politburo member Bo Xilai and the detained Vice-Chairman of the CPPCC,
Ling Jihua (Singtao Daily
[Hong Kong], December 26, 2014; China Daily, December 9, 2014; Shanxi Daily, September 12, 2014). Last
September, two senior CCDI officials were transferred to Shanxi as Standing
Committee members of the province’s ruling Party committee. Huang Xiaowei, who
became the only female Standing Committee member of the CCDI in late 2012, was
named Secretary of the Shanxi Disciplinary Inspection Commission. CCDI member
Fu Jianhua was promoted to vice-governor of the coal-rich province (China Daily,
January 19; People’s Daily,
September 30, 2014).
Increased High-Level Corruption Cases
Suggest Political Purge, Not Progress
Studies conducted by Ren Jianming, Head of the Clean Governance Research
Center at Beijing’s Beihang University, have shown that up to one third of
cadres with the rank of ministers or above have accepted bribes and commissions
or helped their close relatives and cronies profit in commercial deals. This
figure is similar to a 2014 report that quoted an internal document as saying
that “more than 30 percent of party, government and military officials were
found to be involved in some form of corruption” (Hong Kong Economic Journal, August 7, 2014;
Reuters, April 16,
2014; Procuratorial Daily, December 25, 2013).
Given that it is well-nigh impossible for the CCDI to tackle all of these bad
eggs within a short time, the question arises as to what criteria top
graft-buster Wang—and President Xi—is using to determine who to go after first.
According to the official media, the CCDI last year detained for
investigation 42 officials with the rank of vice-ministers and vice-governors
or above. This was substantially more than the 17 officials of similar ranks
nabbed in 2013—and the comparable annual figure of six to eight during the
Jiang and Hu administrations (Ming Pao [Hong
Kong], January 12; People’s Daily,
December 30, 2014). Senior cadres incriminated in 2014 included a former
Politburo Standing Committee member (Zhou Yongkang), a former Politburo member
and vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (General Xu Caihou) and
two former vice-chairmen of the CPPCC (Ling Jihua and Su Rong). Questions have
been asked, however, as to whether Xi and Wang have used the anti-corruption
campaign as a weapon to bring down political foes. For example, Zhou, Ling,
General Xu and former Politburo member Bo Xilai—who are described as “the new
Gang of Four” by the Hong Kong and overseas-Chinese media—are rumored to be
leaders of an “anti-Xi Jinping cabal” within the Party (Apple Daily [Hong
Kong] Radio Free Asia,
December 24, 2014). It is perhaps not surprising that the two previous
Politburo members who went to jail for corruption—former Beijing Party
secretary Chen Xitong and former Shanghai Party boss Chen Liangyu—were
political foes of ex-presidents Jiang and Hu, respectively (Financial Times Chinese, August 1,
2014; Hong Kong Economic Journal, July 14, 2011).
According to Bao Tong, the secretary of disgraced Party General Secretary
Zhao Ziyang, however, corruption can never be eradicated under China’s stern
one-party authoritarian rule. “Corruption can only be tackled with political
reform and meaningful checks and balances [within the system],” Bao told a Hong
Kong TV station. Bao, who is China’s highest-ranked dissident, has been under
house arrest ever since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 (Apple Daily,
January 17; Ming Pao, January
10). Zhao, the revered liberal leader who passed away ten years ago, was known
to advocate the establishment in China of a relatively independent anti-graft
agency comparable to the much-admired Independent Commission against Corruption
of Hong Kong (Radio Free Asia,
January 17).
It is mindful of the potential abuses by the CCDI system that Peking
University political scientist Zhang Ming warned that the anti-graft watchdog
must not degenerate into something like the “Eastern Factory,” which is a
reference to the imperial spying agency run by eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty
(1368–1644) to remove critics of the regime and foes of the emperor and his
favorite aides. “It is said in anti-corruption circles that the CCDI observes
three big laws—the way of thinking, opinions and instructions of the
leadership,” said the outspoken academic. “If the police, prosecutors or judges
break the law, recourse is still possible. But when the CCDI makes a mistake,
nobody is in a position to challenge it.” Zhang added that China’s anti-graft
system amounted to “the Party supervising itself.” “Fighting corruption will
only be successful if there is popular and media supervision [of the
authorities],” he noted (Zhang Ming’s blog, May 14, 2014; IB Times Chinese Edition,
December 11, 2012).
The CCDI’s media appearances
have increased at a commensurate pace with the increasingly vital role that it
is playing in Chinese politics. For example, the word “CCDI” appeared 81 times
last year in the titles of articles in People’s Daily, compared to a
mere 19 times in 2012. The phrase “Party Secretary of the CCDI” showed up 1,327
times on the news section of China’s four most popular semi-official Internet
portals. This contrasted with the comparable figure of just 433 in 2012 (Ta Kung Pao,
January 12; Ming Pao, January
12) Despite the CCDI’s enhanced exposure in the media, the operations of the
graft-buster remain as non-transparent as ever. While President Xi’s commitment
to clean governance does not seem to be in doubt, he and the CCDI’s Wang need
to do more to convince the public that they have not been using one of China’s
most powerful organs to consolidate their power and to decimate political foes.
Publication: China Brief Volume: 15 Issue: 3
By: Willy Wo-Lap Lam , Willy Lam
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