The Chinese Go After Corruption, Corruptly

By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
October 22, 2006

THE corruption scandal in Shanghai that had already taken down one of China’s most powerful officials claimed two smaller scalps last week: the chief of the national statistics bureau was fired, and an official with the Formula One racing circuit was hauled in for questioning. The contrast between the statistician and the racing executive may have been incidental, but it underscored the perception, fair or not, that official corruption is everywhere in China.

To some extent, the ruling Communist Party does not disagree.

In an economic boom gilded with excess and profiteering, official corruption is so widespread, and increasingly so brazen, that it is almost taken for granted. The latest World Bank governance survey found that China had seriously backslid in the category of “containing corruption” when much of the rest of the world, if not improving, was basically unchanged on the issue.

President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have warned that corruption threatens the credibility and legitimacy of Communist Party rule and have vowed to stamp it out. But many experts say that truly stamping out corruption would involve the type of broad political reform and a full embrace of the rule of law that the party has long resisted. The current corruption sweep authorized by Mr. Hu in Shanghai and other cities is widely viewed as more of a purge of allies linked to his predecessor, President Jiang Zemin, than an unfettered crackdown.

“The problem with China today is that if you want to pursue corruption, so many people are tainted,” said Minxin Pei, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. As a result, Mr. Pei noted, Mr. Hu could never investigate corruption solely on its merits because it would topple so many of his own political allies.

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