China urged to pardon millions of corrupt officials
All civil servants must enhance their self-discipline. Government power must only be used for public good, not personal gain.
China must pardon two million corrupt Communist Party officials to avoid falling into a “vicious cycle” of sleaze that could ultimately lead to the government’s collapse, a leading legal scholar and author has warned.
Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, has been waging a determined offensive against corruption since taking power in late 2012, purging a succession of powerful political and military leaders.
Sunday, Li Keqiang, the prime minister, marked the end of China’s annual party-controlled parliament with a promise to “eliminate the breeding ground for corruption,” adding: “All civil servants must enhance their selfdiscipline. Government power must only be used for public good, not personal gain.”
However He Jiahong, a respected legal scholar and author from Beijing’s Renmin University, said two million officials had engaged in acts of corruption, and that investigating them all was not possible since it would take 40 or 50 years.
If China is serious about winning its war on corruption, it needs to focus on preventing future crimes rather than those that had already been committed, he said.
In several recent academic papers, He has called for a form of amnesty or pardon for corrupt officials.
“We set a deadline — let’s say Dec. 31, 2015. If the official declares all their property truthfully then we will not investigate the source of the property,” he said.
Under his proposed policy, officials’ financial affairs would not be scrutinized if they came clean about their ill-gotten gains and promised to behave. Recidivists would face immediate investigation.
A “special account” could be set up for officials who had amassed such stupendous amounts of property that they were embarrassed to come clean, He proposed. “Donations” to the account could be spent on poverty relief and anticorruption initiatives.
While Xi has made the war on corruption one of his administration’s central themes, people have been detained or thrown in jail for publicly demanding that officials disclose their assets.