Xi’s anti-graft drive a success, says book
: President Xi Jinping’s high-profile anti-graft campaign has scored an “overwhelming victory” and hundreds of millions of Chinese now believe corruption levels are down in the country, says a new governmentsanctioned policy book.
The book concludes that despite the success of the sixyear-old campaign, the momentum of the anti-corruption drive is not slowing down but picking up pace.
Xi launched the campaign soon after taking over as the general secretary of the Communist Party of China in 2012-13.
Hundreds of thousands of Communist Party cadres and officials have since been punished. Several high-profile leaders have been swiftly investigated and removed from their powerful posts, which has led critics to say the corruption was – and possibly continues to be – a weapon in Xi’s hand to tackle intra-party rivals and consolidate his grip on power. While launching the campaign, Xi had famously said the Communist Party will go after “high-ranking tigers to lowerlevel flies” in China.
Among the big tigers netted were top political leaders such as Zhou Yongkang, former security czar, and Bo Xilai, who at one point was expected to be part of the top leadership of the Communist Party.
From the military, Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, both former vice-chairpersons of the Central Military Commission, were punished.
Beijing carried out such operations as Sky Net and Fox Hunt to
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hunt down officials accused of graft who had fled abroad.
The campaign has seemingly polished the Communist Party’s image among the people though it is doubtful whether it is to the extent claimed by the “Blue Book of Combating Corruption and Upholding Integrity”, compiled by the China Anti-Corruption Research Centre of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“The overall trend of the anticorruption campaign is getting better and better,” Jiang Laiyong, the book’s executive editor, told state-run China Daily newspaper. “Our survey showed that 80% of urban and rural residents believed corruption has been reduced over the past year,” Jiang said.
He was quoted by the newspaper as saying that anti-corruption efforts have been a feature in protecting public interests and alleviating poverty, which has won people’s favour. The report didn’t mention how that conclusion was drawn – or whether it is purely anecdotal.
Official statistics on the number of people punished under the campaign are big.