corruption | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

01/09/2013

Jiang Jiemin: China corruption probe into top official

There are increasing signs that this time, anti-corruption is being taken very seriously by the Party and government.

BBC: “Chinese authorities have announced a corruption investigation into Jiang Jiemin, the head of the commission that oversees state-owned companies.

The supervision ministry said Mr Jiang was suspected of a “serious violation of discipline”. He has not publicly commented on the allegations.

The term is used to refer to corruption by managers of state companies.

President Xi Jinping has vowed to eradicate corruption in China, warning that it threatens the Communist Party.

Recent months have seen several high-profile corruption cases against high-ranking officials, including disgraced senior party official Bo Xilai, who was put on trial for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power in August.

The verdict in his case is expected “at a date to be decided”. Mr Bo denies all charges.

Until March Mr Jiang was head of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which has faced a number of corruption allegations.

Last week it was announced that another four CNPC executives were under investigation for corruption.

Earlier in August the general manager of state-owned phone company China Mobile Ltd was detained in the southern province of Guangdong. He too is being investigated for discipline violations.

Internet users are also increasingly pursuing those perceived as having done wrong through online exposes and campaigns.

But in recent weeks there have been signs that this has worried the authorities, with a number of journalists arrested for “rumour-mongering” and a high-profile blogger arrested.”

via BBC News – Jiang Jiemin: China corruption probe into top official.

Tags: Bo Xilai, China, China Mobile, China National Petroleum Corporation, CNPC, communist party of china, corruption allegations, corruption in china, corruption investigation, Jiang Jiemin, national petroleum corporation, Xi JinPing

29/08/2013

Bo Xilai on trial: Settling scores

The Economist: “IN A heavily guarded courthouse in the eastern city of Jinan, the trial began on August 22nd of a politician who was once one of China’s most powerful figures. Bo Xilai, who is 64, has been accused of receiving bribes, embezzlement and abuse of power. His downfall in March 2012 caused the greatest political shock of its kind in decades.

That the trial is under way at last is a sign that Xi Jinping, who took over as China’s leader eight months after Mr Bo disappeared from public view, is confident that he can handle its ramifications. Mr Bo, like Mr Xi, is the son of one of Mao Zedong’s fellow revolutionaries. He remains popular in the parts of China where he has served, including as Communist Party chief in the 29m-strong region of Chongqing in the south-west. He is an icon of diehard Maoists and members of the “new left” who decry China’s move towards money making. Handling Mr Bo’s case without upsetting powerful families and arousing public ire (whether of Mr Bo’s fans or of the many Chinese who are aggrieved at widespread official corruption) has been Mr Xi’s challenge. As the trial began, dozens of supporters gathered nearby. Police dragged several away.

Mr Xi and his colleagues wished to choreograph the proceedings—which at the time of going to press were expected to last just a day or two—with great precision. But Mr Bo, with a characteristic feistiness, queered the pitch from the outset. He denied a charge of bribery involving payments of more than 1.1m yuan ($180,000) from a businessman in the north-eastern city of Dalian. His response to the other charges, including millions of dollars in other kickbacks, are not yet known. Foreign journalists were barred from the trial.

The allegations, even if disagreeable to Mr Bo, would have been tailored to suit all factions—including, to some extent, his own, for Mr Bo had powerful backers, including within the security forces. Speculation has also centred on whether the state tried to secure Mr Bo’s co-operation by promising not to go after his 25-year-old son, Bo Guagua, who was expensively educated in Britain and is now studying in America. The younger Mr Bo may hope one day to to avenge his father’s downfall.

via Bo Xilai on trial: Settling scores | The Economist.

Posted in China alert, corruption, Internal politics, Justice, Politics, Rule of law | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Bo Xilai, China, Chongqing, Dalian, Mao Zedong, politics, Xi JinPing

26/08/2013

Mooncake Austerity Hits China’s Mid-Autumn Festiva

WSJ: “First baijiu, then red carpets, and now mooncakes. For Chinese government officials, the list of taboos keeps getting longer.

One month before the country celebrates its annual Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese authorities said Wednesday that they are barring officials from buying mooncakes—a centerpiece of the holiday—as well as giving presents or hosting dinners on the public dime.

Traditionally, mooncakes are gifted (and often re-gifted) as a form of tribute during the festival, exchanged among family members as well as among companies, their clients and employees. “But this kind of polite reciprocity, when overdone, becomes a kind of squandering of cash,” ran an editorial in the People’s Daily on Thursday, praising the mooncake crackdown.

About the size of a hockey puck and traditionally stuffed with anything from red bean paste to salted egg yolk, these days, the once-humble mooncake is barely recognizable. Some are now made of solid gold and others come swathed in pure silk. Such is the luxury nature of some mooncakes that in past years, talk of a “mooncake bubble” circulated, while in 2011, China’s government proposed that workers pay income tax on the value of cakes gifted to them by their employers.

Given the frenetic pace of mooncake gift-giving, they’ve long been seen as an easy vehicle for corruption. Many environmental NGOs have also condemned the modern crop of mooncakes, criticizing their elaborate packaging as wasteful.

This week’s mooncake crackdown is part of a broader attempt to quell anger about public corruption, which in recent years has been stoked by the sight of officials gorging on lavish banquets and indulging in other excesses, including luxury watches and more. Thursday’s editorial in the People’s Daily, for example, cited the anti-mooncake move as part of President Xi Jinping’s effort to educate Party members about the evils of the “Four Winds,” i.e. “formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and waste.”

On Thursday, some users on Sina Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like microblogging service, though, were less than impressed. “”The system doesn’t change, these kinds of trivialities aren’t of any use,” wrote one.

Others mourned the idea that the confections were facilitating corruption. “A holiday that was once simple and pure has been transformed by China’s corrupt bureaucracy into something with a different meaning,” wrote another. “How sad.”

Still others took the opportunity to rail against mooncakes in general. Despite the holiday zeal for them, many languish uneaten for weeks after they’ve been gifted. “They’re just a mix of stuff high in fat, high in sugar, and high in additives,” wrote one user.

“They’re not tasty and they’re expensive,” added another. “No wonder that other than during the Mid-Autumn festival, people don’t eat them.””

via Mooncake Austerity Hits China’s Mid-Autumn Festival – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, corruption, Economics, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, Government of the People's Republic of China, Mid-Autumn Festival, Mooncake, politics, Sina Weibo, Xi JinPing

19/08/2013

Seventy police make graft claims against top Shanghai judge

Must be brave of the police to make such a claim! Safety in numbers!!

Posted in China alert, corruption | Leave a Comment »

23/07/2013

First U.S. citizen detained as China pharma probe spreads

First crackdown on party members and officials, now on commercial organisations. China‘s anti-corruption campaign gathers pace.

Reuters: “The first U.S. citizen has been detained in China in connection with probes sparked by an unfolding corruption scandal in the drugs industry, as China widens the range of international firms and staff under the spotlight.

A Chinese national flag flutters in front of a GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) office building in Shanghai July 12, 2013. REUTERS/Aly Song

Police have also questioned two further Chinese employees from drug maker AstraZeneca in Shanghai, after a local sales representative was taken away for questioning earlier.

And China’s health ministry said 39 hospital staff would be punished for taking bribes from drug companies.

The unnamed American is the first U.S. citizen to be detained in connection with the investigations, and the second foreign national, after a British risk consultant linked with GlaxoSmithKline was held last week.

GSK has been accused by China of funneling up to 3 billion yuan ($489 million) to travel agencies to facilitate bribes to doctors and officials.

“We are aware that a U.S. citizen has been detained in Shanghai. We are in contact with the individual and are providing all appropriate consular assistance,” U.S. embassy spokesman Nolan Barkhouse said on Tuesday, when asked about the involvement of U.S. citizens in the widening probe.

He declined to say which company the individual was associated with.

The latest moves by Chinese officials underline the country’s tough stance on corruption and high prices in the pharmaceutical industry, as it unrolls wider healthcare access and faces an estimated $1 trillion healthcare bill by 2020.

“Momentum is gathering and if you are a big international firm, then you’re a good example to be held up. This is a wake-up call for the rest of the industry,” said Jeremy Gordon, director of China Business Services, a risk management company focusing on China.

AstraZeneca said that the Shanghai Public Security Bureau had asked on Tuesday to speak with two line managers linked to the sales representative questioned earlier.

“The Public Security Bureau is describing this as an individual case. We have no reason to believe it is related to other investigations,” the company said in the statement.

via First U.S. citizen detained as China pharma probe spreads | Reuters.

Posted in corruption, Economics, Politics, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Tags: AstraZeneca, China, GlaxoSmithKline, GSK, Pharmaceutical industry, politics, Public Security Bureau

10/07/2013

China Absent From Transparency International’s Global Corruption Report

WSJ: “How bad is corruption in China? Don’t ask.

That’s the answer Transparency International says it got from Chinese market research firms as it conducted a survey on the topic.

“We approached a number of different local survey companies, but they did not feel that it would be possible to implement a survey of this nature in China without omitting many of the questions,” a spokeswoman for the Berlin-based group said in an email response to questions.

On Tuesday, Transparency International published a report it had been touting in recent weeks as the “biggest-ever public opinion survey on corruption.”

Yet despite the breadth of its research – 114,000 people surveyed in 107 countries – Transparency International doesn’t mention China once in its 48-page Global Corruption Barometer 2013. A pull-down tab of country reports on the organization’s website skips from Chile to Colombia.

“It’s true that China is clearly the main omission in terms of the survey’s country coverage, but we still firmly believe the Global Corruption Barometer’s overall messages and results are globally relevant,” the spokeswoman said. “Every time we do this research we seek to find ways to include China, but it remains a huge challenge.”

Corruption is a common topic of discussion in China.

Communist Party leaders have regularly said official corruption is the biggest threat to the leadership’s legitimacy. In March, just hours into his presidency, Xi Jinping urged his new team to “reject formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance, and resolutely fight against corruption and other misconduct.”

Market researchers say corruption is too sensitive to probe in significant depth, given China’s controls on all forms of domestic media.

Last October, the Pew Research Center said half the Chinese people answering one of its surveys said corrupt officials are a major problem.

Pew said it hired a Beijing firm, Horizon Consultancy Group, to ask dozens of attitude questions related to society and politics including, “Tell me if you think it is a very big problem, a moderately big problem, a small problem or not a problem at all: Corrupt business people.”

Transparency International’s approach is more blunt: it says it starts with the assumption that corruption exists everywhere.

For its Global Corruption Barometer report, Transparency International used a multi-question survey focused only on bribery, malfeasance and influence peddling. Its surveyors around the world began with the pointed query, “Over the past two years, how has the level of corruption in this country changed?”

One measure of China’s corruption is the outsider’s view. Based on that measure, China ranked 80th out of 174 countries in an index of corruption perception published by Transparency International last year.”

via China Absent From Transparency International’s Global Corruption Report – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, corruption | 1 Comment »

Tags: China, Corruption Perceptions Index, Global Corruption Barometer, Political corruption, politics, Transparency International, Xi JinPing

29/06/2013

Chinese Official Sentenced to 13 Years in Sex Scandal That Was Exposed on Internet

NY Times: “Lei Zhengfu, a Chinese official who became a symbol of corruption, was convicted of taking bribes and sentenced to 13 years in prison on Friday in a scandal that exposed the sordid deal-making in Communist Party politics.

The conviction of Mr. Lei was the culmination of a fall that began when video images spread on the Internet in November showing him with an 18-year-old woman. The images, and ensuing accusations of graft and extortion, made him a much-mocked exhibit in the newly appointed Communist Party leadership’s efforts to persuade citizens that it was stamping out official graft and depravity, which have stoked deepening public ire.

Mr. Lei was sentenced days after President Xi Jinping made a new call to halt bureaucratic corruption and bribe-taking. A court in Chongqing, the municipality in southwest China where Mr. Lei once worked, dismissed his argument that a payoff of $488,000, or 3 million renminbi, he had arranged through an associate was a legitimate loan, not hush money to keep secret the video showing him with the young woman.

The court said the money amounted to a bribe.

“The sums involved were massive, and the effects were malign,” said the verdict read to Mr. Lei in the courtroom, according to Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency. “This should be sternly punished according to the law.”

China’s leaders have vowed to get rid of corrupt officials, however low or high. Before his dismissal in November, Mr. Lei was the party secretary of Beibei, a district of Chongqing. Critics said the spectacle of his trial did not make up for Mr. Xi’s failure thus far to take down senior officials, despite widespread speculation about corruption investigations in the government and the military involving powerful figures and large amounts of money.”

via Chinese Official Sentenced to 13 Years in Sex Scandal That Was Exposed on Internet – NYTimes.com.

Posted in China alert, corruption, Internet, social media | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Bribery, bureaucratic corruption, China, Chongqing, communist party leadership, communist party of china, corruption investigations, politics, Xi JinPing

28/06/2013

Exposure via internet now China’s top weapon in war on graft

SCMP: “The internet has become the primary tool for exposing corruption on the mainland, “removing a corrupt official with the click of a mouse”, according to a leading think tank’s analysis.

In its Blue Book of New Media, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said that 156 corruption cases between 2010 and last year were first brought to light online – compared with 78 cases to resulting from reports in traditional media.

Forty-four cases involving disciplinary violations were first exposed in some form online, while 29 cases followed print and broadcast stories. Sixteen cases citing abuses of power were exposed online; 10 were revealed in traditional media.

Among the latest officials to fall from grace thanks to online revelations was Liu Tienan , a former deputy chief of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Liu was sacked in mid-May, more than five months after an editor of the influential Caijing magazine used his microblog account to expose allegations against him.

The report said revelations online, and the rise in interest in public affairs the internet had engendered, were the main reasons more people were participating in anti-corruption efforts.

However, the report cautioned that such efforts still had a long way to go. Only five officials of above departmental rank were brought down via online exposures last year – just a fraction of the 950 officials of that level who were probed for crimes.

The mainland had 564 million internet users at the end of last year, including 309 million microbloggers, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre. The Blue Book said the online community would likely exceed 600 million this year.

The new-media boom has posed an unprecedented challenge to Communist Party rulers, experts warned, due to the easy spread of information, including rumours. The report blamed the online rumour mill on governments’ declining credibility and growing concern on the part of the public.”

via Exposure via internet now China’s top weapon in war on graft | South China Morning Post.

Posted in bad behaviour, Change, China alert, Citizens's rights, Consumer protection, corruption, Food safety, Morality, Social & cultural, social media, Technology, whistle blowing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: academy of social sciences, China, china internet network, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, communist party rulers, corrupt official, corruption cases, National Development and Reform Commission, network information centre, Political corruption

01/06/2013

Anna Hazare concludes second phase of Jantantra Yatra

Times of India: “Anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare today concluded the second phase of his Jantantra Yatra here, asking people to “wake up” to change a system where power has gone into the hands of “tainted” people.

English: Hon. Anna Hazare in Nanded , Maharastra . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“As many as 163 of our MPs are tainted. This means that the system is corrupt and needs to be changes,” Hazare said, adding, he will launch a major campaign from Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan very soon.

He asked people to realise that they hold the key in a democratic setup, and they should bring about amendments to it by voting judiciously for “right individuals”.

Hazare was addressing the last public meeting of the second phase of his campaign, ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha polls.

He asked the youths to come forward and associated themselves with his campaign.

Hazare said he lives the life of an ascetic and recalling an incident, he claimed “once some corrupt people hired contract killers to eliminate me, but they refused, saying they cannot kill a ‘fakir'”.

He said he was grateful to people of Uttarakhand for “showering their love” on him during his campaign.

In his campaign, Hazare covered nearly 50 villages and held public meetings at a number of places including Rishikesh, from where he launched his second phase, Haridwar, Nainital and Haldwani, before concluding it here.”

via Anna Hazare concludes second phase of Jantantra Yatra – The Times of India.

See also:

Anna Hazare accuses UPA of betraying nation (niticentral.com)
Don’t want award from government which can’t act against graft: Anna Hazare (ndtv.com)
Be wary of false prophets (thehindu.com)

Posted in corruption, India alert, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Anna Hazare, Delhi, Hazare, India, lok sabha polls

29/05/2013

China’s spurned mistresses can’t be relied on to bust graft

(Reuters) – “China must not rely on whistle-blowing mistresses to expose corrupt officials, China’s top newspaper said on Wednesday, after a string of such incidents has led to some people hailing the girlfriends as graft-busters.

Liu Tienan, then deputy chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), attends a news conference in Beijing in this February 27, 2009 file photograph. REUTERS/Stringer/Files

President Xi Jinping has singled out corruption as a threat to the Communist Party’s survival, and the keeping of mistresses in lavish apartments, which breaks party rules, has come to represent to many people the excesses of power in China.

In a recent high-profile case, Liu Tienan, once the deputy chief of China’s top planning agency, was sacked after his mistress told a journalist that Liu had helped defraud banks of $200 million, state media reported.

But the People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper, questioned the woman’s motives and said China could not rely on such people to fight corruption.”

via China’s spurned mistresses can’t be relied on to bust graft: paper | Reuters.

Posted in China alert, corruption, whistle blowing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, Communist Party, communist party of china, People's Daily, Whistleblower, Xi JinPing

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

Categories

Blogs I Follow

Archive for ‘corruption’