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Fighting corruption or mere window dressing? – Part Two…..will the net catch them all

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DOZENS of serving and retired generals have been detained or convicted on corruption charges under Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has undertaken an ambitious programme to remake the People’s Liberation Army into a modern force more capable of projecting power abroad.
The military has been increasingly called upon to defend China’s claims in disputed areas of the East and South China seas.
A commentary posted on an official military website when Gen Guo was expelled from the party a year ago compared him to Lin Biao, an army chief accused of plotting a coup against Mao Zedong before he died in a plane crash in 1971.
In early July, Ling Jihua, the top aide of former President Hu, was sentenced to life in prison for corruption.
Ling was found guilty of taking bribes, abuse of power and illegally obtaining state secrets.
Ling joins two other notable senior party officials, Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang, in receiving a lifetime prison sentence for corruption. 
Ling once oversaw the Communist Party’s general office, which handles administrative matters for the party chief and other senior leaders.
He was the equivalent of the White House chief-of-staff and was privy to the confidence of President Hu in a way few other officials were.
Ling, his wife, Gu Liping and a deceased son, Ling Gu, all took bribes totalling 77 million renminbi, (about US$11,6 million). 
Ling Jihua’s brother, Ling Zhengce, served as the vice-chairman of Shanxi People’s Political Consultative Conference and prior to that, the director of Shanxi Development and Reform Commission.
He was placed under investigation for corruption in June 2014.
In 2015, Ling Zhengce was also expelled from the Communist Party of China.
In its official announcement, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CCDI) accused Ling of taking bribes to obtain promotions and business interests for others as well as using his office to seek gain for his relatives.
He was also accused of obstructing the investigation.
Like his brother, Ling Zhengce was also accused of ‘violating political rules’. 
In January 2015, Ma Jiam was put under investigation by the CCDI.
At the time he was put under investigation, he was serving as the vice-minister of state security over-seeing foreign and counter-intelligence operations.
Ma was also the vice-president of China Law Society.
He was a member of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
In a bid to explain the high levels of corruption in China, William H. Overholt, a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Centre, claims China’s authoritarian system inevitably causes extreme corruption and a democratic China would be much cleaner.
He states that poor democracies typically have much more crippling corruption than better performing ones.
In the case of China, he posits that corruption prevails because the growth-focused system demands performance at all levels.
Every official and party secretary has high performance requirements. Securing promotion means fulfilling targets and outperforming ambitious colleagues.
Most countries do not hold political leaders at any level to such performance standards.
Since 2013, over 200 000 officials and party members have been investigated, with a 99 percent rate of conviction.
Compare this to the few thousands brought down each year in the previous Hu Jintao era.
Those caught in the present era include not just lowly officials, but heavyweights at the highest levels such as Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the all-powerful politburo standing committee.
There have been hundreds of other senior officials, bureaucrats and executives from powerful state-owned-enterprises (SOEs) targeted.
And as President Xi promised, it has been a case of not only swatting ‘flies’ but killing ‘tigers’.
According to the Hurun Report which tracks the rich in China, some 203 lawmakers and/or representatives were ranked among the richest 1 271 people in China with a combined net worth of US$463,8 billion in 2015.
Putting aside the mega-rich, well over 98 percent of the senior management of SOEs are card-carrying party members in the country’s state-dominated model.
Over 90 percent of the approximately 85 million party members are business elites.
I end with this: Can President Xi truly clean up the system without undermining the authority of the Communist Party?

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