Message from Chinese Govt: “You can’t just steal money from China and then enjoy life in Canada.”
Similarly, we seriously need to identify the ‘for and against’ for Good Governance in India. Encouragement to the deserving and severe punishment to the corrupt should be mooted by the Indian Government. People need to learn to live within the means of their livelihood and income; greed cannot be accepted as a sustainable model of living in a civilised society.
How the Chinese Govt. delivered time bound and measurable results in its war against corruption?
As Charles Riley of CNN Money puts it, since Xi Jinping the Chinese Premier declared war on corruption in 2012, it has humbled multinational corporations, taken down senior officials and put brothels out of business.
For the officials who thought of leaving the country to escape the law with ill gotten money, the Chinese Govt. had the perfect message, in words of Transparency International’s Liao the message is “You can’t just steal money from China and then enjoy life in Canada.” The ultimate goal in transferring money out of China, said Liao, is that either the official or his offspring will have a happy life after they leave China. The new crackdown on overseas assets is designed to stop this process. “The government wants to make them hopeless,” Liao said.
They know money leaves trail and they followed the trails of real estate, they went hunting for overseas real estate in sought after nations like US, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands bought with dirty money. They did house to house ownership audit in China to work out the “network & the net worth” (former Politburo member Bo Xilai’s wife’s villa on the French Riviera, ex-railway minister Zhang Shuguang houses in Walnut, California). They knew that black money is difficult to invest in stock market funds or directly into an overseas bank as financial institutions are mandated by anti-money laundering agreements to report suspicious funds whilst real estate agents in most countries have no such stipulations.
Stashed money and relatives abroad is a perfect combo -The soon-to-retire Chinese bigwigs started preparation for their escape to foreign land, for which they laid the groundwork for years. One common ploy is to send a son or daughter overseas to a private university as a way to legitimize sending funds out of China. For example, former ministry of finance official Xu Fangming deposited roughly 1 million yuan ($164,000) into the bank account of a son studying abroad. It is hardly a coincidence that number of Chinese students studying abroad has jumped in recent years. In the United States, it more than doubled to 194,000 in the 2011/2012 school year from five years ago says Liao.
The campaign has come a long way, and China’s anti-corruption czar, Wang Qishan has now submitted a list of 150 corrupt Chinese officials believed to be hiding in the United States, and vowed cooperation to help extradite them. As of November 2014, China concluded a total of 39 extradition treaties, including 29 that have taken effect; and 52 criminal judicial assistance treaties, with 46 already in force including countries like US, France and Spain.
Declaring this colossal war was not easy, for it needed guts beyond cheap publicity stunts. Bureaucracy was an important stakeholder during China’s super expansion and had ability to derail the same. The officials didn’t always adhere to the rules for procurement or while awarding contracts or while acquiring land. Their problem is no different than ours. The central government can issue laws and formulate policy, but the factionalism and competition for power among officials at all levels makes implementation of the policies or adherence to laws difficult. Local governments, for example, often collude with businesses to enrich themselves at the expense of the people, soliciting backlash in the form of mass protest and social unrest.
Well did they succeed? After 3 years, what we definitely know is that they meant every word of it.
They have strengthen cooperation with the international community to fight corruption with launch of anti-graft campaign “Sky Net” and “Fox Hunt 2015″ aimed at capturing corrupt members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and government officials residing overseas and wanted in economic crimes corrupt.
Since 2012, China stepped up inspection and auditing of big projects to curb graft. In Shanxi alone, know across the globe as one of the most corrupt provinces about 15,500 officials were convicted of corruption between 2013-14. Being the foot soldiers on the ground, the local officials in China started delaying over project approvals and business deals, especially during the economic slowdown phase as Beijing stepped up its plans to use infrastructure spending to arrest slowing economic growth. The Chinese Govt. under National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) approved 1.9 trillion Yuan ($300 billion) of investment projects for 2015, however the top auditor noted that about $45 billion of projects were behind schedule, including a railway line in Yunnan delayed by five years by official sloth. Did the non-co-operation movement helped, unfortunately no, it boomeranged as State media reported in September 2015, that nearly 250 officials had been punished for failing to spend government funds, delaying projects or sitting on land earmarked for development, they have repeatedly scolded procrastinating officials for laziness.
Wei Pengyuan, Deputy Chief of the coal bureau at the National Energy Administration, has been charged with taking $5.8 million in bribes from 2002 to 2012, whilst our very own Yadav Singh, the Chief engineer of UP is more impressive at $147.82 million (converted Rs 1,000 cr reported by IT dept @ Rs 67.65/USD). The question is for how long we can ignore the obvious insensitivity and indifference of India’s governing and bureaucratic class towards India’s starving and undernourished millions.
For a PM like Modi who quotes “Don’t let me become delicate, I live among thorns”, we believe that this task should not be too hard, however exempting the relatives from assets record declaration of Government officials can hardly be called a step in the right direction.
Disclaimer: IndianBureaucracy.com for the purpose of researched on the subject has referred to articles of many scholars published on web as we wanted to bring this subject in the perspective of India for we believe similarities of culture is there to see for all. We would request our readers to refer to the following links for a fantastic and informative read in the field of governance.
More The Atlantic; CNN Money; Reuters; Quartz; Xinhua
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