China's Answer to Corruption

Li Jianping, shown here on his second worst day

By Thomas Neuburger

“We should continue to catch ‘tigers’ as well as ‘flies’.”—Xi Jinping, January 2013

We recently wrote about the American Augean Stables, the massive dung-filled barn that’s our politics today.

In it, we took a page from Hercules’ book in devising a solution:

You can’t shovel your way out. Remember, that’s a 1,000-cattle stable, and in our case a literal army of lobbyists. With a mere shovel, we’d be buried to our necks before the fourth toss of filth out the window. How did Hercules clean his stable? He diverted two rivers and ran the whole mess out to sea. There’s a word for that equivalent today — radical change — going to the root of the problem. As then, so now.

As then, so now: Don’t shovel your way out one dung heap at a time. Wash the whole thing away. A radical solution.

China’s Solution to Corruption

When Xi Jinping took command of the CCP and thus command of China, he instituted many reforms. The most striking to Western eyes is his campaign against corruption. He wanted to catch them all, the ‘tigers’ (major players) and ‘flies’ (small-timers with more modest schemes).

The task was Herculean but his campaign was up to the task. It not only convicted hundreds of thousands since starting:

China’s Disciplinary Watchdog Says It Has Punished Over 1.34 Million Corrupt Officials Under Xi Jinping

In December, the court did this:

China executes official involved in country’s largest corruption case

The official, Li Jianping, was one of the country's biggest ‘tigers’:

BEIJING: China on Tuesday executed Li Jianping, a former official in the north Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, who was convicted in the largest-ever corruption case in the country totalling to over USD 421 million. The death sentence of Li, former secretary of the ruling Communist Party working committee of the Hohhot economic and technological development zone, was initially issued in September 2022 and upheld on appeal in August 2024. … Li, 64 was found guilty by an intermediate court earlier of embezzling a staggering three billion yuan (over USD 421 million) in illegal gains, the largest sum involved in a single corruption case in China’s history, according to earlier reports in the Chinese official media.

Note: $400 million is not much by American standards. The schemes of our ‘tigers’ net billions.

There’s no question, as both articles point out, that the focus on corruption allowed Xi to “wipe out political opponents and consolidate the president’s power.” (More here.)

But it’s also true that Xi’s goal, based on the obvious results, is also to improve life in China. Who can say that about U.S. policy goals?

So is this solution radical? Yes. Is it needed? In both countries, yes. The stables have to be cleaned, and thoroughly, or none but the masters live well.

As to death, I’m not a fan. But strip them of wealth and send them to live as a muppet on $10,000 a year? That’s a punishment most would support.