Chapter 04 Anti-corruption Fight
Against Dissidents to Capture Power (1)

Jiang Zemin has been in power for 12 years plus the actual control of Hu Jintao for 10 years, practicing indulgence in corruption of military and political officials in exchange for his loyalty and support, resulting in the idea that “all officials are corrupt, no official is corrupt” nationwide. The government has to replace the Xi’s people so it must get rid of a number of heads from the Jiang and Hu eras and establish the power system of President Xi. The people have long hated corrupt officials. They are happy that Xi has uncovered corrupt official tigers. Anti-corruption is unstoppable and easy to handle. As the tigers, big and small, were caught and put in jail one by one, the public found out that Xi Jinping was not always really “against corruption” but selectively against corruption, looking for dissident officials, party officials who did not agree with him and senior officers who do not fit his taste and were not loyal to him. He focuses on politics… In fact this is a “political anti-corruption” campaign.

When Xi Jinping proposed that “anti-corruption is always on the road”, the national masses generally demanded a shift to “institutional anti-corruption” legislation to establish a system to prosecute and punish corruption in accordance with the law rather than just continue hastily by discipline committee members. Xi Jinping ordered the Discipline Inspection Commission to arrest people without the evidence at hand to investigate. They were first arrested, then tried and later on investigated. After trial and investigation, corruption information easily came out. The court was not needed anymore. The court has also been following the party’s and President Xi’s instructions on how many years or life imprisonment or death penalty to be imposed. The court just does the paperwork for the sentence. The court also gives the corrupt officials the right to “appeal”, however, sentenced corrupt officials understand that “appeal” is only a formality. If they appeal, the results are the same:”The original sentence is upheld”. So the condemned also learned a good lesson: “fully accept, no appeal”, only hoped for leniency: not to pursue family members, not to implicate relatives, and to accept their own unconditional prison sentence.

The nation’s people are clamoring for the normalization and institutionalization of the fight against corruption and its normal handling through the prosecutors and courts. But Xi Jinping wants to keep the anti-corruption power in his hands forever and not to let it go. The discipline inspection committee is his tool, his hand, he wants the discipline inspection committee to arrest whoever they want. The masses ask the government every year, like other countries in the world, to establish a system for officials to announce their assets. Xi Jinping delays it year after year, as usual. He has ignored the requests. This is because he knows that the masses will follow the trail to the root of the problem, hiding can not last long. Not surprisingly, Xi’s own family fortune, which according to Bloomberg Finance information was $420 million in 2012, will have grown to more than $1 billion by 2021. Would all the uncovered “big tigers” be dwarfed? How can such a super tiger be announced in front of the whole nation?

Xi Jinping’s “anti-corruption” campaign targets senior officials from different factions who hinder his grasp of power. Ling Jihua, the director of the Central General Office under Hu Jintao, was familiar with party secrets and the power system. Xi Jinping sees him as a major threat in grabbing power from his hands. Xi, therefore, caught him for trial. So he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Xu Caihou was a general who was cultivated by Jiang Zemin to take charge of the personnel and organizational power of the military commission. Xi Jinping could not manipulate him as he wished and so was eager to get rid of him. Xu Caihou was isolated for bribery and corruption, expelled from the Party, imprisoned for introspection and charged with “conspiring with Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai in a coup against Xi”. In 2015, he died in prison.

The next position Xi Jinping was looking to fill was that of Guo Boxiong. He was the vice chairman of the military commission. After the removal of Xu Caihou, Xi started to catch Guo Boxiong. In 2015, Guo Boxiong was under incarceration review for the crime of bribery but no data of how many millions of bribes was released. In 2016, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Guo Boxiong was born in 1942 and is still in prison.

Sun Zhengcai was the secretary of Chongqing Municipal Party Committee, the “King of Southwest China” after Bo Xilai, born in 1963, young and promising, regarded as a candidate for the Standing Committee of the 19th National Congress, or even called the ideal candidate to replace Xi Jinping. He was not the second generation of the red generation, belonged to the group faction and was regarded by Xi Jinping as a major problem in his heart. In 2017, Xi took advantage of his meeting in Beijing, detained and imprisoned him. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018 for taking 170 million yuan in bribes, accusing him of conspiring to seize the top leadership.