China prosecutes more than 1.3 million corrupt officials

According to China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), about 1.34 million officials in the country have been punished for corruption in just the past five years.

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Two Chinese police officers escort Li Huabo, a corrupt official on the 100 most wanted list, in May 2015 - Photo: Zuma Press

Two Chinese police officers escort Li Huabo, a corrupt official on the 100 most wanted list, in May 2015 - Photo: Zuma Press

Reuters news agency reported that since 2013, after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China ended, President Xi Jinping launched a campaign to "fight tigers and flies" to clean up corruption in the state apparatus.

This is one of Mr. Tap's most prominent policies during his 5-year term.

According to the announcement of CCDI on October 8, among the "fly-level" officials punished since 2013 are 648,000 village officials, most of whom were involved in small-scale corruption cases.

In 2016 alone, the campaign prosecuted more than 120 high-ranking officials, including about a dozen military officials, executives of state-owned enterprises...

Notably, Mr. Xi's anti-corruption campaign does not spare current and former senior leaders.

We can point out famous names such as former Politburo Standing Committee member, former Minister of Public Security Zhou Yongkang, former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, two former vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, and two former vice chairmen of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Ling Jihua and Su Rong.

Zhou Yongkang in office in 2011 and in court in 2015 - Photo: REUTERS

Thus, the investigation of the above characters has broken the unwritten "death-free" rule for standing committee members.

Most recently, on September 29, former Chongqing Party Secretary Sun Zheng Cai was expelled from the Party and dismissed from all positions for "serious disciplinary violations" - a common phrase used to describe corruption. He is currently under investigation by the CCDI.

In addition, China has also cooperated with the international community to hunt down corruption suspects who have fled abroad through campaigns such as "Sky Net" and many others.

As of the end of August 2017, 3,339 suspects had been arrested in more than 90 countries and territories, including 628 former officials, and about 9.36 billion yuan (about 1.41 billion USD) had been confiscated.

A poll by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that 92.9% of Chinese people were satisfied with the anti-corruption campaign in 2016, up 17.9% from 2012.

According to TTO