Beijing (AsiaNews) - The rampant corruption in the Chinese Communist Party "is the fault of the state-owned enterprises (SOE), who use public funds to frame executives responsible for their supervision."
This is the main point raised by a series of surveys conducted by the powerful Communist Party Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which yesterday published the first article about this new campaign on its website. The stated purpose is to "push of state-owned enterprises to strictly follow government policies".
The Commission inspected 26 SOE’s and is making further investigations into 17 other: "Some executives who exploited state-owned resources they handled to form groups and cliques and transfer interests, in order to besiege leading cadres."
Hunan Normal University law professor Ma Changsheng said this referred to SOE staff gaining control over leading officials through various tactics such as transferring benefits and pushing the cadres to serve the interests of those within the state-owned enterprises.
The reference, adds Prof. Xu Yaotong, " was made with a specific case in mind - that of disgraced security tsar Zhou Yongkang, who was sentenced to life in jail for taking bribes, abusing his power and leaking state secrets. Zhou launched his career thanks to his position in the China National Petroleum Corporation, and continued to use that group to help him scale the heights of the Party ".
The campaign "against tigers and flies" of corruption in China was launched by President Xi Jinping soon after he came to power in November 2012. It aims to punish the communist officials of at all levels who are found guilty of pocketing public money or having an exaggerated lifestyle. The great political analyst and dissident Bao Tong, however, disputed the true nature of this campaign, as a smoke screen for the settling of internal disputes within the Party.