China did not become world giant by being stupid!

By Tangai Chipangura

Last week’s State visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, leader of the world’s second largest economy after the United States, was indeed historic — it doesn’t matter that to some people, the Chinese leader’s arrival on Tuesday morning and departure around the same time the following day amounted to a “one-day” and not “two-day” visit.

I share the view of the majority that a visit by one who commands an economy of that magnitude and who leads as many as 1,355 billion people is by any measure an event to talk about. What, however, should make Xi more special than just his visit is the kind of man he is – vis-à-vis the leaders of the country that he was visiting.

When he came into power about two years ago, the Chinese leader put his cards on the table, declaring war on corruption and other vices that retarded national prosperity and or abated moral decay. Within months in office, he had caused the investigation, arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of very senior officials of his party and government on corruption charges.

One blogger going by the name Ken Yamamoto writing last week aptly presented Xi’s anti-corruption escapades in good detail:

Jinping is a swashbuckling corruption buster. To send the point home, he has created an impeccable record of snaring the big tigers.

In June, Zhou Yongkang, the former security chief and retired politburo standing committee member was sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, abuse of power and intentionally disclosing national secrets.

Before this, Zhou was one of the most powerful men in China, overseeing courts, prosecuting agencies, the police, paramilitary forces, and intelligence organs.

Yao Mugen who served as vice-governor of Jiangxi province was convicted of corruption and sentenced.

Jiang Jiemin, a former general manager and then chairman of the China National Petroleum Corporation (a parent company of PetroChina), and later director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Sasac), was in March 2013 convicted on charges of abuse of power, bribery and being part of a network of vice and malfeasance, and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Bo Xilai, a former mayor of Dalian, former governor of Liaonin, former minister of Commerce and a member of the Central Politburo and secretary of the Communist Party’s Chongqing branch was charged and found guilty in September 2013 of corruption, stripped of all his assets, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Xu Caihou, a military general in the People’s Liberation Army of China and vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the country’s top military council — a role that made him one of the top ranking officers of the Chinese military — was in March 2014 arrested and investigated on suspicion of bribery and corruption — receiving massive bribes for promotions of officers under him. He died this year before he got his punishment, but after being expelled from the communist party. Xu’s arrest was unprecedented in China because he was a high-ranking general.

Ling Jihua, a former principal political adviser to ex-president and general secretary of the Communist Party Hu Jintao, was in July this year expelled from the Communist Party and arrested for bribery and sleaze. His fortunes had started to wane when his 23-year-old son was killed while driving a Ferrari in 2012 — a sign of elite opulence that riles the Chinese masses.

Liu Zhijun a former minister of Railways of the People’s Republic of China, was in April 2013, arrested on corruption charged for allegedly taking bribes and abusing power as Minister of Railways, and subsequently convicted and given a death sentence with reprieve in July 2013.

Liu Tienan, who served as the director of the National Energy Administration between 2011 and 2013, and before that as deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, was in 2013 investigated and dismissed for corruption-related offences. In December 2014, Liu was convicted on charges of bribery, and sentenced to life in prison.

These are some of the actions that the man who was in Zimbabwe last week, has taken against corruption by people in high offices in China.

He also banned unnecessary government expenditure in the form of unproductive trips and receiving red carpet treatment at useless gatherings where officials are fond of delivering long boring speeches instead of working for the betterment of people’s lives.

The Chinese leader has also abolished wasteful parties where a lot of money is spent on copious quantities of beer, meat, cake etc — such as the annual events where Zimbabwe uses millions of dollars to celebrate the 21st February Movement and President Robert Mugabe’s birthday.

Chinese officials have also been warned that it is a criminal offence to stay in luxury hotels such as the one Zimbabwe’s Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko has been staying in for a whole year with his entire family, including grandchildren — all at the taxpayer’s expense.

Unlike Xi, Mugabe has spoken fury against corruption, but he has done absolutely nothing about it. If anything, his reaction to allegations of open corruption by his top officials has been justifiably viewed by many as protective — abating even! Mugabe has thundered: “bring me the evidence!” — no different from a case where our graft-ridden police force orders a victim of kidnapping, assault and robbery to “go and bring the criminals to the police station”.

Even when former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki told him about his ministers demanding bribes from South African companies that wanted to invest in Zimbabwe, Mugabe still did nothing. All he has done to lull the nation into a false sense of hope and expectation was tell that Shakespearean story “told by a fool; full of sound and fury but signifying nothing”.

It is public knowledge that Zimbabwe is among the world’s most corrupt countries and it would be foolhardy to imagine that Xi did not have that at the back of his mind when he visited Zimbabwe last week.

It is highly likely that while Mugabe was excitedly expectant of Xi’s visit, his guest may not have been that excited. According to media reports, barely three weeks before the Chinese leader came to Harare, he had just arrested a suspected global economic criminal, going by the name Sam Pa who reports say was Zanu PF’s biggest financier.

Reports said Pa cultivated strong connections with resource-rich countries whose leaders were in desperate financial circumstances or international isolation. He is said to have made deals with “Zimbabwe, Guinea, Niger, North Korea and Madagascar, among others — leaving a trail of graft, opaqueness, chronic delays and mismanagement.”

Pa was a key but shadowy and murky player in the body politic of Zimbabwe. He used to trade guns and ammunition in the 90s and had far more influence in the Zanu PF party than any other foreign businessman, including Nick Van Hoogstraten, the reports said.

He was also known for not living to his word and a particular example cited was in Angola where a Foreign Policy report quotes locals saying; “The Chinese spent months getting their camp together and bringing in brand-new bulldozers. Then, instead of beginning to repair the railway line, they dismantled it all, ate their dogs, and left.”

Pa is said to have played a hand in the disappearance of Zimbabwe’s huge diamond reserves, estimated at around $800 billion! He was said to have, with the connivance of local security arms, “looted the diamonds which were flown out from a secure private airstrip in Marange diamond fields”.

With this information at hand, it will be no wonder therefore if the $4 billion deals signed by China and Zimbabwe last week are tied to stringent conditions where the Chinese will seek to protect their money from Zimbabwe’s vultures and plunderers that sit protected in lofty government positions.

China did not become a world economic giant by being stupid! The Standard