China

Crime and Communism

The problem of white-collar and corporate crime is serious in China as it has eroded the Chinese communist regime over 50 years. The incidence of economic crimes in China were present in the early stages Chinese communism. On December 29, 1951, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference issued a “directive on the production increase and austerity movement and anti-corruption, anti-waste and antibureaucratic struggles.” The directive admitted that in barely two years, from October 1949 when the communist regime was established to 1951, the rampage of corruption, wastefulness, and bureaucratism has “developed to relatively serious proportions.” The “three-anti” campaign exposed and punished a number of perpetrators.

A major case of economic crime prosecuted during the period was the celebrated corruption case of Tianjin party committee secretary Liu Qingshan and deputy secretary Zhang Zishan. Using political privileges and their responsible government positions, the duo of Liu and Zhang stole a total of 15.55 billion RMB yuan, by taking funds for building an airport, selling food intended for relief disaster-stricken people, exploiting and withholding back wages for civilian workers, and getting loans from a bank through fraud. In February 1952, the Provisional Court of the Hebei Provincial People's Court sentenced them to death.

Despite vigorous efforts during the “three-anti” period to fight graft, wastefulness, and bureaucracy, the struggle had only turned up several symbolic cases of crimes without getting at the root cause. More than 50 years later, the problem is still bothering the Chinese government with increasing intensity, particularly economic offenses centered around organized and business crimes. It is extremely difficult to measure accurately how widespread white-collar and corporate crimes are in China, because statistical data has long been an instrument of political propaganda and manipulation, or not available at all. However, the limited official statistics do indicate the size of the challenge facing the authorities and how deep corruption has burrowed into the bureaucracy.

In the five years from 1997 to 2002, courts handled 118,692 cases of white-collar crime by public officials including embezzlement, bribery, and misappropriation of public funds. In that time, the courts handed down 118,482 sentences for offenses. Those sentenced by the courts included 19 provincial or ministerial-level officials, 318 department or bureau-level officials, and 2,031 county or officelevel officials.

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