China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
bbc.com
bbc.com
If you get caught in China, Vietnam, or Singapore the penalties for white collar criminals is zero tolerance. You can’t buy your way out if you do something so spectacular that you cause the government to lose face.
You might as well go jump off a building or a bridge cause you’re done for.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/china-executes-ex...
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/uvm7oy/i...
Some may be innocent (framed) or only partially guilty (scapegoat.) Other may have been known to be guilty all along and has only recently fallen out of favor.
A country with satellites is running a Wile E. Coyote tier balloon plot?
But enlighten me. What critical signals intelligence was that balloon getting?
That's not even remotely close to what I said. You should read the comment you're responding before responding with ignorant and blatantly manipulative falsehoods.
> And where did you get this super objective assessment that eastern peoples only care about “saving face”?
Again - never said anything like that. Learn to read.
> The racists
Actually, learn to think. This has absolutely nothing to do with race, as anyone who has passed high school can tell you. This claim is straight-up objectively false.
The second you start slinging the word "racist" around you immediately prove that you have zero valid points to give and are just trying to cry your way into acceptance. Which correlates with the rest of this post.
This is either a troll post, written by a middle-schooler, or blatant propaganda.
And before you start on me, yes - I'm able to "think", and no, I'm not a "troll"
If its not what you wanted to imply, then perhaps you'd be better served at owning up & clarifying, rather than insulting others who merely pointed out what you originally wrote.
And on a general note (not specifically or only you), I'm somewhat amused (in a morbid sense) at the sheer predictability of some of the "oh no, don't you dare try to impugn any moral superiority to that lot over there, vs us westerners" reactions.
Refreshing to see how even after a multi year ongoing genocide, kidnappings other countries presidents, and triple-tap bombing little girls elementary schools, westerners still feel they own the "moral high ground" (wherever that is anymore ...)
Ahhh, the propagandist's classic tactic - when unable to muster even the feeblest possible response to an argument, just make up things and pretend that the other party said them.
Fact: I said nothing of the sort. You are lying.
> owning up
I have nothing to own up to because I said nothing of the sort, and anyone with basic reading skills can see that.
> clarifying
I was exactly as clear as I needed to be. I do not need to provide every single possible hedge on my statements. It is ok to not be perfectly clear and disclaim every negative, and this is now normal, sane, socially well-adjusted people behave.
It is completely unacceptable (and more than a little psychotic) to take that ambiguity and interpret it in the worst possible way.
It is downright evil to then defend that malicious misinterpretation instead of apologizing.
You are evil.
Have fun. Over and out.
You want to win? Make them look stupid in such a way that continuing to fight makes them look even more stupid. Pain doesn't stop people, practical futility doesn't stop people; but, faced with the prospect of being considered persona non grata or a laughing stock or just robbed of their dignity, whether they win or lose, that is when people will call the match and walk off.
So, yes, face is a Western thing, too.
See also: oil futures, politicians who feud over “vibes” instead of tangible policy, constant symbolic strikes in war with no results, etc.
If you cause certain people to lose face, you will get China-like response.
In fact it’s a core conservative value and you can observe it in interactions with police - if a victim embarrasses the police they will prosecute the victim instead of the perpetrator
Yes, in the sense that a bicycle and a Formula F1 are both wheeled modes of transportation.
I never said that western cultures don't have the concept of pride - just that it's categorically different in eastern cultures.
This is both extremely well academically supported[1] and immediately obvious to anyone who has nontrivial exposure to most eastern cultures (including, specifically, Chinese culture).
Furthermore, the punishment of Chelsea manning is clearly irrelevant for multiple different reasons:
1. Specific instances are not reflective of a general pattern
2. Manning and Assange were instances of leakers of classified information, which is a separate category from merely "losing face"
3. There's a consistent pattern of the US government prosecuting leakers of classified information[2] even when there's zero media exposure, which conclusively disproves the "its just saving face" theory
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)#Re...
[2] https://www.justice.gov/news/press-releases?search_api_fullt...
I buy the whole thing that some cultures give more weight to face-saving than others. I would classify my supposedly western country (Chile) as one that gives it more weight than, for example, Germany. Even then, this just sounds like a kneejerk "you cannot trust these dastardly orientals".
Face saving is a thing in the US, to the point that it's a common plot point prestige TV (e.g most of The Wire). It's an accepted fact in political campaign with spin doctors. The 30K in credit card debt to keep up appearances is also face culture. The hustle culture, etc.
You don't need to be racist, you just can be skeptic of the claims of an autocratic government.
Read my comment again, carefully, and you'll understand that your response is unrelated to my point.
Also: all of these things exist in large, industrialized Eastern nations too. You've clearly never lived in any of those places or even had tangential exposure to their culture. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that - just understand that you are exactly the kind of person who is going to have the hardest time understanding the cultural difference - which is part of my point.
For understanding this better - you can try to read the Wikipedia page on the concept of face ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept) ), but part of my point is that academic/intellectual understanding is a really poor substitute for experience in this domain, and reading a page allows for intellectual disagreement that is literally inconsistent with reality - experience forces you to directly confront that reality.
I'd suggest watching a few hundred hours of media from several different Eastern cultures (I personally like a mix between Japanese, Korean, and Chinese television shows - they each have their own memetics and charm and can be highly enjoyable - but most forms of media should give you the same experience as long as it's diverse enough).
When Americans apologise to non-Americans for the behaviour of American tourists abroad, is that collective face saving?
How does a “diverse enough” media diet give someone the “same experience”? Maybe you’re picking and choosing media to reinforce your inner biases?
> Maybe you’re picking and choosing media to reinforce your inner biases?
You think that I chose to watch thousands of hours of media, not for entertainment, but specifically to deluse myself into a very specific and niche bias that the vast majority of people don't even have a mental framework to conceptualize and never comes up in casual conversation or has any relevance to my daily life? Congratulations, that's one of the most insane accusations I've ever seen on the internet.
So, zero tolerance cannot be known without correct stats on both catching and punishing. so it is, indeed unknowable.
Not with money.
on edit: In the U.S obviously, in Western European nations I would assume better conditions than that even.
Also, just off the top of my head I would expect many people getting life in prison for other things are younger than people getting life in prison for financial crimes, since financial crime tends to happen between mid 30s to mid 40s and violent crime tends to happen in teens and twenties. Assuming that the reason for skewing financial crime higher, because needing business connections and experience to pull off, holds with the size of crime without an stats to back me up I will say my naive expectation is the financial crimes that earn you life in prison would tend to be in the 50s, while the violent crimes mainly remain teens and twenties.
some non-violent offenders definitely need to be put into the same prison as violent ones
If you're thinking of the pharmacy drug price jacking thing, the thing he did that physically harmed many people, he wasn't convicted for that.
That makes it right? And that is what you think is reprehensible about him ?
Now maybe if you hurt someone else in the process you'll get convicted, but that's not what happened in Shkreli's fraud conviction, the only people he was accused of harming were the investors who said weren't harmed and had no damages or interest in prosecution.
What happened to Shkreli was a most extreme anomaly practically worldwide.
IMO, the Chinese government has a pretty good ear for the happiness of their population.
It depends on how the complaints are voiced. Karen-like entitled complaints are definitely not working there. Often, legit complaints also do not work, but sometimes they do.
I'm curious if this particular guy is actually going to be executed or the sentence being commuted to life without parole, like in other cases. Looks like it's not.
> You're moving goalposts
How?
And finally no one went to prison for the global financial crisis, which was caused by fraud
If any of those people were politically connected, they probably just got a new identity and shoved off to somewhere else in the country.
Connection works both ways. You can be your superior's lapdog on Monday and jailed for being so cordial that he thinks you are trying to take over his position — I mean, taking bribes — by Wednesday.
Given how this man stayed out of trouble for 30 straight years before finally being apprehended, I feel this could be exactly what happened. He probably had some political leverage to keep the prosecutors looking the other way. And the moment he lost his leverage — maybe his superiors changed their minds about him, maybe he stepped on the toes of someone, who knows — they went after him.
Sometimes the big guy falls out of favor with bigger guys, and then the whole structure is up for grabs. The whole vertical is massacred (sometimes literally) while new people take over from the top down. Often what's visible happens a few degrees removed from the actual cause.
There's understanding among the ruling class and much of the populace that it's just How Things are Done. But moments like that give you public trials with executions that make some naïve Westerners clap.
It's great that you provided evidence of that ... no hypocrite you.
FTFY
I think this is more about punishing political grafting than white-collar crime.
They may not have a higher IQ, but in fact it may be more like the ones who have more self control and discipline. It probably has not been studied.
"Why have criminals who have not been caught not been studied?" is an exercise for the reader.
For UK I have: Grenfell tower scandal (over 100 dead, no one in prison), infected blood scandal (thousands dead, no one in prison), postmaster scandal (thousands falsely imprisoned , no perpetrator in prison), etc.
So.. Biden?
That's bad and wrong but you need to be killing people to call it genocide. It's been a master class in propaganda on this topic, look up the name Adrian Zenz and see how often he gets uncritically quoted.
No, you don't.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...
See Article 2.
Genocide refers to a People (race, kind, tribe, family, etc.), not individual people. The group is a concept, and 'killing' it doesn't have to involve the biological death of the group members. That's part of what the linked resolution is trying to say.
For example, you could go sterilize every member of an ethnic group, without killing - causing the biological death of - any of them. None of them will be able to have children, and as they die of old age, the group disappears. That's genocide.
Another example would be to forcibly separate all the members of the group and prevent them from engaging in the lifestyle associated with membership in the group (e.g. style of dress, music, food, language, worship, etc.). Over time, perhaps generations, the people basically give up trying to do any of these things if they even remember what they were. They have no group cohesion, so the group has essentially disappeared. No need to directly cause any biological death. The argument is that if this is done intentionally, it is also genocide.
Genocide as a concept is about ending the group, not specifically the individual members. It's definitely true that you can end a group by killing all its members, though.
You agreed with me that genocide is more expansive than "we're directly killing people". For the sake of argument, let's assume the allegations are true: what would you call that?
Taking an angle like "well, lets assume these things are true, THEN can we accuse China of genocide" is basically what the media did for 5 years on this topic.
My point about the assumption was to get you to agree that if these things are happening, we know that it constitutes genocide. At this point I don't care if you agree or not.
And it's very easy for me to believe that rates of childbirth and hence violations are higher for subsistence farmer populations than urban workers, because that's true everywhere. Uyghur population grew a ton between 2010-2020, 3 kids per couple is net growth.
Lastly, no, there's no such thing as a "technical" genocide on a points system without some massive crimes against humanity that would drop anyone's jaw, and those things are hard to hide. It's not like you make a couple of technical errors and, oops, genocide even though the population is substantially fine and economic reforms are working.
The only thing this does is cheapen the word. In the past genocide was something serious. But now it includes activities that are simply upsetting.
The word is attached to the intended outcome, not the specific actions taken to achieve it.
Using your example, if some ethnic group changed how they dressed it would be genocide.
That cheapens the word. Change in dress is not as severe an outcome as buried in a ditch with a bullet in your head.
Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:
1. A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
2.1 Killing members of the group
2.2 Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
2.3 Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
2.4 Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
2.5 Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
There was a big overreaction that violated people's rights but the people still exist and are fine.
If we contrast with how the West have reacted to terror attacks, its quite rich to see them throwing UN definitions at China.
Honest question here;
is it a traditional Uyghur owned and managed restaurant freely frequented by local Uyghurs as a living expression of past and ongoing Uyghur culture, or
is it more a Disney "themed Uyghur restaurant" with the same relationship to Uyghur culture as Outback Steakhouse has to actual IRL Australian food and culture (ie three tenths of f-all).
But even if it were the latter.. even that would go against the narrative of total cultural hostility?
Majority culture "celebrating" / "allowing" minority culture restaurants, clubs, bars, etc happens in many different ways with many differing meanings, complicated layers even.
Black Harlem in New York went through stages of being an outpost of US black culture(s) (from US North and South, urban, rural, "African"), a hip place for hip white people, birth place for new takes on old culture, etc. All that while the attitude of majority culture in the US fluxed a few times wrt black minority culture.
TLDR; It's hard to get a read on what a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan means either way in the greater China attitude toward the re-education of the Uyghur.
The legacy of slavery in America is a key component of the microwave background radiation there, the story seeps into default assumptions of everything.
China just.. doesn't have that. They had slavery amongst themselves in the olden days like everyone else but no master race chattel slavery period. There's definitely racism on the black/white scale here but it mostly goes with perceived income/status of the black/white foreigner (most blacks here are from africa), its not some core piece of the national story.
Additionally, minorities here have mostly always been loosely governed people at the empire's periphery, rather than integrated and persecuted in the core. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_regions_of_China). The Xinjiang camps were an exceptional case after some terror attacks, and they're over now.
I think the equivalent core narrative here would be being victims of colonialism during the century of humiliation, which puts them if anything on the same side as domestic minorities.
Wikipedia describes the camps more as rebranded than "over now" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps
and those annoying Australians are claiming the CCP are using "powerful resources in Beijing’s ongoing efforts to reshape the global narrative on Xinjiang, influence political elites abroad" - https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cultivating-friendly-forces/ (July 2026)
/r/AskHistorians adopts a practice of waiting 20 years before attempting to write a reasonable balanced history on current events .. so give things another 16 years and we'll see, I guess.
Meanwhile all of Ukraine and Gaza have been on youtube the whole time, everyone has a cell phone, why do we go back to the same 2 ideological think tanks with rumor-tier evidence every time on this issue? Seriously. Find any article and cite crawl, it's always either ASPI or Zenz at the bottom, citing each other or "sources".
If someone accused the US government of a secret genocide for 7 straight years with this caliber of evidence they would rightfully considered cranks. Especially if everyone was still alive.
https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/united-states-of...
I would suggest that the strict etymology of a word doesn't really matter much in geopolitics, at least not as much as legal definitions arrived at via international consensus.
I actually restrained myself from pointing out that the standards used against China in this thread would fit just fine against US treatment of minorities, it seemed too facile.
Now, western actions in the middle east on the other hand, we have mass casualties so legal arguments are on the table. I wonder if they said anything incensed and dumb that would indicate genocidal intent.
The middle east on the other hand.. there are a whole group of US establishment natsec people who hold that obviously China committed genocide to the tune of hundreds while obviously Israel did not to the tune of nearly 100,000 and millions displaced. Because we have all of these lawyerly definitions, you see.
As human beings we have got to have a sniff test here.
You don't like my choice in appeal to authority, sure I get that. That doesn't preclude from there being authoritative views on the topic though.
We probably should have something to stand on other than vibes. Maybe we can come to consensus on who is an authority. How about the IAGS? https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Fina...
Now, if it has moved in the other direction since 2022, I don't see anything countering that either and I certainly can't speak to the current state of things and will believe you (mostly because I have no intention of looking deeper currently). I will say that's a strong indicator that the process of being called out on the international stage worked though.
I feel like genocide legal debates skip over the human harm into some binary "is it genocide" thing, like detention or the first 90k deaths were ok but now you're really a bad guy.
So “Uyghur restaurants still exist” or “Uyghur people still exist” does not answer the legal question. The relevant question is whether the group’s cultural, religious, familial, or biological continuity is being targeted as a group. It's enough to do this in a single village.
This may sound like a grammar nitpick, but I think it points to the actual issue: “the people still exist and are fine” does not answer the genocide question.
Genocide is not simply about whether “the people” — individual members of a group — still exist. It is about whether a people — a protected group as such — is being targeted for destruction, in whole or in part.
So the relevant question is not merely whether “the people still exist and are fine,” but whether a people still exists as a people, and whether it is fine culturally, religiously, socially, biologically, and institutionally.
In this particular case, I don’t claim to have enough information to make a final judgment. But the fact that so little independent journalism and investigation is possible must be blamed on the CCP and cannot be treated as counterevidence. Unlike individual human beings in a court of law, governments that suppress a free press and block independent investigations should not receive the benefit of the doubt in the court of public opinion.
The fact that the argument has to lean into technicalities and attributed unspoken intentions rather than actual horrors should say everything.
Conversely, in this case, Adrian Zenz is a crank because for a decade he's been unable to put up any. In an era where every single person carries a high def video camera in their pocket. It's a faith-based accusation.
Except there was no intent to destroy, literally all other points 2.X that follows is irrelevant. There's reason plurality of UN takes PRC position that they indented to deradicalize / reeducate, aka not genocide. Which is obvious except to useful idiots on Pompeo propaganda because reducing PRC minorities by 1 is bad for Xi's hagiography. Now the gets to bask in the glory of speed running histories most successful war on terror with minimal bloodshed by sinicizing restive frontier region. Basically Obama should hand over his Nobel Peace Prize to Xi.
German jews btw overwhelmingly spoke German, were deeply assimilated, patriotic of course. XJ would be like if German Jews who spoke only Yiddish and stuck in their minority enclaves, carried out 100s of terrorist attacks, got reeducated to speak both German, and Yiddish, reform religion to be less extremist, and doing it in <10 years / single generation. Not only would it have not been genocide, it would have been exemplar model to emulate for domestic serenity. Which is broadly what XJ securitization was, the most successful deradicalization and integration program in human history. Not unique to human history... again integration = nation building 101 stuff, it was just technologic mediated speedrun, in that sense parallels Germans.
Wuhan situation is clearly government policy. It may be terrible, but that is besides the point.
It was not policy of British government to burn down a skyscraper in central london with hundred of people inside cooked alive.
It was not the policy of British government to infect 30,000 people with AIDS.
Yet British government is unable or unwilling to take action against people responsible.
Why not? Dictators often purge anyone who is a threat, often because they form a possibly competitive power structure (regardless of their intent), and often because of paranoid perceived disloyalty, and for actual disloyalty.
And corruption is the cover story they commonly use - it's vague, general, the public sees enough gov't corruption to believe it and to hate it. Trials are not needed. Off the top of my head, Putin in Russia, Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, ...
That's not an "or" question, imo. If you threaten the king by having too much power, too many allies, or too keen a mind, you get moved off the board. Disloyalty and risk of disloyalty are both abhorrent to autocrats.
What about the bridge falling down people, or the overpromised scam apartment people, or the tunnel that flooded people, or the police officers that blocked view of the flowers left for the folks who died in the tunnel that flooded people, or the opened the dam to flood the farmers during the rainy season people, or the fake drains people, or the fake fire hydrants people, or the lead paint in the kids school food people, or the covered up the lead paint in the kids school food doctors, or the barricaded an apartment that was burning during covid people, or the apartments with styrofoam instead of concrete that collapsed in venezuela earthquake people...?
It sucks extra bad for the people who took out a mortgage for a home that didn't get finished, but it does seem like more of a screwup than corruption.
LOL. Bribery is basically required in China for anyone with a medium sized business. Otherwise, you'll be indefinitely blocked by a bureaucrat who has no incentive to help you. Departments in municipal governments are often underfunded and bribery makes up for a significant portion of their effective payroll.
In some countries, doctors or surgeons are severely underpaid and it would be customary for a well off citizen to bring them a gift or a cash summ before an important surgery.
That’s quite different from Kickbacks (rampant in UK leaseholds by the way), etc.
What those who fetishize China's punishment of billionaires need to understand that what allows for this punishment is also what allows for even more blatant corruption. Rule of law is just something that doesn't exist. You may think that the US no longer has rule of law under Trump, and while that's true to a certain extent, for the most part people act with a rule of law mindset because that's what they are familiar with.
When John Meriweather and the rest of LTCM nearly blew up the market they didn't get a bailout, and the taxpayer didn't fund the hole in the balance sheet. The New York Fed organized private money and leaned on all their counterparties to get it done, but they didn't backstop it. Meriweather and the Sheik and Scholes and the rest were wiped out, they worked it off for a couple of years for salary and then skunk away in shame (we had shame back then). Took it like men near as I can tell. I admire John Meriweather a great deal in spite of the scandal.
President Clinton was impeached and very nearly removed from office for (ultimately) consenting but untoward involvement with a young woman (they got him on lying about it technically, but the political will was there because the country was furious about the skirt chasing.
Enron. Accounting that went from aggressive to sketchy to fraudulent (most of it would pass with flying colors today). Hard time. Skilling, Fastow I think just got out like five years ago (don't take my word for the date). Ken Lay IIRC died before they locked him up which saved him dying inside.
Madoff, died in prison. Ebbers, I think he died in prison too.
When Microsoft was gearing up to strangle the web in its crib the Justice Department pulled guys off of terrorists and human traffickers to go take a pipe to Gates until he backed off, he was allowed to keep Microsoft intact by letting the web happen, the Feds weren't asking, he decided to not fuck around and find out.
Consequences for serious fucking bad shit for people who are our leaders work. A people gets exactly what it demands from it's leaders and that's exactly what a people deserves.
Right now we're choosing to settle for a lot less, China is demanding more. Which is why we're getting our asses kicked.
> China is demanding more.
I have yet to see evidence of that beyond propaganda. Naming someone who reportedly gets a harsh sentence is not evidence.
Their power grid runs at a huge margin of excess capacity and they easily bring more online because they can still do infrastructure projects.
They are rapidly overtaking the United States in domestic, sovereign, and secure semiconductor fabrication. They're a couple of nodes behind but Kirin SoCs and multi-terraweight LLM inference on Aspire look pretty hot shit to me and no one can yank them around like a dog on a leash that it'll get turned off.
Government is dramatically more participatory than the western caricature. It is substantially at the local and regional level that it is directly participatory (so, the size of the whole US). At the very top it is representative in the sense that a party guy in Beijing is considered incompetent (they care about that) if the needs of the region are not on the agenda. When's the last time you called your congressman and got change?
Innovation is plural, research is open, the university system is in the loop, the public benefits.
Real wages are going up.
The PRC gets jumped in with Putin's Kremlin by lazy Americans who don't talk to Chinese people.
It's not the Kremlin. It's JFK in a Chairman Mao hat.
That's a bunch of words, but if we didn't know before LLMs and before the Internet, we know now: words are cheap and valueless without other properties. What distinguishes those words from propaganda? Why should someone believe it's true?
Throwing insults at people who disagree or question you makes it less likely there is substance to the words.
> easily verifiable claims.
I disagree that they are verifiable, not being factual statements. But if you think so, then verify them. I'm not going around HN verifying the claims in everyone else's comments.
The EV claims are the most trivially verifiable, the rest go down from there. Some of them have more nuance but you did not engage with that. Don't worry, reality will catch up eventually, you being convinced is strictly optional.
It's the opposite: If you post claims then others will absolutely cast doubt and it's up to you to verify them. No way other people should do it for you (that's also very inefficient - you already know how to verify them and also it's redundant for everyone else to do it). Even better, you'll see people cite their claims before anyone asks.
In any serious field, you don't make claims and then require others to verify them. Imagine a scientist or courtroom lawyer doing that. It's up to you and if you don't, then it's nonsense by default.
> It's a comment section
Not just any comment section; HN plays by different rules. Look at how others interact. Just spouting claims doesn't get you far.
You are awfully contrarian for someone whose response to an argument is "that's not proven to my satisfaction" and when asked what citations would satisfy you replies "it's not my job to define what citations I will and won't admit".
You do you king, but it's not exactly the incandescent childlike wonder of the perpetual student's mind.
I'll wager your mind was made up before we started having a conversation.
That exchange never happened - maybe you're thinking of someone else?
> I'll wager your mind was made up
You can see how empty the Sinophile side is: they will talk about anything, say anything, but provide actual substance as a basis for their claims.
And if I show you official statistics you will say statistics out of China can’t be trusted.
Folks like yourself will only realise when it’s too late
The collapse of our standards has been heartbreaking to see and I am observing that most are simply in denial.
The mores of the time caused them to be a little more circumspect about their pornographic rapine of the body politic, but they squeezed just as hard and their fists were stronger. Children died working in factories, diseases of poverty claimed entire city quarters, Pinkertons shot striking workers flat dead and walked away like ICE with a brisk stride before they'd even holstered their weapon the way I read it.
Just like today they paid no tax of any kind. And we're heading back there at speed. The typical person is closer to being in an Amazon warehouse where someone has died or the subject of an OSHA report that Instacart hushed up than they were five years ago, things are getting worse for most everyone.
But a few things broke the public's way, a couple of muckracking journalists tee'd it up, Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, you get one class traitor in the White House, and in less than thirty years the robber barons had lost it all, the economy goes into hyperdrive, the working man goes to sleep every night knowing, not hoping, that his children will live far better than him.
This one comes back around too, and the endless vulgarity and corruption on every surface that can render a photo or a sentence? That's not organic someone is paying for all that, it ebbs and flows too. I'm optimistic we can have cool R-rated movies and no banned books without hustler culture Instagram and celebrity yachting YouTube being crammed into every eligible impression.
Until then?
The worse? The better.
You don't have to buy your way out as long as you are the government, i.e. the chairman.
anyone who spent a lot of time in that part of the world will tell you this stuff can basically be made up
the western method to do this is to plant csa material on a person and then publicly announce they've been caught with it. not many people consider that 'possession' can simply be a USB stick found in a tree on your 2 acre lot, or a usb stick that has been planted in your car
your entire family and social network will immediately cut you off and very few consider these things can be fabricated
That's because that's not how the laws worked in the U.S., nor have the laws ever worked that way. If that was actually how the laws worked, a lot of enemies of each administration would get tarred with this, instead of literally none of them.
Did you actually read your cites?
Absolutely you can. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire thing is fabricated to just execute political opponents that don't align with Xi.
If you’re well connected (or making the right people rich) they are happy to overlook it. But if you bite off too much and they need a head to roll they will find one (usually someone lower level).
I mean look at the number of military leader simply dismissed in China for massive corruption. They get a fat pension and go away quietly and the small guy pays with his life.
Not sure I’d be expounding the greatness of that system.
But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?
It will have the same answer, no
who would be able to prosecute them and how?
who would even investigate them
Inner circle leadership won't be prosecuted anywhere as long as their group holds some power.
So, then, question is, how can this be improved?, can it be improved?
Trump was convicted, he still won. He probably would have won from jail as well.
So original question remains, what can be done?
If anything, I think it actually reduces the quality of discussion because it tries to say that dynamics in China are equivalent to the next you would find in pretty much any country which is is vague and lazy as analysis goes, and goes against the HN recommendation that conversations get more precise over time.
it's not a question of "prosecute this one or the other person" - it's the choice between "prosecute this one or nobody"
thus celebration that at least something got done
Also, from a practical standpoint, charging some and not others is not necessarily better if the selection is made politically. That moves the needle from "at least something got done" to "law is just a tool of oppression".
Or, you do what the democratic party in the US has been afraid to do: Rip the bandaid off, accusations of weaponization of the DOJ be damned. The parent's hypothetical situation is precisely what is happening in the US right now where Garland failed to prosecute, and the entire democratic party was far too afraid of appearing to weaponize the justice system meanwhile the opposition has no qualms about doing so. Yes, the public will view it as entirely partisan but there's no other path forward.
But if you just do nothing at all, eventually the social contract breaks. The cost of the corruption becomes too high and the state fails, or you get a forced regime change.
The day this happens is the day that 90% (or more) of our "leaders" find themselves suddenly in prison.
when in actuality the choice is between "both sides steal" or "one side steals"
and allowing both sides to steal is in no way better
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the main way desired "both sides get caught" state becomes a thing is after "one side" splits in two - still being close in horizontal connections to stabilize, but with developed instruments for either half to guard against the other
crying about oppression only leaves you stuck in "everyone steals" state
Even that assumes a normal of being lucky that anything is prosecuted, ever. So it's good but against a low bar rather than rising to the bar parent commenter suggested.
> thus celebration that at least something got done
Is it really something to celebrate if:
1. Someone got sentenced to death because they lost some internal power struggle, and bribery was falsely used as the public reason?
2. The guy's getting killed as a scapegoat, or because he pissed off his superiors by not sharing more of his bribes, etc.?
You kill some corrupt guy, just to replace him with another corrupt guy who's in the leader's good-graces. How is that "a net-better outcome for everyone else"?
Given that this one took nearly half a billion, it is, in fact, quite likely.
Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply make it legal. I would prefer if our politicians or popular media could at least acknowledge this.
This thing about not caring about appearances is new. (And also the only thing I commented about.)
So is crime. But it's all about prevalence.
And not just because corruption has some "indirect taxation" effect, but also because low corruption/trust is a big enabler for a society.
You are never gonna get rid of clannish mentality, vigilantism, nepotism and other undesirable behavior if your citizens don't have any trust in the system.
If you just look at e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Corruptio...
you will see that the spread is very wide, and China/India is significantly behind most western nations.
Corruption is everywhere and varies in degree. The US likes to claim a mantle of superiority when it seems quite the opposite. We have a bully/greatest conman ever in the white house
Are they?
Price Andrew got a name change, but hasn’t had any real penalty to date. He had the Queen protecting him. Mandelson probably will end up in court but it won’t be for anything related to child abuse.
For the British Royals, I suspect becoming persona non grata is more impactful than a jail sentence.
Class-based systems get pretty weird at the top.
I’m not a law expert but it seems pretty basic that there shouldn’t be irreversible punishment.
Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence, which doesn’t happen anywhere in the world as far as I can understand.
So harsher punishment means people with less power will get shafted harder
I agree with you, but we also can't reverse entropy.
I am not convinced. "You can no longer hold office" is a permanent punishment. Why should that not be allowed?
> Also there should be equity which means everyone that does the same crime should face the same consequence
I am also unconvinced. I don't think it is fair to treat a child like an adult and I think those in power should have more stringent standards and larger consequences for violating them.
Let's say that some new evidence comes out that exonerates the person. You can indeed reverse the "no longer hold office" punishment. You can't bring someone back from the dead.
You can't select some random person and do a bit of bureaucracy and then tell a family whose member you killed that this rando is now part of their family as restitution for your mistake. You can give them money but in general it is considered somewhat distasteful to put an immediate pecuniary value on human life.
Of course, attempts are made to "reverse" even after someone had been put to death. Posthumous pardons are a thing. It may not bring anything to the person who has passed, but it could give somewhat similar benefits to living descendants.
It's just to say we shouldn't undermine how impactful something like incarceration is on the theory that it is "reversible". Evidence suggests such experiences mess people up in pretty severe ways. Lets also remember thinking of death in these distinct terms may be very cultural. Few penal systems escape barbarity. There are worse things than death. There are many instances or societies were it is preferable or expected people kill themselves rather than go through something like the ignominy of incarceration.
As to the last line, I'm also not sure. Brutal societies have a way of turning on themselves. Nations that accord more protections to their people are generally a better place for their rulers, even if the reverse is not always true. Personally I would love a legal system that baked into its norms higher punishments for people with more power. I think these have existed in the past, even if enforced through less modern mechanisms.
It is also the case that people in power do things that people with less power are incapable of. Getting rid of notions of executive privilege or qualified immunity would be a good start. The way the law is written currently, people in power won't simply not be punished - they won't even be charged. Take George Bush. Did he ever even just have to testify under oath about the rationale for the Iraq War once? Would the United States really descend into a banana republic if he had been charged for perjury or war crimes? It seems like the push in that direction can instead trace its genesis to the fact that in America, we evidently make our leaders untouchable.
It’s not totally clear what the consequences were for those purged or if their crimes were legit but seems like they are all in prison.
[1]. https://www.afpc.org/publications/articles/the-inevitability...
It's a risky play to try to communicate over the internet to a bunch of us literalist nerds :p.
But yes agreed. It’s very hard to parse what is going on from the outside.
My very uninformed read is that the people who were purged seemed already loyal allies to Xi but had more clout to disagree with him, while the new guys know they are replaceable. The PLA is notoriously corrupt as well so hard to say which of those purges were political control vs corruption based.
I kinda doubt the new guys are unambiguous though you need to be ambitious and risk taking to rise like that in the CCP.
no need to speculate, it's already happened. Zhou Yongkang who was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee (the highest governing body in Chinese politics) was prosecuted, and up until that point people at the top were considered relatively untouchable. Xi also axed the last to vice chairmen of the central military commission, Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, that's the commander in chief of the PLA.
Are we really heralding purging political opponents as anti corruption? Imagine if Trump won and put Harris in jail.
Trump definitely thought about doing that, but even the judges he appointed wouldn't go for it. He still talks about putting Obama in jail for reasons.
The west is inundated with simplistic anti-chinese propaganda, so you would never perceive it as such, the way it would be presented to you in the west is as the evil dictator Xi Jingping purging his opposition, for instance:
This is single party autocracy, no matter how much people cry about propaganda.
You don't understand how calling you a victim of propaganda is me being charitable, I could've also called you a typical western ignorant sinophobe.
Taiwan is Chinese, they don’t have this system. So spare me the crocodile tears.
Single party rule and state controlled media with one of the most sophisticated censorship infrastructure in the world has exactly one simple goal.
While I'm sure he doesn't catch all corruption and the CCP overall has selective enforcement, the reason they do have measures like this is in large part because of Xi Jinping's specific reputation and positioning.
"Similarly, Xi’s siblings, nieces, and nephews held assets worth over $1 billion in business investments and real estate"
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Un...
Far too often when you see stories about how someone was persecuted for corruption it boils down to "he stole from rich people".
You mean in China specifically? Otherwise there are some pretty harsh counterexamples to that "all".
Just like Trump and Modi
He sees it as a challenge to his legitimacy and China’s power, which, as you’d expect are the most important things to him; even if you take the most cynical view.
Another timely example, because it is the World Cup, is the Chinese football programs. They’ve been decimated because of corruption prosecutions, both executives and players. It’s a major reason why China isn’t competitive on the global stage, which much smaller countries with significantly smaller budgets can compete. And, yes, Xi does care about competing in the World Cup. Prestige is very important to his concept of China’s honor and global standing.
This right here is why “corruption” should be looked on with great skepticism. In an authoritarian government basic liberties we take for granted in the West are considered corruption. You know, like having a say in how people are governed. This is a high crime in a state with 1 party that cannot be replaced.
In that way, “corruption” can mean “not being loyal to the dictator.”
This guy took $325M in bribes, embezzlement, abuse of power, and money laundering. And he did this as a public servant for over 30 years.
I say good on China for attacking such brazen corruption so directly. Violating the public trust should be extremely harsh.
and it was discovered just now? May it be that he played exactly by the rules, the real rules, of the regime - corruption being among the foundational rules of it - and thus it was going for 30 years? And right now he just got his turn like it usually happens in totalitarian regimes. The regime will for show find an excuse to execute you if you got your turn, corruption is just the easiest one.
Also note that corruption is for the officials, state treason is for regular citizens. Same as in Russia. The regime wouldn't want to create impression of political disunity among the officials.
>Violating the public trust should be extremely harsh.
definitely. The only question why the comrade Xi is still not executed?
Yeah, that would be wild if any of that completely unsubstantiated conjecture, bordering on fan-fiction, was what actually happened.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
White collar criminals often get caught later in their "careers" precisely because they do it for years and years and years without being caught. They get complacent. They get messy. Each round of embezzlement leads to a larger body of evidence that exists somewhere that becomes more and more damning as time goes on.
> The regime wouldn't want to create impression of political disunity among the officials.
In this thread we have dozens of examples of political officials being prosecuted. I'd strongly suggest you park your McCarthyism, take a break, perhaps go for a nice walk.
>White collar criminals often get caught later in their "careers" precisely because they do it for years and years and years without being caught.
You’ve definitely never seen the castles and fleets of exotic cars that government officials in those countries manage to get on their meager government salaries. Yet you post such authoritative comments …
China has laws especially regarding significant financial crimes like embezzlement, theft, money laundering. And most governments also have rules against breaching public trust, corruption by favoritism, bribery, and more.
This guy was in multiple public servant roles, and exfiltrated $325M. This isn't a 'possible smell of impropriety ' in taking a supper with a potential vendor. This is basically highly illegal anywhere in the world.
But the Americans go back to their 'but communist China!' howls. The punishment's harsh, sure. But I think its a great standard to hold leaders and public servants to.
For example, you're making an effort to try legitimize the regime by framing a factual gross illegal conduct as a overarching policy.
But is it like that when you observe the whole structure?
How wealthy are the ruling elites? Or for example, how has IP theft policy changed?
Or we can reframe this: how do we tell the difference between a genuine tackle on corruption, from a weed out of the system with a public display?
You have plenty of cases in other corrupt regimes when they want to seize assets from someone the regime wants to push away: it's corruption.
Which again, they could be very well be corrupt, but they are corrupt because they're part of the regime.
You'll probably say: "Oh but the USS!!!" Yes, there's some level of systemic corruption there, just not an institution - yet!
>> corruption is an institution
>> Or for example, how has IP theft policy changed?
Another country may decide to have no IP protections, that’s not a crime.
Furthermore Intellectual property is legal fiction, some people and countries don’t believe in it.
Apparently Anthropic don’t believe in IP either, they are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, but cry wolf when someone does it to them. And they are asking for legal immunity on IP theft.
If this was just a political action to take down just another corrupt official enabled by the government, how is this a good thing?
Well for a lot of countries protecting inventions with patents was a major trigger for development, so much so it became a cornerstone and you can even say an institution. So of course it would be viewed as corruption by any country with such institutions.
And it's not like China says it would never abide by IP, else they would have never got the investment that made them into what they are today.
But look further from IP theft, what about seizing assets from companies, or whole companies?
It’s not viewed as corruption. US gov made numerous public statements condemning IP theft, and never even once classified it as corruption - it’s simply a different crime.
Furthermore, you suggested a benchmark is: “How wealthy are the ruling elites”
Well let’s see - the richest man in the world is American, 70% of 100 richest people are American, American has higher inequality than China.
By what robust quantitative measurement does this effort look less genuine than American one?
Are you accessing any objective facts or you simply are unable to accept that a country you are opposed to is making genuine progress?
Go look up the history of the USA and creation of copyright/patent/trademark was done, and how we dis-recognized all European claims. They were howling similarly.
Go look at how extreme patent law perverted and kept airplanes locked to the Wright brothers, and held down an industry, while other countries (many European as well) were at the forefront of avionics. Patents held the USA back until the US GOV eminent domained the patent freeing it for WW1 armament.
Or go look up why Hollywood was a thing. Again, patent laws on cameras, and eacaping to California was all about screwing over patrnt holders over royalties.
And sure, China didnt recognize our copyrights. Ok. And? We dont recognize theirs either.
The point of totalitarian regime is that nobody should feel safe, nobody should have an agency. In particular the people shouldn't be able to obtain safety themselves even by the way of being totally loyal.
I have no doubt that that guy was corrupt like any other official there. Yet, he isn't punished for the corruption. The show needed another star, and he was chosen to be that star.
That does not mean that you should google "China bad" and paste a bunch of random urls in a reply, though.
What Cold War propaganda did to Western brains is tragic.
Some weird fantasies you have.
I grew up in USSR. So very well familiar with inner workings of such regimes.
Just wondering how old you are? 60? 70?
Like insider trading by congress?
Jokes aside, this is not how dictatorships normally deal with democratic activists? I don’t see how you can come to this conclusion u less you believe that corporations are people, election spending is a form of legally protected free speech, and corporations should vote in elections:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/delaware-court-upho...
No. Like Kushner and Witkoff and Trump (and probably Hunter Biden) literally peddling influence for money.
Could you list some of those basic liberties? Are they the sort of liberties whose exercise involves taking half a billion in bribes?
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Generally, basic liberties like showing up to a protest aren't considered corruption, they get called terrorism, or somesuch. A Texas judge just sentenced a dozen people to 30-70 years in prison for exercising them, by the way. Some of the people given 30 weren't even at the protest. Half this forum looked at that, and saw nothing wrong with it. I can only imagine that if they were born on the other side of the Pacific ocean, they would be card-carrying party members.
> The protest was a late-night/noise demonstration (involving fireworks) against immigration detention policies. It turned violent when a shooting injured a police officer. Prosecutors described it as an "act of terrorism" linked to an alleged antifa cell; defendants and supporters denied organized antifa ties and framed it as protected protest activity
https://x.com/i/grok/share/87352ef0ac4b454aba924157c44f476f
It sounds like they arrived in tactical gear, started destroying property, and when cops arrived opened fire.
This seems like a bad example on your part, as the people opposing ICE are some of the most misaligned people in the country. That said, we have a right to protest in traditional public forms, you don't have a right to shoot up an ICE facility.
The rest got 70. None of them had guns.
The guy who got 30 years wasn't even at the protest.
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There is no universe where this is not completely batshit insane, but it's interesting to see you use the exact same logic[1] the CCP has in its crackdowns and pogroms to justify it.
The reason the sentences were so high, by the way, was because the judge took dozens of minor offenses and added the sentences for each. It's the equivalent of sentencing someone who stole a 12-pack for 12 counts of theft, or someone tagging 'FUCK ICE' for 8 counts[1] of destruction of federal property.
For some reason, the current regime does not hold its footsoldiers and other useful idiots to the same standard.
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[1] Someone in a protest/movement/group did something bad, brand them all terrorists, and make sure that everyone's going to a 're-education' camp for what will remain of their lives.
[2] One for each letter, and another one for the space.
Certainly if this was a jihadist attack, a lifetime sentence would be appropriate. Why should it be different just because they're white?
The Federal Building where he murdered the security guard is just an administrative building; at least the people in Texas were motivated by the somewhat reasonable belief that they were attacking guards at a concentration camp.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/steven-carrillo-sentenc...
Most people at these facilities can leave at any time, right? Just so long as it isn't back into the United States? They can return to their country of origin, or another country. I'm sure someone will offer a correction if this particular facility was holding people for other crimes in addition to their unauthorized alien status.
https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/detained-immigra...
A guy deliberately drove his car through a street full of scattering protesters in my neighbourhood a few years ago, and when people tried to pull him out of it, he shot one of them, and then ran off, waving his gun (with a jungle-taped pair of mags inserted into it).
Was he a (disorganized) political terrorist? If these guys got 70 years for being at the protest, how many hundreds of years in prison do you think were warranted for him?
He could have had the book thrown at him. As for the rest, if you seriously think that getting 70 years for being at a protest where one person shot a gun is appropriate, you have a lot in common with a Stalin-era Soviet judge.
That by itself isn't a convincing argument. You can't plan a bank heist and be waiting at your safe house and say, "I'm not guilty of anything, because I wasn't in the bank!". The mafia guy doesn't get to say, "I didn't actually whack the victim, I just nodded to Joey, and he did the whacking".
You might be interested in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_conspiracy
...maybe this is mostly a thing in common law jurisdictions? Maybe there is a lawyer here who can point us to a interesting history of conspiracy in common law vs civil law jurisdictions? Also of interest might be things like:
https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/felony-mur...
- volleyball. Probably their best team sport. Men's team have nothing to show but the women's team won the competition 3 times (1984, 2004, 2016) and the World Cup twice (1982, 1986)
- basketball. Women's team are usually there at the Olympic games and they won a silver medal in 1992 and a bronze in 1984 but nothing ever since. They were the runner ups in the last World Cup final (2022) against the US. Men's team have 0 results.
- football, irrelevant. Men's team only qualified to the World Cup once in 2002. Women's team is slightly better being the runner up once in 1999, and they also won silver medal in the 1996 Olympic games. But that was a one generation thing, nothing to show ever since.
- water polo, irrelevant. Women's team is slightly better usually qualifying for the Olympic games but 0 results. Same at the World Cup.
- baseball/softball, irrelevant.
- field hockey, irrelevant.
- handball, irrelevant.
- rugby sevens, irrelevant.
China is good at group sports where everyone have to do the same thing together (artistic swimming and diving) but team sports needs individuals working together where everyone have to be good at their given position, in their own little world, so almost the exact opposite.
To be explicit about each other's assumptions, I think Race (however ill-defined or specific construct as it may or may not be), is not the same thing as Country, Political System, Culture, Religion, etc.
Understanding racists these days mostly use euphemisms and codewords, and it's a devil's work sometimes to figure it out, in the "Principle of Charity" sense, I read that post as being a critique of China's political and cultural systems in general, and their sport-league / development in particular, leading to specific societal outcomes. I could be extremely naive though but I'm willing to learn if you may provide more backing/thought for that?
Lots of posts about how the CPC isn't really doing the will of the people, they are just following and the people are too docile or subdued to resist. Chinese people are bad at team sports where an individual contribution can play a big part. They are only good at the ones where they all do the same thing.
It ties in with the western ideology that we are unique, dynamic, flawed but able to push ahead in a way collectives aren't.
I will also posit the downplaying and discrediting of Chinese tech and industry is also related with this mindset.
Not sure when we will see this but when we have the Century of Africa, I'd love to see the spin on the front-page of NYT then. I predict something similar to the shade like "Nationalism/Hinduism by Modhi" when he won't play ball with the West on Russian sanction; when African countries rise up with their own ambitions and visions for their own people.
One thing we know is important for a country to be globally competitive in team athletics is having pervasive grass roots youth leagues developing talent from an early age. My sense is the Chinese have a structured selection system where they try out kids in key sports and select the best for special development.
Compare this with Western democracies where kids of most skill levels are generally able to keep playing club sports through high school as long as they have an interest and any aptitude at all. In America, pee wee football, girl's soccer leagues, etc are part of the social fabric of communities. It's considered worthwhile to let kids practice, play and develop even when they show no professional or collegiate potential.
The deep reach and years of development of kids with no clear aptitude matter because it's about identifying outliers. I suspect it comes down to chaotic but pervasive casual development beating central planning.
[1]. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-corruption-rocket-forc...
This is a person who invites war criminals to his country and rolls out the red carpet...then again...
Or his sinocentricity and even racism (as in superiority of chinese people). There's been a long standing view in China about their own superiority of others, including all the way into the way they view their national pride as extending back further than any other civilization, even though external historians might view it more like several disjoint civilizations in a similar region... Kinda like how we don't call American history as starting when previous groups from contemporary russian crossed ice bridges to the Americas... We say it started in 1776 because it was a new major iteration of the regime.
The point is, there's a lot more to history than political organization. A continuous culture and language is a big part of why civilizations extend far beyond the current governing regime.
Xi is also fantastically corrupt. He wasn’t born a billionaire.
There is credible evidence his family controls billions of dollars of assets. Those assets accumulated in direct correlation with his power. Chinese state media disagrees, and if that's your cup of tea for Chinese leaders' corruption, I guess sure, Trump's also clean as a whistle.
None sequitur / who cares? Xi personally doesn't have obscene wealth/assets according to relevant evidence which is what matters.
Many CCP red family nepo babies/princelings influence peddled their way to wealth in last 50 years, they get are first dibs aristocracy class and their wealth should logically snowball with PRC moving from billion to trillion $ economy.
But Xi himself specifically has been outlier in how squeaky clean, even by western investigations. Nothing has been tied to him, hence lame "but his family manages his wealth" cope. Like the bro married Chinese 80s Taylor Swift and all signs point to him being fine what he has, which is not nothing, but also not extravagant, which makes trying to associate him to stupendous graft levels corruption he is trying to fix impossible.
Of course broader PRC leadership class has lots of corruption from development, it should be expected that Xi's sister/husband, both from red families to be wealthy from PRC development, but timeline of Xi's sister/husband wealth predates Xi - i.e. early real estate / rare earth investments. Difference between Xi and Trump is Xi himself has been historically clean, and in office made his family divest/liquidate 100ms in assets vs Trump is is historically unclean and family uses his influence to accumulate.
So no, all signs point to Xi is clean as a whistle while Trump isn't, and its ridiculous to equate the two just because both families are wealthy.
And to circle to original claim, there is no evidence that Xi is fantastically corrupt, only evidence to the contrary, that he is outlier in how uniquely uncorrupt he is relative to elite prestige, access, opportunities.
that's BS
cracking down on corruption has been a common tactic for decades to get rid of people who are a threat to the top dog at the CCP, and Xi has employed this perhaps better than anyone since Mao
are those people being purged corrupt? probably most are. but plenty of people who are corrupt aren't purged, it's a highly selective process.
Xi started this a few years after coming into power -- and it was obviously to the educated class was it was (I was living in Beijing at the time), but "mei banfa" (or emigrate, as many people with the $/ability to do so, did).
This sounds really interesting, do you have any examples?
Honest question to anyone who may be from China - the perception I've been fed in the US is that almost every bureaucrat is on the take. They certainly were in the USSR, you had to "know someone" to get anything done or just eat.
Perhaps it's just a RIF.
You can’t squeeze blood from a brick. At a certain point, you need to tolerate a little messiness to optimize societal growth.
Think of it as a dial you can turn clockwise or counterclockwise:
Security <——> Freedom
A healthy society would have good feedback mechanisms that allow it to change the dial of the government in power, to adjust to the current situation. Obviously, there’s no one optimal position; to use a historical example: Churchill was great for Britain during WW2, and immediately elected out afterwards.
The problem is, if they dont like their governance they cant trade it back for their freedom.
The way the mainstream media freaked out about him asking Bill O'Reilly, "what, you think our country is so innocent?" is a good example. Or saying we're in Venezuela for oil at the outset. Or talking about how they killed so many Iranians they don't even know who they are negotiating with anymore. I mean at least we didn't have to suffer through fumbling Bushisms about freedom. If the day ever comes when presidents are held to the same standards as the people, then ironically in many regards we will have to at least give him some points for honesty... it is quite sad how he is the only person to succeed to such an extent on such an "outsider", really anticorruption message ("drain the swamp"), then turn around and do the same thing. I think it is probably related to the core problem of American society - the doublespeak, the dual consciousness, the resistance to self reflection. People don't want honest answers - including to their own complicity (who elected these people anyway?). They want slogans. The results are sad, but predictable. A society that elects (and then worse, reelects) someone like Trump to end corruption is clearly a society that cannot look itself in the mirror. The same goes for the other side of the aisle. The "democracy" party that has no primaries and says it's either "fascism" or geriatric grandpa. We take this election very seriously that is why we have nominated a corpse. Don't mention it or you're a fascist. No you don't get another choice. Vote for us or democracy dies...
Sad... maybe if politics was a venue where people weren't punished for being honest we wouldn't have such low quality politicians. Brings to mind the George Carlin line:
That would be a nice realistic campaign slogan for somebody: 'The public sucks. Elect me.'"
There's no evidence that Xi Jinping is like Putin (who has enriched himself to abe unknown but expectedly high dgree), no evidence the military generals have enriched themselves with corruption (again, like Russia) or really anything else. Instead there's evidence that the likes of Jack Ma, a billionaire, are brought to heel, China has cracked down on so-called yin-yang contracts, sentenced to death people who messed with the baby formula supply chain and so on.
People really should reflect on why they're so willing to seek confirmation bias and why they have that bias at all.
Here's a tip: if you take anything China says or does at face value you will be more correct than 95% of the China "experts" that have entrenched themselves in the media and Western policy circles.
Everyone in China knows how dynasties end.
Maybe, but they hit the rich. All the selective prosecution in the US hits those least able to resist.
The CCP derives a significant part of its legitimacy from improving quality of life and living standards for the common Han Chinese. Waste and fraud that harms consumers is a drag on this progress; the incentives somewhat align. Real economic harm often causes real political harm.
In Iran, Gaza, Russia (no no, it is not you, it is.. "Ukraine").
You are much worse than them, actually. Though believing yourself to be the light of civilization, soulless robots..
edit: some interesting trivia. Due to the combination of America's incarceration rate, a racist justice system, and a completely wealthless and desperate class of freed slaves who were never compensated (although their owners were), Black Americans are 0.5% of the world's population but 5% of the world's prison population.
Your american KGB knows nearly everything about me, as well as about any other person with internet access (and also those without), without any "warrants", "judges", etc
Never even imagined in Soviet Union.
You are the ultimate horror.
"american KGB"? pray tell, who would that be? FBI? NSA? ICE? Even with their tooling, they are still struggling to legally acquire information, and even more so to act on it. There's even considerations of abolishing these agencies.
Try suggesting the abolition of the MSS as a mainland Chinese national and see what happens.
"Still struggling to legally acquire information.."
I dont doubt for a single moment, and I dont think you should, that you are right there in their database, with your identity, psychological profile, and all the rest. Now whether it was acquired "legally" i dont know, but when they choose people to murder abroad, I dont think that matters much.
So I call bullshit on your argument.
> dont doubt for a single moment, and I dont think you should, that you are right there in their database, with your identity, psychological profile, and all the rest.
I do. Perhaps I am there. Perhaps I'm not. Perhaps my name is there, but the data is wrong and/or misleading. I'm not going to deny USA's alphabet boys abilities, but I'm not going to glaze them either.
Nor I'm going to ignore that I might also be on the PRC's databases as well. They might not bombing people yet, but foreign policy can change easily.
I'm simply going to do my best to protect my privacy, not pretend that either of these regimes wouldn't kill me if they find it convenient.
That said, it is undeniable that USA would have more issues pulling that off domestically, and, arguably, even internationally. PRC has an entire legal apparatus for doing this domestically.
Though you are right I guess in what regards the legal apparatus of PRC.
But look, here in the free west my speech is suppressed without any need for "legal apparatus".. and it is not because I was provocative (though this is eventually what you become when your mouth is being consistently shut with a big fat lap).
As regards to your efforts to ptotect privacy, your identity can be deduced without much difficulty just from the sites you visit.. and Tor's origin you should know, and here I would stop.
Yes, because it means you don't have a good idea of the claims being presented. Perhaps there's a point in there, but you should think it through rather than just allowing it to remain nebulous as suggested in "I dont care much about their [...] organizational structure". Organizational structures matter, they make certain corporate actions easier and others more expensive.
> But look, here in the free west my speech is suppressed without any need for "legal apparatus".. and it is not because I was provocative
I appreciate the change in tone, but I have to ask whether that's really the case, as you're being ambiguous with the suppression methodology. There's quite a gap between "flagged into oblivion in a site" and "arrested for a year for posting anti-government opinions". Given the initial comments on your profile, you haven't done any favors in keeping downvotes and flags away. Not just provocations, but also gratuitous accusations. I try to avoid those because all they do is give ammo to the enemy.
> As regards to your efforts to ptotect privacy, your identity can be deduced without much difficulty just from the sites you visit.. and Tor's origin you should know, and here I would stop.
That's a oversimplified view about privacy. Every piece of information about a person, when enough is collected, can be used to identidy them. Collecting said information, specially when the infrastructure for that is not trivially available (as is the case in the USA in comparison to the PRC) is easier than done. When was the last time someone got identified by law enforcement in the US via their internet traffic? You are better off worrying about GDID in Windows.
A similar story goes for Tor. For starters, it was developed by US Navy, not the intelligence/law enforcement agencies. Second, the protocol is open and publicly being developed, so even if the NSA added a backdoor, it can be caught and removed. Finally, Tor is not the only option, see I2P for an example.
You think so?
I spend a lot of time working with (actual) anarchists in the US, and most of us are far more worried about the US gov putting us in jail (or murdering us outright) for our signal chats, protests, and "actions" than literally anything that the PRC might consider doing to us.
It's true that the US may be more of a immediate threat to those in its territories, but to compare it to KGB is to either massively oversell US domestic forces abilities or undersell KGB's. Even in the closest cases of political executions, extrajudicial murders through abuses of force and qualified immunity, as seen in the recent ICE shootings, they still caused a lot of national instability, even within the right wing. Similar happenings in the USSR didn't come close in reactions.
Sometimes systemic, competent purge the political rivals program is gud and what you want. But IMO US too young/stubborn, doesn't have institutional memory of REAL political crisis, nor humility to learn from history.
Almost certainly. But it's not simple to understand because four things are simultaneously true:
1. Corruption is a serious problem Xi is genuinely focused on reducing through high-profile prosecutions with extreme sentences.
2. Xi and his party lieutenants have certainly used corruption charges to eliminate central party 'Titans' because they got too powerful, got too greedy, or were deemed insufficiently 'loyal'.
3. Corruption is pervasive at almost every level and there's no way most of it can be eliminated anytime soon. In fact, the system relies on it to function as well as it does. The purpose of these high-profile prosecutions is only to reduce the size and frequency of corruption. It reminds officials that stealing half the money half the time can be bad for their health. So they stick closer to taking 10-20% only 10-20% of the time.
4. The sub-1% of corrupt officials who are prosecuted, likely end up being busted because they got 'too greedy' and were made a sacrificial lamb by their corrupt peers to fill the system's need for a few high-profile examples. The 'too greedy' isn't from taking too much, it's usually from not greasing enough palms with enough money (including the provincial corruption investigators themselves). When there's tens of millions of dollars of illicit money at stake, the dynamics become like de facto organized crime mobs and there's always competition between factions. This guy probably knows exactly which rival played the game better and beat him.
In a competitive employment market, paid time off is just another part of the cash value of any compensation package. Employees compare the overall packages, so companies need to offer 'competitive' PTO. In the past decade, FAANG-ish valley companies have had to offer 4-6 (or more) weeks of PTO. I know people who took two weeks every year and 'banked' four weeks. They retired early after 12 years with an extra YEAR of cash salary paid in full the day they left. When 5-10% of a company's debt is owed to their own employees and could become immediately due at any moment - it can be a cash flow and accounting issue for companies.
By 'not counting' the PTO, any time off you don't take in the year you earn it doesn't go on the balance sheet as an unpaid debt from the prior year - meaning PTO becomes 'use it or lose it'. This isn't materially different than the EU where it's normal for most corporate employees always take every day of PTO anyway. In the U.S., where historical PTO trends were closer to 2-3 weeks and only recently grew to 4-6 weeks, the result was more employees took more PTO each year (which is net good), but one component of their overall comp package became a little less good because they could no longer 'bank' more than one year's PTO and cash it out. Earned PTO carry-over was capped at one year and any you didn't take disappeared, unless you made an agreement with your manager.
For example, I deferred a chunk of my vacation into the next calendar year because we were shipping a major product (I was happy to do so and suggested it myself as I was leading the product). Technically, I guess it wasn't 'counted' in any HR record-keeping so if I suddenly quit before I took the vacation, I might not have been paid for the extra two weeks I deferred from the prior year - but only if my boss and the company decided to be real jerks about it. Another reason not to work for jerks if you can avoid it. Also, it isn't smart for companies to not reasonably honor verbal agreements with employees because word gets around and no other employee would agree to defer any PTO and future big projects would suffer. This flexibility wasn't always only in the company's favor. There was also a time I deferred a week of PTO to the next year by verbal agreement which I lumped together with paternity leave when my kid was born. Note: I'm only familiar with the dynamics in the U.S. I believe they also apply in some other geos but regulations and financial reporting requirements differ per country.
Worker protection rights in the U.S.A. truly are seen as a joke.
As a thought experiment, if offered a tech job in, say, downtown Zurich, how much extra money would be required for an avg EU tech worker to happily accept that same job under Bay Area employment law, protections and standards (at-will employment, non-banked PTO, etc) than under EU employment law, protections and standards? In other words, apples-to-apples what are those extra protections actually worth in cash value? I suspect the answer would be, at most, around $25K to $50K/year. But when you look at the total comp packages (salary, benefits, equity, 401k, etc) between Bay Area and Zurich tech workers, the delta is far greater than that. In effect, the bay area tech worker 'sold' that extra protection for a big chunk of cash and is using some of it to self-insure against the potentially increased volatility. I think a lot of EU tech workers would be delighted to make the same trade. Another way of looking at it is you've given up a lot of upside for a relatively small amount of guaranteed extra protection on the downside.
This might surprise you but the reality is, many of the potential employment abuses you may be concerned about are vanishingly unlikely to occur in practice. The point is, you can end up paying a lot for expensive 'tiger insurance' you probably won't ever use and don't really need. While you can feel good knowing you have extra protection from tigers, on a purely economic basis I averaged over $500k/yr over my multi-decade career in bay area tech. In good years, the equity could take it over a million. My own admin (with no college degree) averaged over $200k a year in total comp. The highest paid admin at the Zurich company I'm on the board of makes closer to 50k CHF (and living in downtown Zurich isn't much less than SF). So, the "US tech employment deal" may seem weird and perhaps less fair, but the extra half million dollars my admin earned over several years put a lot of 'social safety net' in the bank that she can spend whenever and however she wants - and she still works there for my old boss, still loves her job and has never had to use any protections or social safety net yet (she's probably over a million in extra total comp banked by now). In short, viewed objectively, it's a different deal but not necessarily a worse deal. In many cases, EU workers may be giving up far more value than they're actually receiving in return.
Tiger insurance seems very necessary for e. g. retail, restaurant, construction etc. workers in the U.S., as they seem to be disproportionally targeted by tigers and earn next to nothing.
Everyone deserves to be treated fairly, even if they don't live in California and know how to programm.
All of these white collar criminals were pardoned by Biden
Nina Simona Allen (December 2024): Convicted of conspiracy to defraud financial institutions.
Duran Arthur Brown (December 2024): Convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a mortgage fraud scheme.
Ravidath Ragbir (January 2025): Convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Jerry Donald Manning (December 2024): Convicted of two counts of mail fraud.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey (January 2025 - Posthumous): Convicted of mail fraud in 1923.
Alex Nain Saab Moran (December 2023): Convicted of money laundering conspiracy (released as part of a U.S.–Venezuela prisoner swap).
Abraham W. Bolden Sr. (April 2022): Former Secret Service agent convicted of bribery attempts, fraud, and obstruction.
Kim Douglas Haman (December 2024): Convicted of making false claims against the government.
Vadim Konoshchenok (July 2024): Convicted of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., smuggling goods, and export control law violations (released as part of a multi-national prisoner swap).
Paul John Garcia (December 2024): Convicted of signing false documents with intent to deceive and theft/sale of government property while serving in the Navy.
Hunter Biden (December 2024): Convicted of federal tax offenses (alongside separate firearm charges). The pardon broadly covers any federal offenses committed or taken part in between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.
Gerald Glenn Lundergan (January 2025): Convicted of unlawful campaign contributions, making false statements, and falsifying documents.
Ernest William Cromartie (January 2025): Convicted of attempting to evade or defeat tax, as well as structuring financial transactions to evade reporting requirements.
Admittedly, in a lot of the western world one side of the conversation has seen Trump take this place, only without any sort of completion of the narrative arc. Good for business, bad for emotional strength for some people. Will be interesting to see what comes after him.
* he goes after corrupt officials, in both minor roles and very public big cases; and * he also accused inconvenient people (mostly potential contenders) of corruption to get rid of them (see the list of party leaders purged since Xi came to power, with some even led off stage at the main CCP Congress in a show of power). * How many corrupt officials are not persecuted due to political favouritism is by definition impossible to know from the outside.
Damn
One thing that China does should be adopted in the West.
The U.S.A. is the embodiment of crony capitalism.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-jos...
[0]: "Trump threatens to prosecute Bidens if he’s re-elected unless he gets immunity" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/30/trump-second...
Again, Trump pardons people for a fee, and the motto of his pardons office is "no MAGA left behind". The fraud that he has pardoned amounts to about $2 billion to date.
Trump's pardons far exceed what Biden did in terms of scope and corruption. Trump's literally collecting bribes for pardons. There has been multiple confirmed, documented cases of someone donating to his reelection fund or buying trump coins, and then receiving a pardon in short order.
This is blatant misrepresentation to try and justify the unprecedented corruption by the current administration. He will be documented as the most corrupt president ever, even surpassing U.S.Grant for the title.
Both pardoned criminals, yes Trump pardoned more criminals
Know how many criminals China has pardoned? zero they get the death penalty
For instance, high level executive Bryan Malinowski was executed by the ATF and barely anyone noticed, but if the courts had sentenced him in such way, there would be great outrage.
* the ATF decided not to raid his home when he was out of town but early in the morning when he was at home
* the ATF gave him 28 seconds to comply with their announcement after which they battered the door down
Given the fact that the agents weren't wearing body cameras, the guy had a normal day job that he'd go to, and that 28 seconds is certainly too short to dispose of firearms it does seem a lot like execution served by way of search warrant. Certainly, I wouldn't be able to let anyone in 28 s after waking up to pounding on my door.
He was shot after opening fire, unprovoked, on federal agents performing a search of his home under a lawfully obtained warrant.
I can understand if there's some imminent threat but there was none. He was going to wake up, and report to a secure airport full of cops and federal agents. But they couldn't resist engineering a situation that ended up with him dead, doing what anyone would do to protect their wife when given ~zero time to distinguish threats entering their home at night.
Now you can argue maybe it wasn't an execution, and only their acts were indistinguishable from what those doing an execution would do.
The ATF in this instance (and frankly most instances) chose the most violent option available to them, because good people don't join the ATF. Violent thugs who get off on shooting dogs join the ATF. And when they get tired of shooting dogs, they decide to manufacture a scenario where they get to kill a more dangerous game.
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Whistleblower Yang Hai already reported Yang Youlin for his economic misconduct in July 2008. The whistleblower was detained because of the report at Nov 21st, 2008.
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People's comment on this matter around March, 2009:
哇塞！终于有人敢动杨友林啦，杨海好样的。杨友林此人早该除无奈碍于他的势力。除掉杨友林大快人心。Wow! Finally, someone dares to take action against Yang Youlin. Good job, Yang Hai. That guy should have been dealt with long ago, but we were stuck with his influence. Getting rid of him is incredibly satisfying.
不杀此贪官，难平民愤。If you don't execute this corrupt official, you won't appease the public's anger.
江宁有一个传说，谁也动不了杨永林！There's a legend in Jiangning: nobody can touch Yang Youlin!
他的保护伞是谁？Who is protecting him?
希望引起中央的重视！I hope this gets the attention of the central government!
现在社会怎么啦？好多天了根本没人关注这件事？是上层没有看到？还是视而不见？还是怕牵连自己？What's going on with society lately? It's been days and no one is paying attention to this! Did the higher-ups miss it? Are they turning a blind eye? Or are they just afraid of getting dragged into it?
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Since the report, there were several pieces of news about "the investigation about Yang Youlin is ongoing", but no real progress until 2023.
It certainly helps motivate them to testify in court.
Strong minority opinion: If someone steals more than the average total lifetime earnings of 10 people, I think the death penalty should apply. That's about 25 million USD
But I gotta say something: if the EU or the US were to kill politicians taking in bribes, there wouldn't be many politicians left.
Society cannot work with too many corrupt civil servants. Yes, "autocrats", "civil liberties", and yet - the guy slurped up $325M to put his finger on the scale, not to change the model of governance.
I wish we in the west took corruption more seriously, but I suppose we're more interested in cage fights on the lawn these days.
I mean, live that way on $325 million. But yeah.
It's a mentality where you can't stop.
He got away with it for 30 years. That shows at least some level of craftiness.
You should come to [insert your favourite EU country here].
And once you've taken the first bribe, they now have leverage.
They'll basically be your friends, partners and coworkers. Making a sudden change in how you associate with each other can have rather negative consequences, ranging from anxiety to them trying to murder you.
is it prone to abuse by those who yield power - Yes!
however - the alternative - where corruption goes unchecked is even worse!! if you come from a poor country e.g in Africa - you would've experienced the effects of corruption.
American are now experiencing it now - & the country is already worse off. though before corruption in American was used as an incentive mechanism - now it's just pure grift.
so yeah sentencing one or two people to death explicitly is the humane outcome vs sentencing thousands to death implicitly.
We don't need death sentence, we just need, like, any regular sentence
Holmes et co have been charged and incarcerated, SBF is also sitting in prison, other executives at smaller companies have also been prosecuted and faced imprisonment. I think there is a lot of fraud in various industries, but some of it is prosecuted, and some of it is legal enough that there is only a fine to pay. There is some accountability, and as much as i can criticize what corps do, i don't think of them as "legally responsible" for every misuse of their tools. Today it seems that if someone cuts their own leg off with a power saw it is a lawsuit against the tool company.
Insider trading - Using knowledge of impending policy decisions and military operations to massively profit from the stock market.
Further than this, one could argue that those policy decisions were made, or at least timed, in order to deliberately short stocks in order to reap profit. The timing of a lot of the Iran war announcements followed very suspect patterns.
Using the highest office in the land to promote personal businesses.
Awarding military contracts to companies linked with family members of the administration over other more suitable options.
We'll likely never see any accountability for the literal billions being illicitly gained by the current administration after they've left office.
This guy did it over 30 years so it is feasible.
Scapegoat isn't the right term but I think it is very possible he is being executed to essentially send a message. I think your bigger point that there are way more corrupt officials than just this guy involved seems very plausible.
The GDP of the city was 278.9 billion USD in 2025.
Additionally, there are two noteworthy aspects regarding the unique characteristics of Chinese law:
(1) The characteristic of "politics over law" in China has gained increasing approval online. Previously, many people admired and envied Western judicial independence, but more and more people are realizing the drawbacks of this system.
(2) China has always been very cautious regarding the execution of the death penalty. Even during the feudal dynasties, official executions remained rare and typically required imperial review. In essence, China still operates under a model of governance by Confucian elites.
In North Korea, you get a death sentence for even something a lot smaller.
And that’s if they’re ever charged at all, which is rare.
1. strong defensive positions float to the top... which could be astroturfing.
2. the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.
maybe it's all fair, but on a site where everyone's ~anonymous, it's hard to take the discussion at face value.
- Many people feel the death penalty is wrong in every case.
- Some have a general familiarity with high-level politics of elites and wonder about selective enforcement.
These don’t feel like they’re in bad faith. The merits are difficult to know from the outside, so there will always be speculation based on someone’s lived experience and perceptions. Better to have those aired with a chance to respond, in my opinion.
Especially for China, since it is a global power that operates differently from others. In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.
then, re-read my comment:
> the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.
…juxtaposed to your conclusion:
> In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.
fwiw, i too feel that the death penalty is wrong. but, that's answering an off topic survey question.
i should also note that you've gotten pushback on your comment above declaring that "Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption". my issue is that there's a narrative that forms based on up/downvotes and thus these political threads are gamed. kinda like how my concerns about legitimacy are being downvoted – that's to be expected.
Tariffs on all things Chinese is pretty much an open admission that the West can't compete.
Is he dumb? Surely he is smart enough to know he committed a capital crime and yet he kept doing it. Perhaps he only kept doing it because he believed he could somehow get away with it? Perhaps he saw others pull off the same stunt? Or perhaps he had the political capital to keep himself out of trouble and is now facing justice because he rubbed someone higher up the wrong way?
Is the prosecution dumb? 300 million is no small money are they really so incompetent that over the course of 30 years they could not find anything wrong with this guy? Perhaps they had a reason to keep him around? Perhaps he had them in his pocket? Perhaps he had the connection to fuck up anyone who dares investigating him? Perhaps they never meant to care about corruption anyway and only went after him because someone somewhere issued an order and they are just charging him for corruption because the true reason is less convenient?
China has invested a lot in whitewashing its public image these days. Every young left leaning westerner is salivating at the idea of a Chinese century because they somehow convinced themselves that the Chinese has the solution to everything that went wrong in the west. It's sad to see it spreading even to this website.
Like those 'advanced' countries that don't have death penalties but are silent - or arming/funding - a genocide?
I guess some deaths are ok.