A Change for China's Military Corruption

Newly selected Chinese Communist Party chief (and ruler of China) Xi Jinping has come out strongly in favor of stronger and more aggressive armed forces. Xi was selected (by his fellow party leaders) as the new party chief (for the next five years) in November and takes power (as China’s president) next March (replacing Hu Jintao). But his announcements warn government officials of new policies. The newly selected president will often issue orders (as head of the party) in the months between selection and taking office as president. To that end, senior military officers have been banned from staging elaborate banquets at their headquarters, and ordered to cut back on travel and partying in general. Senior military officials have been told rather directly that they are responsible if any members of their family (especially wives and children) are caught taking bribes or engaging in any other kind of corruption. Yi is giving the military more money and he wants to ensure it is used to make to increase combat capability, not make corrupt officers rich. This will not eliminate corruption, but will reduce it for a while and make it more difficult. The government has launched several major anti-corruption campaigns against the military in the past two decades, but the bad behavior persists, as it has in China for thousands of years. Xi also calls for less corruption throughout the government as the senior Communist Party leadership openly acknowledges that such bad behavior is the major threat to the survival of communist rule in China.

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Boy has he got a lot of hard work ahead .
I bet there will be a few high ranking people put before a firing squad to make the others squirm .

reply to post by pillock


good luck to the guy however the corruption in china means conflict is less likely so when they are all cleaned up They will be on track to be a superpower

The Central Government is taking slow baby steps towards this, but they have along road ahead.

I guess it's quite hard to administrate an armed force of 1,000,000 plus, many things fall through the cracks and go unnoticed, many financial forms changed and gone unnoticed, there will always be corruption until fair salary is arranged for the force. Many young upcoming soldiers buy their way through the ranks, having the backing of rich and powerful families, skipping the majority of the basic experience.

If China ever did goto war I guess the majority of the younger officers would have absolutely no idea on what to do.

Hell I even see military plates on Porsche Cayenne's and Range Rovers (families of officials), you used to be able to buy a military licence (enabled free parking, free toll, run red light, ect) plate 4-5 years back but they clamped down after seeing the sheer abuse.

EDIT TO ADD:
The basic PLA soldier goes through absolute hell, I've got the utmost respect to those who rise through the ranks with experience and have done their hard yards, it's those mentioned above that should be purged from the ranks.

Well, Xi has just taken the top job in the Party and isn't even the Head of State yet, so it's natural for him to have big, ambitious plans for the future ten years. I'm not too optimistic, however; China has been talking about reforms all the time, but the pace of change is so slow that there is no visible change. It's rather probable that Xi will be another Zhu Rongji.

There's another thing to consider, which is that Xi may not really intend to fight corruption. It might be that he's just trying to raise morale and public support, much like Western politicians who are great at speeches but not so much at ruling.

Plus, there's a lot of of dissidents here who claim the Communist Party is not as united as it seems, but is very divided. They say there are three 'factions', to which Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping each represent one. They claim that anti-corruption activities are one of the ways in which the 'factions' fight. (There are already speculations that Xi is aiming at Hu's 'faction'.) I don't know how accurate their claims are (probably not at all ), but it's plausible if not probable that the Party is divided. A similar phenomenon has occurred in nearly every previous dynasty, of which the Song Dynasty is the most notable. A quarrel between reformists (led by Wang Anshi) and conservative politicians (led by Sima Guang) turned into a nation-wide factional struggle that eventually led to the end of the Northern Song Dynasty. I'm not saying the current situation is as nearly bad as that one, but it's something we should watch out for in case it history repeats itself.

After Mao died all the things which the cultural revolution was able to dismantle came screaming back to life. The modern Chinese military is a prime example of this. It might very well be the most corrupt military force in the world which is actually able to cause some major damage globally.

The military is operated by rich and power military families who could less who is the president of the political bureau or chairmen of the workers party. The Communist Party of China lost control of society as a guiding force toward the movement to create a true unified social collective when they decided that free market ideas could be mixed into the communist system. They ruined themselves and now they have a very large, and highly corrupt, military to deal with.

The first thing they should do, which they lack the muster to do, is expel off the rich and power military families out of the military. At the very least declare all their assists to be property of the people, seeing that all their riches come from the people in the first place. All military leaders should live at the direct expense of the government. So, when military budgets are discussed guess who is going to have to answer for their fat cat lifestyle?

reply to post by freedomwv


i take it you have never been, or understand how indochina works. under your philosophy they should by use of military retake japan, south korea, rather than the actual philosophy of being 'harder and better workers', which they actually use and you buy you duck head.

Originally posted by NateHatred
reply to post by freedomwv

 

i take it you have never been, or understand how indochina works. under your philosophy they should by use of military retake japan, south korea, rather than the actual philosophy of being 'harder and better workers', which they actually use and you buy you duck head.

If they tried to take Japan, the US is obligated to step in. That would be the start of WW3 and China does not have the resources.