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Opinion
Morning Clicks
by John Kennedy
Morning Clicks
by John Kennedy

China has at least 1.18 million ready-to-flee 'naked officials', anti-corruption rant reveals

First published by Beijing Evening News (then deleted) yesterday, the figure attributed to Chinese Academy of Governance professor Zhu Lijia has been republished by Xinhua earlier today.

In a Beijing Evening News report yesterday decrypting anti-corruption tsar Wang Qishan's speech delivered last week at a meeting of top mainland discipline officials, Chinese Academy of Governance professor Zhu Lijia (竹立家) is quoted saying there are now nearly an estimated 1.2 million 'naked officials' with assets and family members halfway (or further) out of the country.
The report attributes the 1.2 million figure to Zhu, as well as the final few paragraphs of the analysis (which has since been removed from almost everywhere it appeared, although the 1.18 million figure was published by Xinhua today):

Who can really say exactly which country it is they serve? As long as these people are in positions of power, they are a huge loss and potential danger to our nation, state and the Party's authority.

There is one way these "naked officials" can be brought under control, and that's for the central leadership to lead the way in making their family information open and transparent. The best and in fact only way to achieve this would be for the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee to publicly declare where they reside and what their wives and children do for a living.

Local leaders at every level would then do well to learn from the central leadership and at the very least require standing committee members for local governments declare their family assets and other information. It goes without saying that anyone with [spouses] or children with residency overseas would be ineligible to hold a government leadership position. This would facilitate supervision, and would certainly greatly reduce the number of "naked officials".

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