China rated ‘high risk’ on global military corruption index

China’s armed forces are battling a major corruption problem, with little political oversight and no whistle-blower mechanism to counter graft, watchdog Transparency International said on Tuesday.

China, which has the world’s largest active military, scored as a “high-risk” country on a new global index on defence establishment corruption launched by the Berlin-based organisation at a press conference in Taiwan.

“The Chinese military acknowledges that there is a major corruption issue through its various promulgations, and it has put a variety of measures in place to limit this major concern,” said Mark Pyman, director of the organisation’s Defence and Security Programme.

However, he said it is uncertain how effective these measures are, since the military does not allow the level of scrutiny required to ensure an anti-graft campaign is succeeding.

“There are many areas where China is weak in its protections against corruption in its defence sector, and it has very low oversight of defence and armed forces policy and no effective whistle-blower system,” Pyman said.

China’s new leader Xi Jinping has made the fight against corruption one of his priorities since he became Communist Party chief in November.

But the problem is that the Chinese military is “a closed system”, according to Kevin Yeh, director of Transparency International’s Taiwan chapter.