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Wang Xiangwei
SCMP Columnist
China Briefing
by Wang Xiangwei
China Briefing
by Wang Xiangwei

As Shaanxi saga shows, even Xi hits China’s bureaucratic brick wall

  • A scandal over illegal villas suggests even China’s most powerful leader since Mao struggles with a bureaucracy that has spent centuries ignoring its leaders
  • After all, “the sky is high and the emperor is far away”
Soon after Xi Jinping came to office six years ago, he declared war on rampant official corruption, helping him to consolidate power, vanquish opponents and become China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
Despite all the power he has amassed, however, bending the country’s vast bureaucracy to his will has proved much more fraught and nuanced than might have been expected.

The mandarins may cower in his presence and sing his praises publicly, but many of them continue to obfuscate and frustrate Xi’s policy agenda and specific directives.

His apparent frustrations and anger came to a head this month when China Central Television aired an unusual investigative report in which high-level incumbent, sacked and jailed officials in the northwestern province of Shaanxi were paraded to detail how they had repeatedly obfuscated and fobbed off Xi’s specific directives on probing the illegal construction of luxury villas in the ecologically fragile Qinling mountains – five times over a span of about four years, to be exact. The saga was finally laid to rest in July when Xi dispatched a central government task force of anti-graft investigators to probe the blatantly lethargic reactions to his directives, resulting in a large number of senior officials being demoted or detained on charges of corruption.

The airing of the documentary was followed by the annual meeting of China’s top anti-graft investigators in which Xi declared “a sweeping victory” in the fight against corruption and effectively declared war on official lethargy.

At the meeting, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection – the top anti-graft watchdog – identified fighting “the practice of formalities for formalities’ sake and bureaucratism” as one of its top priorities for the new year.

Zhao Zhengyong, former party chief of Shaanxi. Photo: ImagineChina

On Tuesday, Zhao Zhengyong, a former party chief of Shaanxi, became the latest official from the province to be detained on corruption charges. Xinhua reported his detention in a one-sentence report without giving further details, but he is widely believed to have incurred Xi’s wrath because of his provincial leadership role at the time when Xi’s directives were ignored. There are also suggestions that Zhao was involved in another snowballing scandal involving a mine with a potential worth of 100 billion yuan (HK$116 billion).

The documentary was politically significant as the Chinese leadership rarely airs its dirty linen in public in such detailed fashion, particularly at a time when the state media is saturated with reports in which officials are lining up to praise Xi and his policies and vowing to implement them to the letter.

While the media reports billed the airing of the documentary as a reflection of Xi’s determination to fight official indolence and a stern warning to others, it also brought to light the scale of bureaucrats’ passive resistance and indifference to Xi’s policy agenda.

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In recent months, the state media have frequently blasted the so-called “two-faced” bureaucrats who are exuberant in expressing support for Xi but remain lethargic to his edicts or, even worse, actively undermine them.

According to the documentary, in May 2014, Xi issued his first directive to the provincial leadership of Shaanxi on what appeared to be widespread illegal construction of luxury villas in the Qinling mountain range south of Xian, which supports a large variety of plants and wildlife including the endangered giant panda population.

By official protocol, Xi’s directive should have been a top priority and “reviewed and studied” by all members of the provincial and Xian city committees, but the top party chiefs in charge of the province and the city merely directed their subordinates to look into the matter without informing other senior officials. These acts were later labelled as a sign of great disrespect to Xi’s authority. As a result, a toothless provincial task force was formed to investigate for the sake of formalities, according to the documentary.

A booklet by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-graft watchdog. Photo: Reuters

Two months later, the task force came up with a report identifying 202 illegal structures which were mostly built by farmers while leaving out a vast number of lavish villas built by property developers in collusion with the local officials.

In October 2014, Xi followed up with his second directive urging resolute efforts to prevent further ecological deterioration, but the local officials appeared to have stuck to their previous finding.

In fact, since then, more approvals were given to allow property developers to build more luxury villas – riding on the then property boom – with their new developments openly advertised in the local media.

To add insult to injury, Xian’s party chief and mayor published a joint-bylined article in the provincial party’s mouthpiece newspaper on how they had taken resolute steps to curb illegal construction in November 2014.

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Such blatant deception continued until July last year, when Xi finally sent a team of central government graft investigators to the province and quickly found 1,194 illegally built luxury villas, which were later demolished and turned into greenery.

As a result, nearly 1,000 officials in the province were questioned and since then several hundred of them have been investigated, according to media reports.

What was not reported at all was what happened to the buyers of those luxury villas, which were reportedly priced at as much as 10 million yuan, and whether they received compensation. Given the circumstances, that seems unlikely.

But according to the media reports, many of those lavish villas on sale met all the legal requirements and everything was above board at the time. The sales were later deemed illegitimate only because the central government now says that the then local officials breached their own regulations.

But there was no way that the buyers would have known about the local officials’ illicit acts. In fact, media reports suggest some investors and property developers were attracted to the developments by those officials representing the local government.

The south gate of Zhongnanhai, which houses the central headquarters of the Communist Party. Photo: Shutterstock

The Shaanxi investigation came after the revelations in 2017 that top officials in Gansu had repeatedly ignored Xi’s directives to tackle construction of high-pollution factories in the ecologically sensitive Qilian mountain range. This led to the investigation of Wang Sanyun, former provincial party chief, who was put on trial on corruption charges in October last year. Wang is expected to face a lengthy jail sentence.

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It is interesting to note that when Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor, was in power from 2002 to 2012, his reign was characterised as weak and ineffective, leading to the popular saying that the central government’s directives did not make it beyond the walls of Zhongnanhai – the headquarters of the Communist Party.

It literally means that the directives were ignored as soon as they were issued.

But the lengthy Shaanxi saga shows that Xi, who was determined to change that by strengthening the central government controls and concentrating power in his own hands, still faces a tough fight ahead. Indeed, the bureaucracy has long perfected its methods of obfuscating the central authorities’ edicts into an art form, as known in the centuries-old saying “the sky is high and the emperor is far away”.

Wang Xiangwei is the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post. He is now based in Beijing as editorial adviser to the paper

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