中国的反腐败驱动助教kes Aim at Guo Boxiong

The upcoming prosecution of former Chinese military chief郭伯雄capsPresident Xi Jinping’s three-year anticorruption campaign, a political maneuver that has led to the sacking and arrest of some 30,000 Communist Party officials, the fiercest purge since the Cultural Revolution.

Retired four-star general Guo, 73, who served as a vice chair of the Central Military Commission from 2002 to 2012, was expelled from the Party last year and put under investigation for alleged corruption. The commission’s most senior military representative, he was therefore the most powerful officer in the People’s Liberation Army. Military inspectors are wrapping up their inquiry, and in the next month or two a civilian court is expected to charge Guo with taking up to 80 million yuan ($12.3 million) in bribes in exchange for promoting underlings, according to sources close to the Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Central Military Commission.

“China’s military was quite corrupt” before Xi launched his campaign, says a Beijing-based businessman whose relatives include senior PLA officers. “Being promoted in the PLA often required giving economic benefits to one’s superiors.”

For example, in recent years some local garrison commanders began illegally charging recruits initiation fees of up to 100,000 yuan for preferential treatment, he explains. “For a senior colonel to be promoted to the rank of general often required a bribe to his superior of no less than 5 million yuan.”

郭敬明是陕北人，1961年从北京解放军军事科学院毕业后开始了他的军旅生涯。1963年入党后，历任北京军区副司令员、兰州军区司令员，1999年晋升为将军。江泽民主席从1998年到2005年担任中央军事委员会主席，他被任命为中央军事委员会主席。

郭坐在一个“金字塔”的顶端，在那里，他分享了下级官员因升职而获得的“佣金”，这位商人声称。这位2012年监督年度国防开支6700亿元人民币的前将军，据称也得益于他在决定哪些中国主要国防承包商获得利润丰厚的合同方面发挥的重要作用。

President Xi’s anticorruption drive began with lower-ranking Party officials and extended through the government bureaucracy, including state-owned banks and financial institutions, where Party members rule. “It is culminating with a sweep of China’s military,” says Guan Anping, a Beijing-based lawyer and an unpaid adviser to the Chinese government on financial and economic reforms. “A corrupt military is a military that cannot win wars. Corruption must be eliminated completely from the PLA. Otherwise China’s own national security is at risk.”

Guo is the highest-ranking general to be booted from the Party and arrested for corruption since the Communists gained control of China in 1949. Xi, who took power in 2012, has brought down dozens of top officials, including several members of the Politburo. Among them: Bo Xilai, an ex–Party chief for Chongqing; Zhou Yongkang, China’s onetime head of national security; and general Xu Caihou, Guo’s deputy and another vice chair of the Central Military Commission.

Guo allegedly headed the so-called Northwest faction of dozens of PLA generals, say sources close to the Chinese military, who describe his purge as part of a broader effort to expunge such groups from the Party and the armed forces.

“President Xi may seem to be dictatorial in getting rid of factions from the Party and concentrating power in his own hands,” attorney Guan says. “But he is getting rid of these factions because he wants to drive through economic and financial reforms.”

Such factions hijacked China’s economy and made it a haven for rent seeking, according to Guan, who says that, in the past, businesses had to pay bribes to key gatekeepers not only in government ministries but also in the PLA: “Of course corruption still exists in some form and shape in China, but it is a far cry from the days when the likes of General Guo ruled China’s military.”

在Twitter上关注Allen Cheng@acheng87.