TV series reveals graft in watchdog’s ranks
Print Edition
CHINA’S top graft watchdog has begun airing a three-part television series highlighting corruption in its ranks, sending a message that there will be no omissions in the war on corruption.
In nightly episodes that began on Tuesday, the series reveals how inspection officials traded on their position of power for expensive gifts, such as pearls, designer watches and gold bars, and cash bribes dating back to the 1990s.
“To Forge Iron, The Metal Itself Must Be Strong,” takes its name from a 2012 speech by Xi Jinping in his role as the Party’s general secretary and aims to show there are no blindspots in the Central Commission of Discipline and Inspection’s investigations, the narrator explains.
At a meeting of high-level Party officials in Beijing last October, Xi stressed the need for the commission to “clean its own doorstep.”
In the first episode the narrator quoted commission head Wang Qishan as saying it “resolutely guards against there being darkness beneath the light.”
As president, Xi has vowed to stamp out deep-seated corruption in the Party, vowing to go after powerful “tigers” as well as lowly “flies.”
The “tiger” interviewed in the first episode, Zhu Mingguo, a one-time graft-buster and former Guangdong representative of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said he exploited gaps in the Party’s oversight system while in power.
Zhu said he received over 1,000 bottles of expensive alcohol as gifts and had received bribes dating back to the 1990s, stashing the money in his home.
He is quoted by the narrator as warning other corrupt officials against attempting to destroy evidence or to flee abroad, saying that such tactics will not work and would only serve to make their crimes more serious.
Designer watches, pearls and gold bars are among the spoils of other former inspectors featured.
The TV series follows the commission’s first TV program “Always On The Road,” which aired in October 2016, and offered the first behind-the-scenes look at the nation’s most dramatic corruption cases.
Since Xi was elected Party chief in late 2012, dozens of senior Party officials have been jailed for corruption, including former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang, who was jailed for life in 2015.
But as the number of high-profile corruption cases begins to fall, the anti-graft campaign, which enjoys widespread public support, has begun to shift toward lower-level officials.
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