Scorching piece from John Garnaut on corruption in the PLA and the attempts by General Liu Yuan, the political commissar of the General Logistics Department, to end it. These are bolstered by the fact that Liu is good mates with incoming president Xi Jinping and, as the surviving son of former president Liu Shaoqi, the most princely of China’s princelings. Here’s what he has to deal with:
In January Liu Yuan ripped out one allegedly cancerous node, the deputy director of his Logistics Department, General Gu Junshan, after a protracted internal struggle. Those close to the investigation describe details of Gu extorting county officials with threats of violence and buying his way up the PLA hierarchy. Together with friends, relatives and patrons in and beyond the military, they say, he profited immensely from property developments, distributed hundreds of PLA villas to his closest friends, and generally ran his construction and infrastructure division like a mafia fiefdom. They detail a bewildering list of personal assets beginning with his own luxury villa, which stands outside the usual military compounds, behind a high wall next to Beijing's East Fourth Ring Road, called General's Mansion. ...
Soon after Gu's removal, around Spring Festival, Liu Yuan gave a more detailed account of corruption and insubordination, which confirmed the problems were not confined to one rogue general. In his speech to the party study class, according to sources who have seen it, he described a disease of "malignant individualism" that makes officers follow only orders that suit them, rely on their guanxi connections everywhere and openly sell their services at "clearly marked prices".
Like I say, scorching stuff. For my money, Garnaut is the most deeply sourced regular correspondent in China, in particular within the reformist camp and I tend to read his stuff in the knowledge that I’ll find out what they think of any given situation. In that light, it’s interesting that they seem to be so much behind Liu Yuan, who seems in local terms to be a bit of a raving Tory. Maybe it’s just a matter of getting close to the incoming leadership.
UPDATE: now with added link. Anyway, the article also contains a nice overview of how an upbringing among China's elite affected one man's politics:
One reason Liu Yuan has the guts to cut through the shiny carapace of the People's Liberation Army is because he is "the sole surviving male descendant of president Liu Shaoqi", as President Hu once put it to Liu's late mother, say sources close to Liu. One of his brothers was killed in the Cultural Revolution while the other emerged insane, to die soon after. His mother, Wang Guangmei, was jailed for a decade. His father, who had been Mao's anointed successor for 20 years, died in a cold concrete prison cell: naked, emaciated and caked in vomit and diarrhoea.
..."Man cannot survive without killing," Liu wrote last year, in the preface to a friend's book.
Oh, hey, John's actually doing his princeling book. Excellent.
Posted by: JamesP | April 15, 2012 at 07:10 PM
One thing unmentioned in the article: the PLA is rumored to have a major hand in the drugs trade in the south.
Posted by: JamesP | April 15, 2012 at 07:14 PM
Also, check this Gonger article - http://www.mingjingnews.com/2012/01/blog-post_3120.html
Posted by: JamesP | April 16, 2012 at 08:50 AM