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Fighting corruption, China seeks to remove the temptation of politicos’ lovers
 It was the most dramatic illustration of how mistresses have become a key part of China’s corruption story. On Sept. 3, according to the Beijing Times, of the 16 ministry-level officials sacked recently for corruption, 14 had mistresses, including Shanghai Communist Party Secretary Chen Liangyu, who had several, as did former Beijing Vice Mayor Liu Zhihua.
It was an
operation worthy of Mossad or an Al-Qaeda operative in central Baghad
– a car bomb detonated by remote control on a crowded street
that blew the driver into two and scattered her remains over a wide
area. But the difference is that the assassin was one of the most
senior Communist Party officials in the eastern city of Jinan, in
league with two accomplices, one of them a middle-ranking police
officer who used police explosives.
Duan Yihe, 61,
former Communist Party secretary in Jinan, capital of Shandong
province, pleaded guilty in court last week to the murder of Liu
Haiping, 31, his mistress. His two accomplices also pleaded guilty.
Duan also pleaded guilty to taking bribes and was he unable to
explain the source of 1.3 million yuan in assets, far in excess of
his official income. The court Thursday sentenced him to death along
with his two accomplices. The three men have appealed the sentence.
The money, it
seems was for the late mistress, who had taken to blackmailing her
lover. Duan needed to get rid of her.
It was the most
dramatic illustration of how mistresses have become a part of China’s
corruption story. It is so serious that, on July 8, the Supreme
People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procurate issued a
legal ruling that includes mistresses for the first time in the
definition of “those having a special relationship with an
official.” Previously, the law spoke of “those having
common interests with an official,” but did not mention
mistresses as a category. By this change, the court made it easier
for prosecutors to charge corrupt officials if they find misdeeds
that involve one’s “little” wife.
The ruling
includes the term “a person having a special relationship with
an official” and defines this as a close relative, a mistress
or others. The inclusion of mistresses is necessary because they
frequently demand money, cars, apartments and other gifts from their
lovers. When he cannot pay out of his official salary, he has to look
elsewhere.
For example, Li
Jiating, the governor of Yunnan province until his dismissal in June
2001, paid his mistress, who had just four years of schooling, three
million yuan to pay off debts she had run up.
Mistresses also
often play a role in helping the official obtain illegal income and
launder the money.
The Duan case is
typical, even if the outcome was extraordinary. In 1994 he met Liu, a
primary school graduate, when she was a waitress at an official guest
house. He took a liking to her and made her his lover. She used the
money she gave him to buy two cars and four apartments, one in a
high-class district of Jinan, purchased in the name of her mother.
Duan also
arranged a job for her in a Communist Party office bureau of the city
government. However, as such things do, the relationship faded and
Duan went looking for fresher talent. The official later took on new
mistresses and the two fell out, but beware the woman scorned. Liu
found documents linking him to illegal income and blackmailed him.
Duan contacted his nephew, a police officer, and the head of a local
auto repair shop and asked them to arrange a traffic accident.
The two placed
explosives from a police arsenal in Liu’s car and detonated it
as she drove by on a busy road in Jinan on July 9, the court was
told. Two bystanders were injured.
When officials
of the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing learned that police
explosives had been used, they became alarmed and sent a special team
to investigate. Officers found Duan’s number on the dead
woman’s mobile phone, which led them to investigate him.
The ruling by
the Supreme People’s Court putting mistresses into the law
provoked widespread debate, with some lawyers arguing that it was
difficult to define a mistress and that this would cause problems for
judges in handling such cases.
Wang Zhenchuan,
deputy chief prosecutor, acknowledged to the magazine Caijing in its
current issue that there was no strict legal definition for a
mistress. “Is it a woman you have feelings for? Is it a woman
you sleep with? No, it is not clear. But they are extremely common
and very many officials become corrupt because of them.
“So we
decided for this reason to include them explicitly in the law, which
is very significant,” he told the magazine. Experience, he
said, had taught him that corrupt officials often had closer
relationships with their mistresses than with members of their own
family, even though they had no legal relationship as husband and
wife.
“In some
cases, they stole millions, even tens of millions of yuan for their
mistresses, which shows how widespread and serious the phenomenon
is,” Wang said.
In an editorial,
the magazine, one of the most influential in China, said the
phenomenon of mistresses is eroding the image of officials, of
domestic politics, the economy and social morality.
The public
assumes that, like emperors and rich men in pre-communist China,
officials take mistresses as a perk of the job and, the higher up
they are, the prettier the woman will be and the more numerous.
Chairman Mao, for example, had dozens of mistresses.
Jiang Zemin, who
headed the party from 1989 until 2002, is widely believed to have
two, his favourite a beautiful and famous soprano named Song Zuying,
who sang as China’s representative at the 2002 World Cup in
South Korea.
Many anecdotes
circulate about their relationship, the most famous relating to the
night of September 11, 2001, when President George Bush is said to
have called Jiang, among other world leaders, in a desperate effort
to find out who planned the attacks on the World Trade Centre.
In the dark
bedroom, Jiang is said to have fumbled to pick up the telephone as
Song shouted: “Ben, ladeng (idiot, switch on the light).”.
And that is how Bush, overhearing this, learned who was the
mastermind behind the attacks.
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