Chinese Auditor General Says $46 Billion Yuan Misappropriated

This journal has little affection for the Communist Party of China, but Auditor General Liu Jiayi is one of the good guys. The BBC says in his latest report to the puppet parliament, “an audit of more than 50 government departments and their subsidiaries had discovered that 4.5 billion yuan ($660 million) had been misused or embezzled in 2007. The report also found ‘managerial irregularities’ in the use of another 41.7 billion yuan ($6 billion) of public money.” Arrests have been made.

Corruption among officials is one of the ChiComs biggest headaches. Chinese President Hu Jintao has constantly said it threatens the Communists’ hold on power (so in a sense, it’s a good thing). But there is no free press or opposition parties to ferret it out. Mr. Liu’s office is the only thing standing between officials and free money. What is surprising is that 14 officials have been arrested and another 200 punished in other ways. One believes a couple of zeros after those figures would be about right.

One of the examples Mr. Liu noted was the use of disaster relief funds to build a government office. When money is appropriated to rescue earthquake victims, the funds are needed for more immediate things than extra office space. It’s not that any one really lined a pocket here, but rather there may have been lives lost so that some middling bureaucrat had a bigger desk.

Furthermore, some agencies and ministries are more corrupt than others. Mr. Liu noted the commerce and education ministries are particularly bad. This means that business is not being looked after properly (that is, regulated, inspected, and otherwise made to behave), and millions of children aren’t getting the education they deserve. Add to that the statistics and tax office corruption, and Mr. Liu hasn’t got much hope of even finding out if more is going on than he has uncovered.

There is one factor working in Mr. Liu’s favor. The ChiComs are not a very liberal bunch. Last year, the former head of China’s food and drug agency was sentenced to death for taking bribes. What a wonderful way to find out if the death penalty is a deterrent.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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