China Steps Up Anti-Corruption Crusade

The 16-year prison sentence handed down Friday to the most senior Communist Party official ever to be convicted of corruption is the latest sign of a heightened drive here to stamp out official misbehavior, analysts said.

The punishment meted out to onetime Politburo member Chen Xitong, who was implicated in a $2.2-billion graft and bribery scandal, surprised many observers with its severity--but not its timing.

Chen’s prison term comes hard on the heels of a high-profile campaign to eradicate corruption in Chinese officialdom, including a sweeping order by President Jiang Zemin last week for the Chinese army to withdraw from its vast commercial ventures.

“It’s not such an accident,” Jonathan Pollack, a China expert at the Rand Corp. think tank, said of Chen’s sentencing. “It seems very related to what’s happening.”

Chen, a former Beijing mayor and party boss who was stripped of his titles amid a widening corruption probe, had been under house arrest since 1995. People predicting that he would quickly be punished were confounded during the last three years as the central government appeared unwilling--or too indecisive--to act.

But in rapid order, Chen, 68, was indicted and convicted last month, the latter occurring Friday in a public court session aired on national Chinese evening newscasts.

The five-minute segment, which came toward the top of the 7 p.m. news program, showed Chen literally twiddling his thumbs and looking impassive as a judge sentenced him to 13 years in prison for corruption and four years for dereliction of duty, with one of the years to be served concurrently.

The video footage showed tables piled high with loot, including expensive watches and jewelry, that Chen bought for himself, his alleged mistress and other hangers-on with the funds that he skimmed from development deals in Beijing. The court ordered Chen to pay back all the money he had taken illegally.

Even local Chinese inured to the endemic corruption tainting virtually all levels of the Communist government awaited the case’s outcome with interest. Chen was both popular in Beijing for his efforts to develop the city’s infrastructure and hated for his part in invoking martial law to quell the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square.

“This is what regular people are interested in,” one Beijing resident said Friday before the verdict was handed down.

Gossip about the case has abounded. Last year, the central government banned a novel that revealed new details about the case, which authorities have kept under careful wraps.

“Symbolically and otherwise, it’s very, very powerful,” Pollack said of Chen’s prison sentence. “It sends a very potent signal. . . . It shows they’re willing to make some of these tough calls and break some crockery to do it.

“Now the question is going to be whether we will see other cases that are similar.”

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For several years, Beijing has made noises about clamping down on official corruption, shown in surveys as the biggest gripe Chinese citizens have about their leaders.

The Chen case was widely seen as a litmus test of the government’s seriousness.

Its pointed conclusion will lend added impetus to last week’s edict for the People’s Liberation Army to pull out of its business dealings, activities that have prospered in some cases because of smuggling and other illegal practices, experts said.