The recent executions of two men and death sentences for two others were a grim reminder that Chinese authorities are serious about a promised crackdown on rampant corruption and crime.
The punishments were clearly intended as deterrents. Chinese reformers are aware that the trend toward crime must be halted before it becomes political ammunition in the hands of disgruntled conservatives ready to apply the brakes to the open-door policy and return the nation to a more isolationist system.
In the capital, salesman Zhu Jianguo, 32, was executed last month for embezzling 180,000 yuan (about $50,000) in public funds. On the same day a court in Beijing sentenced to death a customs official and a factory worker.
The official had forged customs declarations for color televisions, videocasette recorders and refrigerators-all in short supply. The factory worker had supplied them. The court was told that the two men sold 1,898 appliances and made a profit of 260 million yuan ($70 million).
In the same week, the state executioner fired a single bullet into the neck of Li Jitao, an unemployed worker convicted of arson and murder in the southern city of Sanghenshan.
Li had been turned over to public security by his younger brother, Li Yutao. The official People`s Daily said Yutao was awarded a 3,000 yuan ($800) bonus, a raise in salary and a merit citation for turning in his brother.
Since last July Chinese authorities have created anticorruption offices throughout the nation at which private citizens are encouraged to file complaints against officials who accept bribes.
Spiraling corruption and crime are seen as a byproduct of China`s modernization drive, a shortcut for the unscrupulous to become rich quickly.
And crime does flourish.
Yu Lei, vice minister for public security, told reporters last month that the crime rate went up 45.1 percent last year with 827,000 reported cases; the violent crime rate rose by 65.7 percent; and Chinese crime syndicates, often in cahoots with organized crime abroad, now deal in narcotics, gold, antiques smuggling, counterfeit currency and forged credit cards and passports.
Yu blamed the rise in crime on increased social mobility and on the opportunities created by the open-door policy.
Yu, the country`s second-highest law-enforcement officer, said he doubts China could ever return to the low crime rates of the 1950s and `60s, when the nation was closed to the outside world and had an undeveloped economy.
The quest for enrichment appears to have poisoned the ranks of government and Communist Party officials.
According to official statistics, 24,000 of them were involved in corruption cases during the second half of 1988.
Politically, the person in the hot seat is Zhao Ziyang, the general secretary of the Communist Party and the man identified with the drive to liberalize China`s economy along Western lines.
Negative side effects of the new policies have more than once sparked rumors that the urbane party leader with the vision of a corporate executive was about to be purged. Zhao has survived all the rumors. But last month, during a tour of central China, he admitted that in these times of social change, ”ugly things are emerging that must not be allowed to spread.”
At the same time he reaffirmed his policy: ”It would undoubtedly be a mistake if we weakened our efforts to carry on with the reform and the open-door policy because of the present difficulties.”
Perhaps in an attempt to placate party hard-liners, he added: ”It would be an even bigger mistake if these difficulties caused us to cast doubt on the socialist system.”
