Ken Wedding's CompGov Blog: Reducing Ostentation/Increasing Legitimacy, to a point

PLA license plate

During the height of the Cultural Revolution it was difficult for outsiders to distinguish between officers and enlisted soldiers. Their uniforms were nearly identical. Officers could sometimes be identified only by a ball point pen in a pocket or a watch on a wrist.

Nowadays, even low ranking officers seem to get around in "black Audi sedans with tinted windows" and a driver.

Will the policy changes bring about a reduction in corruption or only the appearance of corruption? Will it make the PLA and the Communist Party more legitimate? And, why keep citizens from participating in the anti-corruption process?

China curbs military’s luxury cars

License plates are the latest casualty in the highly publicized anti-corruption campaign of China’s new leaders.

First the lavish government banquets were cut, then government officials’ red-carpet receptions.

Now the target is military plates — long coveted items among government officials, allowing their owners to skirt traffic laws with impunity and skip toll fees.

PLA (air force) plate on a Jaguar

Under a new policy taking effect May 1, such plates will be more tightly controlled to crack down on officials who abuse them or hand them out as perks for privileged associates. In addition, military license plates will be banned outright for use on luxury cars such as Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs, Cadillacs and Jaguars, officials said.

For years, the sight of such cars with military plates has angered many Chinese, who regard them as one of the more blatant signs of government corruption…

The license plate crackdown is just the latest in a series of moves by China’s new president, Xi Jinping, aimed at reducing ostentation and corruption in government to soften growing resentment, anger and disillusionment toward the ruling Communist Party. Critics, however, remain doubtful that the flood of new policies and publicity will result in fundamental, long-lasting changes to China’s culture of corruption…

In one interview with state-run Xinhua News Agency on Sunday, Xiang Yang, director of traffic and transportation logistics for the Chinese Air Force, called the new policy a “severe test” for the military, acknowledging that it was initiated in part because of public pressure.

He called the new era of Internet scrutiny of public officials a double-edged sword. It has helped in some ways, he said, “but also hurt the image and reputation of the military.”…

Arrests in China Show Limits of War on Graft

China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, remains something of a mystery, but he has made one element of his agenda abundantly clear: The government will no longer tolerate the rampant corruption that he says is threatening the Communist Party’s grip on power.

But President Xi’s apparent war on graft has limits, at least judging by the detention on Sunday of four activists after they unfurled banners in central Beijing expressing support for the party’s self-described war on official malfeasance...

Although it is unlikely that Mr. Xi and other top leaders were aware of the protest, rights advocates say the detentions, coupled with the recent harassment of other people fighting corruption, are a worrying sign that the leadership is determined to constrain any populist campaigning on an issue central to the president’s agenda.

A petition calling for senior leaders to disclose their wealth publicly has been largely scrubbed from the Internet in China, and a number of citizen activists across the country have been detained in recent weeks for trying to collect signatures or for staging similar demonstrations against graft...

---

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

---

The First Edition ofWhat You Need to Know: Teaching Toolsis now available from the publisher

---

The Fifth Edition ofWhat You Need to Knowis now available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

---