On July 1, 2020, Hefei citizens experienced the scene model of "Six Feet Alley", which was named a demonstration of clean government education by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. (Photo courtesy of People's Vision)
Ten months after his dismissal, Xu Wenrong, the former deputy general manager of PetroChina, was indicted. On April 9, 2024, the Supreme People's Procuratorate announced that the designated Shenyang Municipal Procuratorate had filed a public prosecution against Xu Wenrong with the Shenyang Intermediate People's Court. In a previous briefing, Xu Wenrong was accused of "befriending political liars in order to seek promotion."
In recent years, in the briefings of fallen officials, there have been frequent expressions of "political liars". The Second Plenum of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection held in January 2023 stressed the need to crack down on so-called "backgrounded" political scammers, and since then, Liaoning, Jiangxi, Ningxia and other provinces have deployed relevant efforts to crack down on political scammers. In January 2024, at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, "cracking down on political swindlers" was mentioned again.
According to Mao Zhaohui, executive director of the China Supervision Society and director of the Anti-Corruption and Integrity Policy Research Center of the Chinese University, most of the publicly disclosed cases related to political swindlers occurred before the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
Define political hustlers
In September 2017, in the TV special "Patrol Sword" broadcast by CCTV, he packaged himself as a "mysterious person with a background" and called a political liar, which was the first time that the term political liar appeared in the media.
At the end of November 2020, the anti-corruption warning film "Hunting: Bribers Say" once again appeared as a political liar. After that, in January 2021, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission pointed out in a notice that Liu Guoqiang, former vice chairman of the Liaoning Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, "blindly listened to political liars". Seven months later, Liu Xinyun, the former vice governor of Shanxi Province, was also accused of befriending political crooks. Since then, the term "political liar" has begun to appear frequently in the reports of fallen officials.
In May 2022, an article published in the Study Times said that political swindlers are people who use political pretenses and political disguises to seize political and economic benefits through various tricks, tricks, words and routines.
Lu Qun, who has worked for the Hunan Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection for many years, believes that political swindlers mainly refer to people who pretend to have close ties with senior leaders and "operate" promotions for grassroots officials, "and their purpose is mainly to defraud money." Mao also believes that the main purpose of political swindlers is to seek financial gain.
On June 2, 2023, Liaoning Daily published on the front page the "Notice on Cracking Down on Political Scammers" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice") jointly issued by the Liaoning Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Provincial Supervision Commission, the Provincial Public Security Department, the Provincial High Court, the Provincial Procuratorate, and the Provincial Department of Justice, giving a more complete definition of political scammers.
The circular pointed out that by impersonating or fabricating leading cadres and their relatives, friends, and staff members, experts, professors, scholars, think tanks, and "masters" with special backgrounds, they have designed identity disguises, or by forging leading cadres' graphic and audio-visual materials, fabricating their experiences with leading cadres, spreading political rumors, fabricating internal information, and pretending to "matchmaking" and other means to deceive others into trusting others by luring political interests such as "promoting and reusing" and "setting up cases to erase cases", and seeking to grab economic benefits. A person who has improper interests such as social status is a political liar.
This is one of the few publicly available information that has been explicitly defined as a political swindler by the discipline inspection and supervision system.
A staff member of the Liaoning Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision's External Propaganda Department told Southern Weekend that the definition of a political liar in the notice was based on the information he had learned in his daily work, and "basically the situation in society is similar to what he currently knows."
On January 1, 2024, the revised Regulations on Disciplinary Actions of the Communist Party of China (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations") came into effect, and new content related to political swindlers was added.
The regulations make it clear that those who engage in speculation, make friends with political swindlers, or are exploited by political swindlers shall be given serious warnings or removed from their positions within the party; and those who are seriously expelled from the party shall be placed on probation in the party or expelled from the party. Those who act as political swindlers are to be removed from internal Party positions, placed on Party probation, or expelled from the Party.
When interpreting the above-mentioned new regulations, the Laws and Regulations Office of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission said that making friends and acting as political liars is a relatively typical type of problem discovered in discipline enforcement supervision in recent years. Judging from the practice of discipline enforcement and law enforcement, there are political swindlers behind many serious corruption problems.
In Mao Zhaohui's view, the revised "Regulations" have adjusted the content of the concept of political performance from the chapter on "work discipline" to the chapter on "political discipline", and political liars are a manifestation of the wrong view of political performance, and the relevant departments naturally have stricter requirements for this.
In the TV special "Patrol Sword", he packaged himself as a "mysterious person with a background" and was called a political liar. (Image source: CCTV)
Why was you deceived?
Three days after the announcement of Liaoning's crackdown on political swindlers, on June 5, 2023, "Liaoning Daily" once again published an article on the front page, naming Liu Guoqiang, former vice chairman of the Liaoning Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Sun Guoxiang, former deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress, Yang Quan, former director of the Standing Committee of the Panjin Municipal People's Congress, Meng Bing, former party secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Law Society, Wang Hongming, former deputy director of the Liaoning Provincial Development and Reform Commission, and Han Qing, former deputy director of the Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Overseas Chinese (Foreign Affairs) Committee of the Liaoning Provincial Political Consultative Conference, to make friends with political scammers.
A reporter from Southern Weekend observed that the above-mentioned six people's "dismissal" reports all involved "running for official positions and buying official positions" and "setting up antennas" to seek job promotions. In Mao's view, seeking promotion and evading organizational scrutiny are seen as key links in a person's political career at some moments, and thus tend to be a high-risk area for political swindlers.
Similar statements are not uncommon in the many briefings involving political swindlers. According to incomplete statistics from Southern Weekly, in addition to the above-mentioned six people, Xiang Jifei, head of Suizhong County, Huludao City, Liaoning Province, Jiang Hongge, former deputy director of the Liaoning Provincial Department of Natural Resources, Wang Ku, former deputy secretary general of the Jilin Provincial Government, Liu Yu, former deputy mayor of Weifang City, Shandong Province, and Zhao Haidong, former secretary of the Party Working Committee of the Nanchang Economic and Technological Development Zone in Jiangxi Province, were also reported to have listened to political swindlers running for official positions and buying official positions, and "setting up antennas" to seek promotions.
The website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission has issued an article stating that frequent personnel changes before and after the change of office are an active period for political swindlers to cheat. Zhu Honggen, deputy mayor of Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province, and Jiang Zhonghan, former county governor of Yugan County, Jiangxi Province, were both deceived during the election change.
Jiangxi was the latter province after Liaoning publicly stated that it would crack down on political swindlers. In October 2023, the Jiangxi Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision issued a reminder in the local media: Those who ask for help and matchmaking under the banner of "leading cadres" or their relatives must remain highly vigilant, do not believe or see them, and promptly call the petition reporting hotline or report to the public security organs.
Prior to this, Ningxia also formulated and issued the "Opinions on Improving the Punishment and Governance Prevention Mechanism to Resolutely Crack Down on Political Swindlers and Political Brokers" in July 2023, which clearly cleared and doxxed the clues received since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, focusing on political swindlers who fabricated lies and defrauded and polluted the political ecology, as well as leading cadres who were used for speculation.
According to public reports, Changhai, Liaoning Province, is one of the few county-level units deployed to crack down on political swindlers. On September 1, 2023, the Changhai County Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision issued the "Announcement on Soliciting Clues on the Issue of Political Scammers", which clarified that all fraud involving political swindlers can be reported.
"No one reported it. On March 27, 2024, a staff member of the Changhai County Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision told Southern Weekend that so far, they have not collected relevant clues.
"Radical Sexual Cure"
In the view of Jiang Ming'an, a professor at Peking University Law School, cracking down on political swindlers is not only the responsibility of the Discipline Inspection Commission and the Public Security Procuratorate, but also the responsibility of the Party committee and the organization department.
Therefore, it is first necessary to control and standardize the conduct of party committees and organization departments in selecting and promoting leading cadres through intra-party laws and regulations, so as to prevent them from contacting and colluding with political swindlers and buying and selling official positions. Second, we will crack down on political swindlers through discipline inspection and supervision organs, public security, procuratorate, and law departments.
When it comes to the specific implementation of the crackdown on political swindlers, when "cadre selection and appointment" and "evasion of organizational review" have become the hardest hit areas of political swindlers, the aforementioned areas have also become the key points in the crackdown on political swindlers in various places.
In January 2024, Liu Nana, deputy director of the case trial room of the Liaoning Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision, said in a briefing on the relevant work that in view of the active practice of political swindlers during personnel changes, the discipline inspection and supervision organs of the province and relevant judicial law enforcement organs jointly established mechanisms such as joint investigation and joint office, quick investigation and quick settlement during the term change, and severely punished those who ran for official positions; In view of the problem of political swindlers' habit of "organizing dinners" and "accumulating contacts," Liaoning has established and improved a working mechanism for "investigating corruption at the same time."
"Investigate cases involving issues such as running for official positions, setting up cases, and asking for help, severely punish 42 political swindlers and political brokers, and resolutely eradicate the soil for the survival of political swindlers. On January 4, 2024, "cracking down on political swindlers" was written into the "Top Ten Keywords of Liaoning Zhengfeng Discipline and Anti-corruption in 2023". When introducing the relevant work, Wang Shijian, director of the Propaganda Department of the Liaoning Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision, shared the above data.
In Jiangxi, in order to crack down on political swindlers and involve the issue of the selection and appointment of cadres, the Jiangxi Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision and the Organization Department of the Provincial Party Committee have promulgated the "Working Rules of the Joint Conference on the Supervision of the Selection and Appointment of Cadres" and issued the "Circular on the Prevention and Control of Problems of Running for Official Posts and Asking for Officials and Interceding and Greetings." At the same time, a mechanism for joint investigation and joint office, quick investigation and quick conclusion, and joint supervision and supervision has been established to resolutely investigate and deal with violations of discipline in the selection and appointment of personnel.
In response to the problem of political swindlers who are accustomed to accumulating contacts through group dinners exposed by the case, the Jiangxi Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision has established a working mechanism of "simultaneous investigation of corruption" to find out "who to eat, where to eat, and why to eat", and follow the line to dig deep into the problems behind the solicitation, interest collusion, and gangs. At the same time, it will supervise and promote the Provincial Federation of Industry and Commerce to formulate a positive and negative list of political and business exchanges, and guide and standardize political and business exchanges.
Data disclosed by the Jiangxi Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection in February 2023 shows that since 2020, 15 political scammers have been found in the cases investigated and handled at the same level in Jiangxi Province.
Mao Zhaohui said that in order to crack down on political swindlers, it is first necessary to trace the causes of political swindlers, which is related to the lack of openness and transparency in the process of selecting and appointing cadres and investigating and handling cases in some areas. Thus, a certain degree of transparency is helpful in the fight against political crooks, "but it is not a fundamental means of governance".
In Mao Zhaohui's view, the "fundamental means of governance" need to play a decisive role in the process of selecting and appointing cadres, and "I hope that cracking down on political liars can become a breakthrough in changing the cadre selection and appointment system."
Southern Weekly reporter Li Gui
Editor-in-charge: Qian Haoping