(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
By Chan Ka Sing
HONG KONG, Jan 18 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Xi Jinping is declaring victory in his decade-long war on graft. He has made more progress than India and the US over the same period by some global standards. Yet the decision to double down on cleaning up the finance sector when the economy is weak could come at a heavy cost.
Full view will be published shortly.
CONTEXT NEWS
China’s President Xi Jinping on Jan. 16 vowed to accelerate the creation of a modern financial system with Chinese characteristics, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. Financial supervision should have "long teeth and thorns", Xinhua quoted Xi as saying in a speech at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.
Senior officials of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), China’s top anti-graft watchdog, concluded the third plenary session of their five-year term on Jan. 10.
Speaking at the three-day gathering, Chinese President Xi Jinping said “an overwhelming victory” has been achieved in the fight against corruption after his anti-graft efforts over the past 10 years. Going forward Xi said it is imperative to further combat corruption in the sectors such as finance, energy and medicine where “capital is intensive, and resources are abundant”, and efforts should be intensified to punish bribe givers.
The CCDI launched investigations into a record 45 senior officials in 2023, which is 40% higher than 2022, South China Morning Post reported on Jan. 3. The watchdog has investigated 4.39 million cases and punished 4.7 million officials as of April 2022, state-run newspaper Global Times reported in June 2022.
(Editing by Una Galani and Katrina Hamlin)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on KaSing.Chan@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: KaSing.Chan.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
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