Several senior staff at GlaxoSmithKline's China operation
are under arrest for bribery. They gave doctors and officials billions of
yuan's worth of foreign travel, supplied prostitutes and handed over cash in
return for boosting GSK products. More arrests are said to be imminent.
The trial has begun of former Communist Party (CPC) high
flier Bo Xilai, accused of taking bribes, embezzling money and buying sex. He
is the politician whose wife faces life imprisonment for allegedly murdering
British businessman Nick Heywood. Similar charges were proved against former
railways minister Liu Zhijun who was given a suspended death sentence.
The fact that it is these two officials on trial and not
others, is only due to the fact that they are losers in continuous in-fighting
in the CPC. The fact is that they are all at it.
Users of Weibo, the social network popular in China , are more
and more taking their courage in their hands and publishing hundreds of
accusations. Particularly disgusting are the stories of mass abuse of women. It
seems the CPC has reintroduced the feudal crimes of concubinage and forced
prostitution.
The impossibility of getting any redress through the courts
or government is leading people to acts of total desperation. This month alone:
- an unemployed man set off an explosion on a bus in the
south eastern city of Xiamen ,
killing himself and 47 others. Chen Shuizong left a suicide note expressing
despair at being totally impoverished.
- in Dongxing, Guangxi, a villager stabbed to death two CPC
officials trying to enforce the one child policy. Their crime is not entirely
clear, but it is likely they were trying to force the man's wife to have an
abortion.
- at Beijing
airport, a man in a wheelchair injured himself by detonating an explosive
device. It seems 34-year-old Ji Zhongxing, from the eastern province of Shandong
Driving this social and political upheaval is a deepening
economic crisis. Growth continues to slow and exports fell 3.1% in June
compared to the previous year, the highest monthly fall since the global crash.
The price Chinese firms can get for their products on the global market fell
for the 16th successive month.
The government is trying every way, from enforced retraction
to Keynsian investment to fiscal measures, to shore up growth. Banks have been
told to stop lending to businesses in sectors where there is oversupply,
particularly industries making materials for construction. Local authorities have
been instructed not to give land or planning permission to any new ventures in
these sectors.
A collapse in tax revenue from falling consumer sales has
added to the sense of crisis. The government has responded by lifting credit
controls, to encourage people to borrow to buy consumer goods.
The government has pledged to keep unemployment below 5% and
to improve its image. A commission is trying to convince people they are now
"down-to-earth, honest and upright", and to regenerate support for
nationalism and what they call, without irony, "the Chinese dream".
Hong Kong's relatively independent Oriental Daily News concludes that: "If the ruling authorities
cannot reverse social injustice, narrow a rich-poor divide, eliminate
bureaucratic officialdom and combat judicial malpractice to create a fair and
equitable social environment where the weak have hope and where most people can
live in equality and dignity, cases like the fatal stabbings on the streets of
Beijing and the Xiamen bus explosion will not stop."
An increasingly confident working class is demanding and
getting better wages and conditions. As a result, firms are moving out of China
to even lower-wage countries. The CPC bureaucracy knows that they are facing a
sleeping giant which when roused will shake the rule of the corrupt elite of
oligarchs and local tyrants.
Penny Cole
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