WASHINGTON DC: By revealing the corrupt nature of CCP, the CRS report helps the world to grasp the fundamental nature of CCP.
An important Congressional Research Service (CRS) report was released in Washington at the end of May. The report studied the publicly available information on the wealth and corruption of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This includes the General Secretary of the CCP, Xi Jinping, and senior leadership officials of the Central Committee, the Politburo, the Politburo Standing Committee, the regional Party Secretaries, as well as the leaders of the five autonomous regions, and four municipalities that report directly to the central government. This was mandated by members of the U.S. House and Senate and also tasked the U.S. intelligence community with producing a similar, publicly available study. The report was precipitated by the fact that the CCP leadership and their families are as wealthy as Croesus while shamelessly espousing socialist rhetoric. Precisely how did selfless CCP leadership gain this wealth on their nominal salaries is curious and it is certain that the Chinese people will wish to know.
The CRS report is of paramount importance for four reasons. First, it reveals for global audiences the corrupt nature of the CCP and to identify pathways for investigative journalism, documentation on social media, and how states within the Quad may wish to employ their resources, including their intelligence communities, to document these facts. There is a rich menu of topic for journalists to explore and for other media, perhaps most importantly social media, to highlight the CCP’s wealth and corruption, and so publicize and thus inform global populations.
Second, the report reviews some of what is openly known about senior CCP officials like Xi Jinping and his family, former CCP officials like Wen Jiabao, and tycoons like Wang Jianlin. It also documents the difficulties some journalists have experienced in their investigations. Those difficulties have come from the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) government. For example, when the Wall Street Journal reported on the activities of Xi’s material cousin, Ming Chai, one of the article’s co-authors, Chun Han Wong, did not have his press credentials renewed, which effectively expelled him from the country. But there is another more odious form employed to discourage investigation into the wealth of the CCP leadership. The example of Michael Forsythe, who was leading a Bloomberg News investigation into Xi’s wealth. After publishing an exposé, Forsythe and his family received death threats, and Bloomberg’s site was blocked within the PRC, and Bloomberg declined to publish a subsequent investigation into Wang Jianlin, a well-connected head of a major real estate and entertainment concern. The PRC’s direct and indirect pressure against media is tangible however intrepid journalists may be. It underscores the need of alternatives to find the information, including the Chinese diaspora and by individual nation states to employ their resources.
Third, by revealing the corrupt nature of the CCP, the CRS report helps the world to grasp the fundamental nature of the CCP. While the CCP rules China, it is not its legitimate government. Their grotesque wealth and corruption are a symptom of their illegitimacy. They are not the rightful rulers of the Chinese people but gangsters, thugs and goons who came to power due to the Communist International and ultimately as a result of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s support in the wake of the defeat of Japan. They are the poisoned fruit of the Bolshevik Revolution who seek to sustain the tyranny of the failed ideology of Marxism-Leninism on the Chinese people. They only held onto power after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre because of the world’s industrial states’ reluctance to ostracize Beijing as long as it could provide rock bottom cheap and slave labour.
Fourth, the CRS report is the beginning of a path and framework for creating the most effective tool of political warfare that members of the Quad and other concerned nations possess. Illuminating the corruption and obscene wealth of the CCP leadership means that the CCP’s legitimation crisis is close at hand for the Chinese people to act upon and for nations to factor in when calculating risk in bilateral relations. As a result of its gross human rights abuses, hyperaggression directed at East Turkestan, India, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Tibet, the CCP is beyond the bounds of acceptable behaviour in international society. It is hoped that armed with detailed facts about the enormous wealth of individual leaders of the CCP, the Chinese people will turn China into a respected democracy like Taiwan.
Having made a contribution, the question becomes what will the global public do with such information. The Quad members, acting either as individual states or as a unified group, can lead the community of nations to identify the sources and location of the wealth of the CCP. It is a certainty that investigations will reveal that the CCP’s leaders are billionaires with untold wealth in New York, Switzerland, Dubai, London, Paris, and other locations. While that has been long suspected, the revelation of the facts will be a critical component for the Chinese people to free themselves from this base and evil regime.
The CRS report, and related ones, are important steps in delegitimizing the CCP to remove this aggressive cancer from continuing to harm the health of China and the body of global humanity. Working together, the international community should labour towards a complete accounting of how many billions Xi, his family, and Party comrades have in overseas banks, properties, and other assets. Thereby, the true, corrupt nature of the CCP leadership, with specific amounts and locations documented, will permit the victims of the CCP, domestic and international, to move to seize those assets. That window into the sordid behaviour of the CCP will permit the Chinese people and the world to demand accountability while also energizing the necessary response from people of goodwill around the world.
Paul Berkowitz is a former House Foreign Affairs Committee staffer. He covered Asia and the Pacific for Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman who was honoured with the Padma Vibhusan Award for Public Affairs in 2001. Bradley A. Thayer is the coauthor with James Fanell of “Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure”.