Corruption in China has to stay capital crime

Zou Hanru, China Daily, Asia News Network/ Beijing

Corruption in China is a crime that draws capital punishment. But capital punishment doesn't seem to deter "capital crimes." So should we abolish capital punishment?

China has lost billions of yuan of public money to corrupt officials. The latest in that series is former Bank of China (Hong Kong) chief executive Liu Jinbao. He was given a suspended death sentence last week for embezzling, solely or in collaboration with others, more than 14 million yuan (US$1.7 million). He could not account for another 14 million yuan worth of personal assets.

Liu was only one of those caught and tried in China and the amount recovered from them is but a fraction of what the country has lost.

According to the Ministry of Commerce, more than 4,000 officials have fled the country, taking with them nearly US$50 billion.

Since China does not have extradition agreements with most of the countries harbouring the fugitives, they cannot be always brought back to face Chinese justice.

Also, many of these countries do not hand down the death penalty for corruption. So extraditing the fugitives, they argue, would be tantamount to sending them to death row.

To facilitate the extradition of such criminals, China's legal experts have suggested abolishing the death penalty for corruption.

It's true that about half the world has abolished capital punishment altogether and the other half that still has it hands it down only for heinous crimes like murder.

The question then is, should China ride with the tide? Or, should it have a distinct criminal justice system like its economy - "socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics?"

The very suggestion of removing corruption from China's list of 68 crimes that draw capital punishment has provoked a public outcry even at the embryonic stage of public debate.

Corruption, rampant and prevalent as it is, poses a serious threat to China's political stability and sustainable development. Hence, it warrants utmost care in its handling, especially at a time when China's Gini coefficient, a statistical measure of income inequality, has been hovering above the red line of 0.4.

China need not necessarily to abolish the death penalty for corruption for it has other ways to manoeuvre on the technical front with countries harbouring its criminals.

For instance, it can pull on the weight of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), to which the United States and other major host countries of China's corrupt officials are signatories. UNCAC contains elaborate mechanisms and procedures for seizure, confiscation and return of illegally acquired assets.

Though China is unlikely to have an agreement on the application of capital punishment, it is possible nevertheless for them to work out mutually accepted principles.

The host countries could be asked to keep the criminals, if they want to, but confiscate and return their ill-gotten money and assets to China. And Beijing could reciprocate in handling their nationals.

Pulling this off successfully would serve the dual purpose of deterring corruption and saving the host countries from sending back the criminals.

China desperately needs those US$50 billion, the kind of money that can be used to build schools for its children, provide jobs to hundreds of thousands of its unemployed and arrange for basic amenities many of its people so badly need.

Today, corruption may be a crime punishable by death only in China. But most countries were looking at capital punishment as a practical way of deterring serious crimes utill only half a century ago.

Opponents of the death penalty have almost always approached the issue from a moral, or should we say, religious point of view. Their principal argument: You cannot destroy what you cannot create.

Supporters of capital punishment, on the other hand, take a more pragmatic view, arguing that the death penalty does have a strong deterrent effect.

The arguments for and against the death penalty run into volumes and perhaps will rumble on forever without unanimous agreement. But studies do suggest that one execution deters five to 18 potential murderers from committing the ultimate crime.

Though there is no detailed study on the death penalty's deterrent effect on corruption cases, it can be expected to play a similar role.

If corruption is struck off the capital punishment list in such a situation, there is a fear that all hell would break loose.

It is true though that to tackle corruption at the roots, prevention is more important than punishment.

To start with, China needs to thoroughly review its institutional system for preventing and combating corruption and for identifying and plugging loopholes. Corruption in many cases has been the result of power abuse. So we have to think of ways to curb such powers.

It is time for China to declare a people's war on corruption. It is also time to rope the mass media into this war. The Zhejiang provincial committee of the Communist Party has made a good start by expressly empowering its local media to scrutinize and keep an eye on public officials.

Educational ads should be telecast on TV, broadcast on the radio and published in newspapers, something that Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption has been doing for a long time.

Utill the war on corruption is institutionally ensured to be won, utill such time that a multi-layer firewall is in place and starts functioning properly, corruption should continue to stay a capital crime.