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China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

bbc.com

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Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

#51

Post by lysace »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #37
lysace wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't confuse "the west" with the US. The US is less than half of "the west".

Are you claiming Europe is not obviously corrupt? Or Latin America? Or Korea, or Japan? I can't speak to Australia or New Zealand, I suppose. Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply ma…

You are shifting the goalposts. You first said "at least they try to appear anti-corruption".

This thing about not caring about appearances is new. (And also the only thing I commented about.)

Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

#52

Post by myrmidon »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #37
lysace wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't confuse "the west" with the US. The US is less than half of "the west".

Are you claiming Europe is not obviously corrupt? Or Latin America? Or Korea, or Japan? I can't speak to Australia or New Zealand, I suppose. Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply ma…

> Corruption is, of course, universal.

So is crime. But it's all about prevalence.

And not just because corruption has some "indirect taxation" effect, but also because low corruption/trust is a big enabler for a society.

You are never gonna get rid of clannish mentality, vigilantism, nepotism and other undesirable behavior if your citizens don't have any trust in the system.

If you just look at e.g.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Corruptio...

you will see that the spread is very wide, and China/India is significantly behind most western nations.

Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

#54

Post by arkhiver »

greenavocado wrote: post #34
vitally3643 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you use your single digit millions of currency to buy an island and retire for a decade or two while everyone forgets you exist

One does not simply move money out of China

Cryptocurrency or GPUs. Both are fairly easy to obtain and even easier to move out.

Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

#55

Post by lyu07282 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #8

I sometimes see people "celebrate" this, with the rationale that China is cracking down on white-collar crimes and handing out sentences unheard of in the west. But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?

> Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?

The west is inundated with simplistic anti-chinese propaganda, so you would never perceive it as such, the way it would be presented to you in the west is as the evil dictator Xi Jingping purging his opposition, for instance:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41670162

Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

#56

Post by __patchbit__ »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #27
onion2k wrote: post #5

I don't really understand the mentality of people who do this sort of criminal activity. If he'd stopped after, say, $5m and just retired he'd probably have managed to get away with it. Continuing to such a ridiculous degree through sheer greed led him to a death sentence. That's just plain stupid.

People get away with this all the time—you just only hear about the stupid ones.

$2 million in cash flushed down the toilet, manually, that clogged the sanitation system was a very stupid funny one.

Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

#57

Post by greenavocado »

Retric wrote: post #41
greenavocado wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One does not simply move money out of China

The options increase when you’re already breaking the law.

They will send people after you at some point like they did to Vadym Yermolaiev

Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

#58

Post by thewebguyd »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #48
grvbck wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that perspective to some degree, but imagine a hypothetical country with say, two parties in power, where prosecutors only crack down on white collar criminals if they are supporters of one party and not the other. We would call that system corrupt, and probably not celebrate that at least some of the criminals face justice. Also, from a practical standpoint, charging some and not others is not necessari…

How else do you propose a system that is fucked like that ever gets unfucked?

To unfuck a system like that you have to have a clean reset of sorts. It will feel unjust because past criminals will all go free, but you have to prioritize future stability. You offer amnesty for past crimes in exchange for absolute transparency and massive structure reforms moving forward.

Or, you do what the democratic party in the US has been afraid to do: Rip the bandaid off, accusations of weaponization of the DOJ be damned. The parent's hypothetical situation is precisely what is happening in the US right now where Garland failed to prosecute, and the entire democratic party was far too afraid of appearing to weaponize the justice system meanwhile the opposition has no qualms about doing so. Yes, the public will view it as entirely partisan but there's no other path forward.

But if you just do nothing at all, eventually the social contract breaks. The cost of the corruption becomes too high and the state fails, or you get a forced regime change.

Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

#59

Post by verdverm »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #37
lysace wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't confuse "the west" with the US. The US is less than half of "the west".

Are you claiming Europe is not obviously corrupt? Or Latin America? Or Korea, or Japan? I can't speak to Australia or New Zealand, I suppose. Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply ma…

Europe is prosecuting the Epstein Pedos. Trump is protecting his friends

Corruption is everywhere and varies in degree. The US likes to claim a mantle of superiority when it seems quite the opposite. We have a bully/greatest conman ever in the white house

Re: China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

#60

Post by mittensc »

glenstein wrote: post #46
MattDamonSpace wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but that’s bad right

The Achilles heel of all whataboutism is assuming someone can't consistently criticize the new thing in addition to the original thing.

It's not whataboutism if you point out question was naive. (answer is the same everywhere and has always been the same)

Inner circle leadership won't be prosecuted anywhere as long as their group holds some power.

So, then, question is, how can this be improved?, can it be improved?

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