Peking University professor He Weifang's wonderful speech on official crime

Peking University professor He Weifang's wonderful speech on official crime You can compare why China's economic crimes are so serious, while some democratic countries and some...

You can compare why China's economic crimes are so serious, while some democratic countries and some rule of law countries do not have so many economic crimes? Because we did not establish an effective institutional system in the early stage to prevent officials from committing crimes in the early stage. But then the people saw it and became angry, and the government took it out on those officials. Some people said: "How about we kill him?" The people said: "Kill him!" The government started to kill him. But if the previous system was good, how could there be so many economic crimes? There are many officials in the United States. Why do we rarely hear of American officials being sentenced to death for corruption and bribery? Because they have no way to take bribes, there are three factors in their political system that make officials have to work honestly without daring to take bribes.

The first is their parliamentary system. What does parliament do? Elected representatives form such a body to monitor government officials every day, and they may be impeached for any behavior that is not in compliance with the law. For example, the British Parliament is the most typical parliamentary system. Here is the ruling party and over there is the opposition party. Can the issues of the ruling party escape the eyes of those MPs? Congressmen have very sharp eyes, and they will expose everything you do. Because their politics are competitive, they are not only market-oriented economies but also market-oriented politics. If you can't do well, you can come down and I can go up. The goal of the opposition party is to be ready at any time and work hard to come to power. Sometimes an economic scandal of the ruling party may cause people's distrust and it may step down. You can sing and I will appear. It is such a competitive politics that officials must act cautiously and never do wrong or bad things. Parliamentary oversight forces officials to be submissive.

The second is the judicial system, an independent judicial system. An independent judicial system constitutes a huge deterrent that officials have to face. The United States has specially set up a special prosecutor for the president. The former special prosecutor Mr. Starr is a minor official to the president, but this minor official has incredible power! Because he can launch an investigation into the president without the approval of the attorney general. To be honest, the incident between Clinton and Lewinsky is nothing to many officials in our country. For us, it just embodies the romantic feelings of proletarian revolutionaries (laughter). Mr. Starr did not hesitate to spend 50 million dollars in federal funds to investigate the president's sex scandal, causing the president to lose face. There was no way out, because the position of special prosecutor cannot be removed by anyone, and he has a group of capable people. Is that president good to be? The president is under such strict supervision, let alone the officials below. They are monitored by the judiciary every day. Once there is a crime, the judiciary will not be lenient. The Watergate scandal occurred when Nixon was president, and there is evidence that President Nixon may have known what happened after the Watergate scandal. But President Nixon said he didn't know, and a court ordered Nixon to turn over his tapes. President Nixon had a peculiar hobby. He put a tape recorder in his office every day even if no one was around. As long as someone was talking, the tape recorder would record it all. All conversations in his office were recorded. When the court ordered him to hand over three tapes of the incident, he refused, saying, "No, I can't hand it over. It's the prerogative of the president and I can't hand it over to you." The court asked: "Hand it over, or not hand it over?" (Laughter) If you don't hand it over, you're guilty of obstruction of justice. "Under tremendous pressure, Nixon had to hand over all the tapes. The next day, he announced his resignation. Therefore, the executive heads of the United States must obey the orders of the judiciary, and these officials must be monitored by the judiciary.

Another means of monitoring is the news media. A free media is one of the most important institutional guarantees for officials' integrity. All newspapers and television stations in the United States are privately run, and radio stations are also privately run, with the exception of one radio station: Voice of America, which is run by the U.S. State Department. When the Voice of America is broadcasting, it sometimes says that it will broadcast an editorial that reflects the position of the US government. Voice of America is run by the government, but it is not allowed to broadcast signals in the United States, so you cannot hear Voice of America in the United States. To hear Voice of America, you have to go to China (laughter). The reason why they do not allow government-run media is because the government-run media will wholesale information that is beneficial to the government to the people, so they are making lies all day long, saying that our situation is great.

I wrote an article and published it in the China Youth Daily Freezing Point, called "Be Kind to Officials." I said, I often wonder what Mr. Chen Xitong, who is serving his sentence in prison holding the bars, is thinking when faced with the sarcasm and ridicule from people at home and abroad. A few days ago, an article suddenly appeared on the Internet, titled "Hu Changqing Talks about Press Freedom Before He Dies" (laughter). Hu Changqing said, if newspapers in Jiangxi Province and across the country could expose me the way American reporters exposed the Clinton scandal, how could I have ended up like this? Why face the death penalty? I am in pain. You know that in this country, people are arrogant at first and respectful at the end. Those current provincial party committee secretaries, don’t they make any mistakes at all? Newspapers report every day that they called on the cadres and the masses at meetings to learn the important thought of "Three Represents", maintain the advanced nature of Communist Party members, and remember the "Eight Honors and Eight Disgraces". They say those high-sounding words every day, but only when we are knocked down do we know: Oh my God, this person is so corrupt! (Laughter) You can see how cruel this media environment is for officials! This makes a person only able to resist this temptation after becoming a god, because the bad things you do will not be exposed, so why don’t you keep the money? Think about it, everyone. Suddenly I heard that a person had embezzled 8 million yuan. I thought the amount was huge and quite scary. In fact, when you are a county party secretary in China, money comes pouring in. You have to accept it. If you don't accept it, you won't be able to continue, you won't take care of it as much as you can, and you won't understand the feelings of the revolutionary masses (laughter). You're sick, my dear, and people are going to see you. Everyone left, and suddenly I found money all under the bed! (Laughter) As soon as the officials arrived to study at the Central Party School, the people below knew they were about to be promoted and hurriedly picked up their things to take a look. 8 million is too easy. The so-called "three years to clear the prefecture, one hundred thousand snowflakes and silver". So they were on the verge of death before they knew it. Under such circumstances, who wouldn’t be greedy? Who doesn't like money? ?#38065;Is it laughter-inducing grass?#65292;When I counted the money, my mouth started laughing like this (signaling, laughter). Money is such a good thing, who doesn’t need money? When some leaders’ children go to study abroad, others pay for them. Who doesn’t like good cars? The houses get bigger and bigger as we live in them, and the cars get smaller and smaller as we sit in them. Who doesn’t like beauty? Zao looks like Jiang Yanping, a female official. She also likes men! (Laughter) This is human nature. There is no other way to deal with human nature except a strong supervision mechanism. As long as a problem is exposed, the media will keep an eye on you, making you afraid to do bad things, making you involuntarily become Kong Fansen, and you cannot become Wang Baosen. When you first gave a house to your lover and there was a lot of noise in the newspapers, how dare you do another bad thing? If there was such media, you wouldn’t even dare to give away this house! You can't do any bad things. You said it's easy to be Lei Feng. Why don't Western countries have such a problem? We always have such a serious problem of executing our own officials, but other countries don't? The system in the front was not well established, but he became ruthless later on, just like a dissatisfied father who did not know how to educate his children when they were young. When they grow up, they will beat their children when they make mistakes, beat them to death, and even beat them to death. Of course, my analogy is not appropriate. The government should be our son. I said it backwards (laughter). Deng Xiaoping once said: "I am the son of the Chinese people," which is the son of each of us (laughter).

If you don’t establish a good system in the front, it will only be a shock later, which is useless! You can see that in the past few years, the amount of money involved in the case has become larger and larger, the number of people involved has increased, and the level of the officials involved has become higher and higher. Frankly speaking, I dare not pursue the case thoroughly now. If we pursue it thoroughly, and if our country's judiciary really becomes independent, then the vast majority of officials in this country will face the death penalty. You must know that the starting point for the death penalty for corruption and bribery is very low. A few hundred thousand can be sentenced to death. If this is the case, I am afraid that family planning will not be necessary. (Laughter) Tens of millions of officials will be gone in an instant. This is good, but we should strengthen system construction instead of being superstitious about the death penalty, or using death to perfunctory our people.