The Wall Street Journal-20080130-Politics - Economics- Playing in China- Shanghai-s Scandal- Corruption- Remorse Displayed in a Film By Communist Party
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Politics & Economics: Playing in China: Shanghai's Scandal; Corruption, Remorse Displayed in a Film By Communist Party
Full Text (846 words)SHANGHAI -- Middle-aged men, behind bars and dressed in prison uniforms, wipe away tears as they admit on camera to influence peddling, bribery and other corrupt acts.
The confessions from 11 people who were once among the most powerful Communist Party officials in China are contained in an unusual propaganda film, "The Harm of Greed," produced by the party itself.
The film offers an unusual peek inside perhaps the biggest corruption case in modern Chinese history, a 2006 scandal involving the Shanghai pension system.
The Shanghai case stemmed from charges that money from a $1.2 billion public pension fund was misallocated and stolen. The scandal quickly spiraled into allegations of conspiracy between people at the top of the city government and the powerful companies it owns.
"I thought I would retire soon, and I had to do something for my children," said Wang Chengming, a former party official who was chairman of Shanghai Electric Group Co. Last year, a court found the 59-year-old guilty of embezzling $40 million and handed down a death sentence.
In the film, Mr. Wang sports a thin wisp of grey hair instead of his trademark mane of sculpted black hair. "I never knew I would be like this today," he said. He is appealing his sentence, which may be commuted to life in prison.
The Communist Party last year made the film required viewing for local members in Shanghai. Since the film and accompanying exhibit opened to the public recently, more than 115,000 people have visited the top floor of the Shanghai Municipal Archives to see it.
In one shot, only a pair of stylish eyeglasses suggests that Han Fanghe, the former chief executive of Hua An Fund Management Co., once held a powerful job. His hand shakes, and he sniffles into a tissue. When the camera pans over scrolls of fine art, another ousted party official admits he took the pricey gifts, saying, "People knew I like painting and calligraphy."
The slickly produced propaganda is meant to demonstrate Beijing's determination to punish crooked senior officials. But the production is also a Chinese-style substitute for the kind of open trials and free press that shed light on scandals elsewhere.
Most of what the public knows about the pension case was surmised from terse arrest notices published in state-run media. Last year, courts handed down a string of guilty verdicts, often within days of brief trials held in closed courtrooms in remote cities. The lack of transparency has fueled views that the Shanghai officials fell out of favor for political reasons as much as alleged corruption. Though impossible to know if their onscreen confessions were voluntary, the fallen officials leave little doubt of their guilt.
A reshuffling of the party's top echelon last year left it devoid of officials with deep Shanghai ties for the first time in decades, a possible sign of broader political ramifications.
News of a pilfered pension fund in China's richest city prompted audits of the social-security system, a process that ended careers of officials in other cities. The probe coincided with a bribery case in the pharmaceutical industry that led to last year's execution of China's top food-and-drug administration official.
Now, "The Harm of Greed" offers a version of what happened in Shanghai. Among the 170 photos and 60 archival documents are mug shots and signed confessions. The highlight is a series of videotaped jailhouse interviews that are projected onto the floor of the museum.
The dejected-looking former officials, including one woman, explain how Shanghai's transformation into a city of glitzy shops and expensive property tempted them to parlay powerful positions into a piece of the action. The camera scans the illicit takings: villas, paintings, watches, cameras, liquor and gold bars.
A former district chief, Qin Yu, explains through wet eyes how he became envious of people getting rich on the boom. "It felt unfair at the beginning. I had to work 15 or 16 hours a day." Now facing life in jail, the 44-year-old says he accepted bribes in the form of apartments worth $250,000 each as "my just compensation."
The party's Shanghai Commission for Discipline Inspection and other government departments declined to comment. Zhai Jian, a lawyer for some of the accused former officials, said he hasn't visited the exhibit but notes, "Anticorruption drives can't be done at the price of sacrificing the law."
The film ignores some important aspects of the case, including one of the most tantalizing unknowns: What will happen with the alleged kingpin, the Communist Party's former top man in Shanghai, Chen Liangyu.
Mr. Chen, 61, doesn't appear in the film and hasn't been seen or heard from since he was abruptly fired as Shanghai party secretary in September 2006. Last year, the official Xinhua News Agency explained that Mr. Chen's ouster was punishment for his abuse of power, acceptance of bribes, family members' corruption and being "morally decadent" in exchanging political favors for sex.
The exhibit includes a single display mentioning Mr. Chen: a tattered copy of the front page of the People's Daily newspaper that originally announced his downfall.
