From Bill Bishop at Sinocism today:
Over the weekend John Garnaut, Fairfax Media’s Asia Pacific editor and star China correspondent, posted interesting comments on Twitter in reaction to a recent Financial Times column arguing that Xi’s corruption crackdown would fail:
Methinks the world is still under-estimating Xi Jinping’s corruption purge bc Xi sees himself as clean http://on.ft.com/1tzxhQ8
under-estimating Xi’s resolve, his own sense of moral standing and consensus that CCP was rotting to its core
25 months ago Bloomberg documented the wealth of Xi’s extended family noted that:
No assets were traced to Xi, who turns 59 this month; his wife Peng Liyuan, 49, a famous People’s Liberation Army singer; or their daughter, the documents show. There is no indication Xi intervened to advance his relatives’ business transactions, or of any wrongdoing by Xi or his extended family.
I know the nearly universal assumption is that Xi is corrupt like other leaders, even though no one, including Bloomberg, has proven that. But what if Garnaut is correct that Xi believes he is clean? How might that inform the current corruption crackdown, in terms of intensity, scope and longevity?
And how might we understand what Xi is doing if, as I have heard, even as a child Xi told people that one day he would run China?
Someday it would be nice to learn what is actually going on rather than be left with guesses.
Jim Chanos also appeared late last week on Charlie Rose where he discussed the import of the anti-corruption campaign making a number of points about the centralisation of power and how that will enable the rebalancing of the economy away from investment and towards consumption:
Nothing new here but it is a useful reminder of the MB base case, that China is going to rebalance, even if it occurs with fits and starts, because it is in the interests of the Party to do so. As China rebalances so too will Australia only ours will be in the opposite direction, away from consumption and towards stimulus!
