Guo Boxiong, 73, served as China’s foremost military officer for a decade until his retirement in 2012. He “candidly confessed” that he took bribes in exchange for helping other officers win promotions or transfers. [see Michael Forsythe, Former Top Military Official in China Took ‘Huge’ Bribes, Inquiry Finds, New York times, 5 April ] In the latest slash at corruption in the military, this ranks higher in credibility as out-and-out graft. This is a lot like the highest ranking General in the U.S. Army taking bribes so a friend could transfer from Texas to Hawaii.
That is indeed graft, but graft normally not carried out by so high ranking a person. Yes, it sounds like very credible, but the believability is not there. Guo Boxiong was the highest ranking military member of the Central military Commission of the Central Committee. He was one of the 25 senior leaders who run China. This is a little more like a Cabinet member of the Obama Administration selling transfers from Texas to Hawaii. That would certainly be big news.
A BBC story from July 2015 [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-33725125] indicates that this whole thing started over a year ago, and "The other two generals that Gen Guo served with, Xu Caihou and Gu Junshan, were accused of corruption on a huge scale. State media reported that it took a week to catalogue all the cash, jewels and antiques amassed in Gen Xu's Beijing residence and that 12 trucks were required to remove them all. He died of cancer in March." Maybe corruption in the military of China is bad, but this kind of corruption sounds petty and certainly not enough to get 12 truck loads of goodies to save up. There is more to this story than the facts as the Chinese publish them.
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