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Chinese officials facing corruption charges are being tempted by suicide
On Sunday alone, at least two Chinese government officials killed themselves. Mainland media reported that Liu Xiaohua, the deputy secretary general of the Guangdong provincial party committee and a former party chief of Zhanjiang, hanged himself in his home in Guangzhou in the afternoon.Just hours earlier, Xiao Bibo, the woman head of the secret protection bureau for Shenzhen’s Yantian district, jumped from a bridge to her death.
Police are still investigating what led the two officials to take their own lives. But the growing number of cases involving a “non-natural cause of death”, many of which are suicides, prompted the Communist Party to begin examining the issue early last year, according to local media.
A commentary by the official Guangming Daily said that between 2003 and 2012 – when Hu Jintao was president – at least 68 officials killed themselves. That number was surpassed in the first two years of President Xi Jinping’s administration, with at least 77 officials committing suicide.
The escalation comes amid Xi’s massive anti-graft campaign, which has swept through government bureaucracy, the military and state-backed industries alike.
Yuan Yulai , a prominent rights lawyer based in Zhejiang province, said it was not surprising many officials killed themselves before they were interrogated by the Communist Party’s graft inspectors, a process known as shuanggui.
“Being hardline and suppressive of ordinary people, some officials found themselves, in turn, subject to [the same treatment] when they faced fellow officials with higher ranking,” Yuan said.
Officials accused of graft are usually dealt with by the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and kept incommunicado for interrogation before being handed over to prosecutors. The prosecutors then assist the criminal investigations and pursue charges.
But since the system is considered an internal disciplinary mechanism, it is usually operated in the dark. There is no transparent rule about the maximum duration of shuanggui and it has been criticized as abuse of power by some investigators.
Reuters/Jason Lee
In 2013, a 42-year-old chief engineer at state-owned Wenzhou Industry Investment died after he was detained for 38 days on suspicion of bribery.
For some officials, suicide might offer another advantage – protection for their families.
The law specifies that the court, rather than the CCDI, is the only institution entitled to judge whether a suspected official is guilty. If the official dies before trial, the prosecution will be terminated immediately. “Once the suspect is pronounced dead, the judiciary organ will abandon the investigation of his or her criminal responsibility, close the file or terminate the trial,” the Criminal Law states.
Through committing suicide, guilty officials who have amassed an illegal fortune would be able to shield their families from scrutiny.
Such a thought might have been at the back of the mind of Chen Hongqiao, a 49-year-old president of state-owned Guosen Securities, who hanged himself at his home in Shenzhen on October 22. His suicide came amid a massive crackdown by Beijing to hunt down those it deemed responsible for the summer stock market rout that wiped trillions of yuan in value off stocks.
Chen left behind a one-line note that read: “Please leave my wife and children alone.”
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