Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141202

Comparison was to compare enough in iraq, there was a huge stabilization of the situation. Refugees came back from turkey. Lets imagine now that the u. S. Did not intervene in 91, what would have happened to this refugee camp in turkey . Trust me. You have the same scenario inside turkey would have been an extremely bad civil war. It shows entered sbr at the right moment, in syria, the idea was not to send troops. The idea it was going against the strategy of beshar in a very efficient way. Thats one thing. The second thing is and this is crucial. This is the most difficult. There is no clear thought on what im going to say. But the tradeoff between shortterm and longterm, lets take two examples. The drones in yemen and the drones in afghanistan. In both cases the drones are in a way useful because theyre killing enemies. From time to time, they are not enemies, they are mistakes but basically you can say that its useful. But at the same time, you know that drones are very, very, very destabilizing effect on local societies. And im not sure its working actually. Drones are working in yemen . They are working in eastern part of afghanistan . What i think is that you have a trend in the u. S. Policy to make the tools the end the beginning the end of everything. Its a drone, its working so we are going to use drones until the end of the time. No, drones can be useful for six months but then you have to stop because it can be extremely dangerous. And the idea now we have in afghanistan is that all we can do is shock them and we dont have really the leverage and the resources to change the game. So honestly, i dont see very clearly a solution. Negotiation would be perfect and im sure frederic would agree with me, but im not sure its going to happen. But im trying to answer your question, jessica. If i may interfere in that debate. Let me just say one thing. We can always this is not about an initial decision that was wrong, right. There is also ways of conducting the war. And, of course, there was a period when Something Like the power doctrine existed which precisely you are referring to with clear said objective, exit strategy which i think made a lot of sense. Now, in the way things are conducted, im referring particularly to afghanistan, i mean, there are a number of things that could have been done totally differently. And of course, its much easier to be smarter afterwards because we have the luxury of the experience, failed or successful, but there are things we could have worked differently. Among the things which we have observed for example in afghanistan, even the political process has been at the very beginning of it framed in a way so as to facilitate the military intervention . Well, then you introduce a problem within the local dynamic that will make you impossible to solve later on. And in many ways what were facing now is also paying for that mistake as well. And you can say, well, but now that they have been done, what should we do . Well, again, i mean, this is a whole and we cannot ignore that. And there are lessons that can be drawn from it. And im not sure that they all have been drawn. Any way, sir, you wanted to Say Something . Stanley cope. Im wondering if were not being too focussed on our own experience. Let me refer to two experiences in foreign countries, one that ended badly, one that was successful. The one that ended badly, israel lebanon. They went in there, stayed for years, tried to create a proxy army, they failed, badly. How long did the South Lebanon army last . The success, vietnam in cambodia. They went in there, they cleaned out the rouge. They were destroyed. Vietnamese went back across the border. What did the cam bodians do what did the vietnamese do right . What did the israelis do wrong . Maybe we should look beyond our own experience and gain some lessons from what other countries have done . Yes, sir. And well come back to the panel later. I have a more fundamental question on whats wrong with the arab world that it cant govern itself. My son says that obama if he can carry it out the right thing to do. Any other question at this stage . Yes. Madame over there. Hi. Im just responding thanks. Madeline stokes, ive been in lebanon for the last three years. Comment on frederics comment about u. S. Coming out on january 2014. Isis coming out. I was on the ground for the last three years and it was very clear what was happening for the last three years. We knew what was happening. We were screaming at the top of our lungs to all of our contacts, all of us. So, i mean, my comment is that there are plenty of people who are willing on the ground there are plenty of potential allies on the ground, i just think the u. S. Has been really selective. So my question is this a lack of will to get involved period . Or is this a lack of competence in the American Government and its affiliates to communicate with the ground and use all of its resources to make small changes happen . Thank you. Who would like to answer first . I should go with whats wrong with the arab world . Thats a big one. You take that. Come on, i took the last one. Perhaps we could save the debate for later on. But at least i think there is something in your comparisons, sir. What went wrong in lebanon for israel. Could you elaborate a bit on your own question because the fact that you asked you asked the question this way sukts that you have some answers. I dont actually. To be honest, ive tried to look at what the vietnamese did right. I dont speak vietnamese. I would love to see a study on it. That one seems the most successful. They totally crushed them. They went back across the border. Cambodia has survived. Theyve had trials recently and i would love to know how they did it. I have absolutely nothing to say on cambodia, but what i think is that the obama framed the situation in syria is exactly the thing you should not do. I mean, it seems obvious. You take syria as a new iraq. And syria is not a new iraq because the structure is different. So, we should stop the idea that all interventions are going to fail, its not a good idea. Right . I would most of the time i say do not send troops on the groun ground. Ed the problem in washington is that when youre saying i want to intervene or i dont want to intervene, actually theres a political sub text. Are you liberal, are you neutral . Are you whatever, whatever, whatever . Nobody is looking at whats going on on the ground is the problem. Everybody is playing politics. And i would argue at least just looking at the problem not the political undertone of the solution is the key to answer things. And the lady was perfectly right. Everybody interested in syria was very clear, there are two years that we are going to it was clear. It was written. We wrote it. Other people wrote it. The strategy was very easy to understand. International sorry, i should not say that. You dont need necessarily to have opinions or understand the crisis. Its quite simple actually. What we wrote in spring, 2013, was easy. It was predicting the next six months. No big deal. Yes. In a sense it also comes back to question of what we mean when we say what we say. I think that elaborates on what gilles is saying. We are doing comparisons in afghanistan, syria here. The situations are very different. The situations are different and they should require discriminated policies. In a sense, it looks like if after well, it started before. Theres always a debate about should the u. S. Be isolationist and not intervene or should they intervene . I think the two positions only make sense in university courses. It does not make sense in policy. Intervention can work and intervention in the context of which you are going i mean, at least one difference that you have between cambodia and lebanon i would not elaborate on the cases. Rouge were hated when vietnam intervened. And not liked when intervened in lebanon among those populations. You know, if we look at the Islamic State and the taliban, we have two very different movements. And you dont engage with the taliban the way you engage with the Islamic State. The Islamic State is a movement that die bollically refuses any intergregs is someone acceptable to them. The borders do not make any sense. The taliban you should engage them. On the contrary, they have tried to uphold Afghan Border to take a very precise example in 2009. Youve got the movement which whose dream is to integrate International Order as the afghan state. So you should not look at them in the same way. Thank you. Other questions . Yes, please, sir, over there. Lauren heresy. I was a scholar in 1968 in india and i continue to read the india story. Its hard to formulate a good question for a panel like this because youre brilliant and thats a compliment. I want to ask you to give me a scenario for the retaking of the large city of mosul in northern ra iraq. Vietnam, lebanon, cambodia, israel, et cetera, we had a civil war in the United States that lasted four years. This is civil war territory. Mosul is an iraqi city but its in the hands of another self declared state authority. So, each of the four of you or five, if you will, mr. Moderator, give us a scenario how long will it take before mosul is maybe like the city of atlanta, georgia, part of a union again . Somebody want to answer that . Yeah, please, please. Loogs k, as this new york ti article brilliantly highlighted, were dealing with a military in iraq the most effective combat forces on the ground are for mosul to be liberated it has to come from the sunnis themselves. I think the u. S. Strategy is empowering a provincial movement, a provincial armed wing under this national guard. There will probably be some sort of effort to split sort of the prague thattists twn isis ranks who can be bought over. The question is not so much the liberation but what comes next . Terms of the government structures that will replace it and are you going to have enough confidence being conveyed to the sunnis that theyre part of the national project, that they have representation . I mean, this is the real longterm struggle. You could argue that weve done this before where we have air power, we have indigenous forces, probably some use of ground advisers on the ground to coordinate air strikes. We have these tribal para militaries that come in. But then what comes next . I was in iraq in 2008 in baghdad working on this surge. As we heard, aqi was declared dead. The tables had turned, but we know that these movements can reemerge, like a cancer coming back. And so the question is what kind of government is going to replace isis in mosul . Yeah. Mosul, i was not far from mosul when isis attacked. Of course, i left with a lot of people from around the city. But what to do with moes . Youre right. Its a strategic city. You cannot break isis in iraq without taking back mosul. The problem is the way of our u. S. Are dealing with mosul right now with the iraqi army. Booming isis, its not the solution. The program is political. You have to deal with the sunni arabs but also on the field with the different groups. I mean, when you bomb mosul, when you try to kill them in this way, of mass bombing, you know, you kill off a lot of civilian. You destroy mosul, the local elite. Its impossible to dream about to stabilize the situation by then the second point is which forces do we have on the field . Kurdish are not effective. Theyre very dividing among them. You need maybe to train them for two, three years and then what will happen probably is that they will try to make a competition between them to know which one could increase they are not convinced at all that they have to go back to mosul. Then you have the iraqi army. Will try to slaughter, you know, different arabs and try to secure baghdad. The center of iraq showed that its really difficult for the iraqi army to progress itself and they have to go through different militia which is a really bad sign for the arabs. And the last point, i spoke i was in iraq two weeks ago and i spoke with a lot of arab people who are still living in mosul. And for them, they have more fear that the iraqi army come back to the city than isis stay. I mean, they know that if the iraqi army come back, it will be slaughtering to the people. It will be a lot of mass killing. Really for the moment they are not really for that, of course. So right now, to take back mosul will take time and i think the solution is a political solution. We have to negotiate. Thank you. Gilles, you wanted to intervene . No, thats okay. All right, we have time for one last question and then ill give two minutes to the panelists to conclude. Yes, madame, please. Thank you. I have a really simple question. The u. S. Is retaining some combat troops in afghanistan and also increasing Training Forces in iraq. Does this signify some changes in National Security . Thank you. Well, i dont know who wants to answer that. What was the question . Is there a change in National Security i mean, thats the decision to maintain troops in iraq and afghanistan signify a change in the u. S. Strategy of those two countries . Well, i could speak for iraq. I dont see that as a major shift from this prohibition or actual front line troops. But youve heard general dempsey say at some point it may become necessary. I think they want to leave that option open, but i dont see at least in iraq, significant shift from what obama articulated in his earlier speech. I dont know if you yeah. In afghanistan, no, you cannot speak at the moment of a change. What could we see in the future maybe next few months is that probably the u. S. Government is going to be afraid by the deterioration of the security in afghanistan. And then they could decide to give more air support, medevak or things like this and probably to leave more troops in afghanistan. Thats a possibility. Because if we dont do anything probably two, three years, its likely that the taliban will take control of afghanistan now. So, probably at some point somebody is going to say, maybe we should do something. But right now, no, its not very clear. On that note, let me ask each of our panelists to conclude for no more than two minutes. Please. Yes. Well, in the sense if we look at what weve been saying in the discussion, what were trying to argue here is that, you know, in how the u. S. Act in the middle east, there is a genuine interest for the u. S. , for the west, to have a stable region with states. And in that sense, one of the failures of u. S. Policy here has not consider enough institutions, not to consider what is happening not just in kabul but on the borders of afghanistan. Not to look enough at what were doing. Not to look enough at how the iraqi state was disinstitutionalizing itself in the last year of its withdraw. Not to look at how the army was building their own institution and how important it is in the interest of europe or in the interest of United States to have actually state in this regime. In the moment, you have boulders in such a turmoil. The border might be contested. Thinking of having not stabled policies of huge intervention but supporting movement that have already entered strategy is at least something to consider. Gilles . Yeah. Actually sorry. Actually i dont have a great conclusion, sorry. Maybe i would say that we have three differentiated polices. The police recommendation would be first in afghanistan to sustain the current government to the point where its possible to deal with the taliban. I dont think that the idea that you can let it go in afghanistan after the taliban is dead and if the taliban take back afghanistan, its not a big problem. I think this idea could be wrong. At least we should try to play the negotiation card which means to long enough for him to be able to negotiate with the taliban, if possible. The second recommendation would be in syria. So we should absolutely do something if the Islamic State because they are going to reconsider. If these two movements are taking syria, we will have a huge major security problem and its almost done. And my third recommendation would be that probably we should find or try to find a way to open washington to the real crisis, whats happening on the ground, and probably to change the debate. And i think probably its possible to make it a little better and to be sure that people are speaking about outside world and not totally focussing on all washington world. That would be great. Arthur . Well, only two points. Isis tried to do a new revolution in syria. The only way to stop it is they are weakened. Especially because of the u. S. Bombing. We have huge critical situation chgs. Maybe they will fall in the next months. Fall because of isis. In syria, continue to progress. And they have to know that cleaning the territory and institutions, Judicial Court system and that is still working there. The second point is i want to warn about the especially in iraq. Gilles and adam were saying that this is a big it shall its also the way Bashar Al Assad is acting against sunni insurgents. His army is not able anymore to do any large scale, so he tried to send some different militia. Is playing with this very dangerous tools. Especially to focus which people are training on the ground and to which people are going the weapons and support that were sending to iraq. Thank you. Thank you. Fred, please, youll have the last word. Yeah. Maybe this is ending for a plae on what the u. S. Can accomplish. Having served in iraq and this theme of exhaustion. Just because we have awareness doesnt necessarily mean we have we are equipped with the policy tools to effect a very complex situation. Certainly there are mistakes made. I want to point out one thing to end with or gilles point about a nofly zone. I like to call nofly zones, gateway drugs to regime change. I cant think of a place, iraq, libya, where we didnt end up in going into regime change after that. I just dont think u. S. Policy given the end state was prepared to do that if we set up a nofly zone. Well, thank you very much, fred, for those very sobering last words. Its time now to bring this session to a close. Thank you all of you for being with us this afternoon. Thank you to our panelists. I think you will join me to give them a big hand for their contributions. [ applause ]. And to all of you, a very happy thanksgiving. On the next washington journal steve king of iowa talks about his attempts to stop the president s executive order on immigration. Then we hear from congressman Jim Mcdermott of Washington State on negotiation to fund the federal government amid the tensions over immigration. Washington journal is live every morning on 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. The cspan cities tour takes book tv and American History tv on the road, traveling to u. S. Cities to learn about their history and literary life. This weekend we partnered with Time Warner Cable for a visit to waco, texas. As we began to receive the vinyl to be digitized to be saved, we began turning over the b sides of the 45s that we received. Now, first off, gospel music was not widely heard in the white communities. But the b or flip side would be heard even less. What we discovered quickly is how many of the bside songs were directly related to the civil rights movement. Since theres very few data bases and none of them are complete on all gospel music, didnt know that. We didnt know the sheer number of songs that had very overt songs like there aint no segregation in heaven type songs, at a time when possessing one of those songs, much less singing it was a very dangerous thing in the deep south. You could get killed for a lot of things in the deep south, but singing that sort of song outloud, well, thats a risk. The texas ranger hall of fame, it was set up in 1976 for the 175th anniversary of the rangers. And honors at this point 30 rangers who made major contributions to the service or gave their lives under heroic circumstances. We have paintings or portraits of all of those rangers. They really begin with steven f. Austin. Austin was very successful with his rangers. They fought not only managed to make the area reasonably safe for settlement from indian raids, but when the texas war for independence broke out, the rangers played a major role in texas gaining its independence by staving off the mexican army long enough to allow the kol lonists to build their own army and develop a strategy. And as a result, texas became its own independent nation, the republic of texas for ten years. Watch all of our events from waco, saturday at 12 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2s book tv and sunday afternoon on American History tv on cspan3. Next, a look at chinese corruption efforts as the chee niez party tried to strengthen its constitution. Speakers discuss how these changes might be implemented. The motivation behind the changes and what the effort means for u. S. china relations. From the Wilson Center, this is an hour and a half. Well, good afternoon and welcome to the Wilson Center. All of you who are here with us here in this auditorium and those who are watching on cspan or on our web cast. The Wilson Center is the living memorial to the 28th president of the United States. My name is robert daly, i direct the Kissinger Institute on china and the United States here at the Wilson Center. Were very glad to bring you this program on corruption, constitutionalism and control, implications of the fourth china and u. S. china relations. This afternoons talk brings together two topics which are very often treated separately although i think they belong in the same program which are corruption and chinas attempts to carry out further round of legal reforms. No doubt all of you have been following corruption stories from china over the past few years. And you have heard about x pings willingness to take on both tigers and flies. Probably followed the some times sorted tales pings attempt to combat corruption is often in the American Media characterized as a campaign but it really seems to be a state of affairs. Its part of xis on going govern nans. Combatting corruption has been one of the major factors leading to xi pings great popularity in china. You need to look no further than the second line of the new viral song in china called i dont know if youve heard this or not. Its covered in todays new york times. If you havent seen it, i rj you to give it a close listen. The first two lines, china has produced a uncle xi. He dares to fight the tigers. So, notice too in this song its actually very catchy. It has elements of march and elements of folk tune, its hard to get out of your head. And that line china has produced an uncle xi harkens directly back to the east is red, which begins the east is red the sun has come up, china has produced so theres aling in this popular song about how ardently xi and his wife love each other. So, xi has been very closely associated with anticorruption, the china dream, continued economic and social reform. This all seems to be of piece for his gof nans and indeed for china. Its sometimes difficult for us from the United States to discern how these different pieces fit together. And therefore can be tough to figure out how we need to respond to a rapidly changing china. The difficulty levels at the linguistic level with some of the recent documents about legal reform in china and theyre full of socialism with chinese characteristics and continued reform then different uses of phrases that seem to have something to do with law but its clearly legal concept not quite like our own. Even the phrase corrupt who is corrupt and who is not. One of the questions i hope well be asking today is whether the anticorruption efforts of xis government are primarily principled or primarily political. What does corruption mean . The documents that were released after the big meeting of the communist party in october, i think, offers some clues as to where xi intends to take these themes, to take these efrforts o improve gof innocence. This was the first plenem. I was struck in reading american breakdowns of this plenum with the third plenum. Many writers focussed on what wasnt in these documents. Usuallily from an American Point of view. They were criticized from the americans that wished would be in the documents that werent there. We didnt focus on the many proposals for change that were in these documents. I think that we need to begin from a chinese point of view. The Kissinger Institute is committed to beginning an analysis of china with how china sees itself. We may not end there but that has to be part of our analysis. And the documents coming out of this plenum were very frank about the depth and breadth of problems that china faces in its legal system. It had almost confessional quality to it and seemed to raise expectations extremely high. So to understand these values, the priorities, the policies of x jing ping, we want to start where china started with corruption and with legal questions. To do that, we could have no better pair of scholars than Andrew Wedeman and donald clarke. Andrew is at Georgia State university and is the United States now leading expert on chinese corruption questions within the context of political economy. He has been working on this since long before xi jing ping begans his anticorruption efforts about 15 years. Thats been a major huge focus . Pushing 18. 18 years. Before he came to Georgia State, he was at the university of nebraska lincoln where he directed the Asian Studies program and the internationals studies program and also been a visiting Research Professor at beijing university. I had the pleasure of working with andy when he was a visiting professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University Center for chinese and american studies where he was from 2006 to 2008. And i would also like to welcome his daughter, maggie, who is also at the Hopkins Center and is now studying china at George Washington. Andy is now working on a new book project that examined social unrest in china and he is the author previously from mow to market. And the double paradox of rapid growth and rising corruption in china brought out by the Cornell University press in 2012. I should also mention that when we were at Hopkins Center together, andy once caught me singing loudly the Rolling Stones wild horses and what i thought was the abandoned underground garage where the acoustics were excellent but i was not alone. And in that Small Community you did the courtesy of never telling anybody, so a man of discretion as well as a man of letters. I want to thank you for that. Donald clarke is the david weaver Research Professor of law at George Washington university where hes been since 2005 and leading specialist in chinese law. He was previously at the university of Washington School of law in seattle and at the school of or rental and African Studies at the university of london. Before that, he practiced law for three years at a Major International if i recashtional large chinese practice and he is very fluent in mandarin chinese. He is on chinese criminal law and corporate governance. These are exactly the topics of the third and fourth plenum. He was also founded and maintains china law which is the leading list serve on chinese law on the internet and writes the chinese law prof blog which i have bookmarked and is one of the first places i go when ever theres a major legal issue. He is a member of the new york bar and council on foreign relations. Well start with 15 minutes each, first, andy and then don and then we may have a little time for them to ask each other questions and then we look forward to hearing from all of you. Well open it up. Thank you once again and andy, you have the floor. Thank you very much, robert. I did not ever share your singing in the basement, but now that the cat is out of the bag, i no longer feel obligated to be discreet. Welcome to all of you. And to the viewers of cspan. Let me begin with the question that robert raised in his opening remarks. And its one that i think we get i get frequently about xi jing pings now 2yearold Anticorruption Campaign, is it principled or is it political . I think if you look at the way the most visible part of the campaign has unfolded, its easy to say that this is nothing but pure power politics. The campaign really predates ping. It begins in november of 2011 when an english businessman turns up dead in a hotel is swiftly cremated and looks like he will be simply forgotten and then later in 2012 the former head of Public Security attempts to defect the United States in the wake of which we are we discovered that the wife of chung ching Party Secretary is allege willed behind the murder. They have apparently been collecting money from a variety of sources. The english businessman may well have been laundering the money for them. We move to former Standing Committee member, former head of the internal security apparatus, from there we move on to a series of what i would think of as kind of clusters of Corruption Cases. We have the former head of the Chinese National petroleum company. We get a whole nest of Corruption Cases in the oil sector. We then have a series of corruption scandals involving the former secretaries, people who worked with him, linked into whole networks of corrupt businessmen. We get evidence then that some of his former underlings in the ministry of Public Security have been involved in among other things, Money Laundering ma cow but also arranging dates for senior members of the leadership with the staff of chinese central tv, finally we get his son is implicated in a series of schemes, most of which involve flipping of state assets, the son would get ahold of them on behalf of other businessmen and then resell them. Among those that he was connected to was a man named leo han who is a major figure according to the government in chinese organized crime. If you look at that series and then excuse me. We get several more interesting scandals. We get whats known as the earthquake in which a whole host of people in the province, most of them in some way involved in the coal sector are implicated in a series of nefarious deals which in part link to a man namedling su whose brother happened to be haos right man and whose nephew plowed a 300,000 porsche to a bridge 4 00 a. M. In the morning with two scantily clad coeds. If you look at that and most recently of course we have the military scandal. A series of generals are caught trading basically promotions for jobs. Most recently general hu was his house was searched. They found literally a ton, a metric ton of cash. It took between 10 and 15 military trucks to take all the, quote, evidence slash loot out of his apartment, out of his 20,000 square foot house. You look at these scandals and the easy conclusion is that this is about politics. Ping comes in and basically what you look at is for various random reasons, he sets himself up, he becomes an entry way, had been portrayed as something of a rival of xi jing ping. Its an opening that allows xi jing ping to go after him, go to go after a wide swath of people at a fairly senior level and to clear them out and obviously replace them with his own people. At the same time, you can look at it as a very clear effort by xi jing ping to consolidate his own power. By going after the big tiger, after the kongs, and showing that he is willing to take on anybody, regardless of how high up they might be, how sensitive the case may be. He is trying to demonstrate his when you look at it on that level, you do say, well, is this principled or political . And i think the easy conclusion is to say, looking at that level its political. But i think you have to broaden out and look at the bigger picture. The number of big tigers that is taken out is a little bit vague. Exactly what institutes a big tiger in terms of rank, in terms of importance i think is partly in the eyes of beholder. So the numbers vary depending on who you listen to. Between about five dozen and maybe 120, 130. Whether its 60 or whether its 130, i dont think is actually as important as you as might appear on the surface. When you broaden out and look at the bigger picture, this campaign formerly began two years ago in november of 2012. The numbers are incomplete and unfortunately the chinese only give us numbers in year incriminates not in months. So we dont know how many people got taken out during the first two months of 2012. We dont know how many people will be taken out this year because the year isnt over and you get part year statistics which having looked at these as i told robert 18 years, i know the part year statistics often are largely meaningless. That you really have to have the constant metric. So the best figures we have are for 2013. In 2013, the Judicial Branch which has the power to indict an individual and to bring that individual to court for trial, the Judicial Branch said they filed the case to hand down an indictment. They indicted 37, 551 people. So, if the number of big tigers was 60 or 130, its a tiny fraction of the total number of people indicted. That number, 37,551, was up almost 9 over the previous year. Now, 9 may not sound like a tidal wave of anticorruption, but if you go back and look at the number of people indicted, the number has gradually declined from over 40,000 down to a trough of 32,000 in 2011. It was up a little bit in 2012 but up 9 in 2013. The number may well be up something on the same order this year. Its hard to tell because you dont really have any partial statistics. They also give us some numbers for people higher up the food chain. For people who are holding leadership positions at the county and the departmental level, they indicted 2,871, that was up 12 from 2012. More significantly at the prefek dhur and the bureau level the number jumped from 188 to 261, a 39 increase. So, when you look at when you look at the top and if you follow the campaign in the media, the Media Campaign or the media focus is totally on the big tigers. And the big tigers are important, but the bulk of the campaign is at the next level down. Its not so much against the flies, against the people who are the fairly lowlevel officials, et cetera. Its at this leadership, upper leadership level where you get this huge, almost 40 increase. To me, what that suggests is that the answer to roberts question, is it principled or is it political is quite frankly yes. Its both. Xi jing ping is trying to do two things at once. He is trying to consolidate his power. He is trying to go out and take out big tigers and at the same time he is as best i can interpret it, he is really serious about wanting to fight corruption. I think theres a realization and this comes out as ill talk about in a minute when we look at what this campaign has revealed, corruption has gotten considerably worse over the past decade. When i wrote the book the working on it really in 2008, 2009, i looked at all the data and i couldnt see any real evidence of a worsening, deep deepening or intensification of corruption. When i look at this campaign, and i look at what has come out, corruption is worse than i actually had thought. You know, you can look at people like general gut, a man in charge of logistics, base construction and other things for the pla. The man was apparently flipping real estate and collecting 2 . One deal allegedly involved 2 billions of yuan in fees for shanghai real estate. When they raided his house, he literally had a tunnel full of expensive mal tie liquor and a three foot tall golden statue of mao and considerable cash. When they raided another home, they found a metric ton of cash. These are unprecedented figures. And in some ways theyre quite interesting. Why would you sit on a metric ton of cash . The answer is probably interesting. He didnt have anything to do with it. He couldnt get it out of the country. He apparently couldnt get it out of the country, and really couldnt spend it. He sits there and they accumulate this cash. So you look at the scale of the corruption that were being that is being revealed in this campaign, and it is not millions of it is tens of millions and even hundreds of millions, which is these are sums that i think we have not really encountered in the past. But what also struck me is this, those two cases are real tigers. These are senior generals. But there was a there was a man named mao who was arrested in Hubei Province recently. The man ran a local water company. Not what i would consider a high powered position. When they raided his home, they found 80 million ren and b in cash. 425,000 u. S. Plus, 37 kilos of gold and certificates for 68 properties. So not only do we have evidence of, you know, this kind of huge sums of money on the part of the tigers, but we have some extraordinarily fat flies down at the bottom. If a man whose basic job is to provide you with water and sewage can collect what you what i would have to quickly do my math and multiply by six and add, 100 million, if you can extract 100 for tap water, thats quite a fly in you know, we go on early on, we had all these cases, we had sister house, she had 45 properties, we had brother house, 19 properties, and these are low level officials. So when you look at what the campaign revealed is it is not just a problem of big tigers gorging themselves on the economy, the flies are also sucking a great deal of blood out of the economy. What are the prospects looking at all of this . Xi jinping racked up a pretty good hunting record. Hes got some pretty impressive pelts, i think, as robert said. His campaign is popular. Do i expect to see change in corruption . Do i expect to have to be looking for a new topic after nearly two decades of slogging through endless stories on corruption . Absolutely not. You know what, xi jinping at best is going to do is hes going to lay down some suppressing fire. Hes going to get people ducking. Hes going to get people to be careful. Theyre going to take that 50 million that they have stashed in their basement and theyre going to hide it really good. You know, all everything ive heard out of china recently people are petrified, theyre worried, you know, there is a lot of fear and anxiety. How long that lasts, it is hard to tell. You know, this campaign is two years old. For two years i keep expecting it to begin to wind down. For two years ive been wrong one time after another. Some had suggested this campaign is now the new normal. And that in fact this campaign will keep going on and on and on. If it does, that may be have positive effects because the pressure will be kept up, officials will have to be careful, and therefore theyll avoid or theyll avoid accepting bribes or do it with a great deal of cunning. The other danger is after a while, when the inspectors dont arrive, and when you get away with it, you become emboldened. So i dont expect to see dramatic inroads into corruption. I dont expect it to go away anytime soon. But having said that, i think it is important to keep in mind, in the United States, if you go back and read american political history, in the 19th century in the era around the civil war, it in a shock some of my american comrades, but we had a problem with corruption. We had tammny hall. If you look at municipal history in the u. S. , the political machine was the norm. Whether in new york, omaha, nebraska, or chicago, et cetera. The u. S. Seriously began fighting corruption in about 1870. Guess what . Were still fighting it. Just a few months ago the governor of virginia, Robert Mcdowell mcdonald and his wife were convicted and will face prison time for corruption. If we turn around and say, gee, is xi jinping really serious in fighting it . And we then say, well, are we going to see victory in the war on corruption . I think not. The current war on corruption in china began in 1982. It has continued for over three decades at this point. I would expect it would continue for quite some time. It will ebb. It will flow. Sometimes it will be more overtly political and sometimes it will be more principled. But i will give mr. Xi credit that he has responded and i believe hes actually made some progress, although i dont think you can make as much as most people would like. And i will end there and turn over to don. Okay. Thanks very much. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming out this afternoon. Those of you maybe who were going away for thanksgiving tomorrow will regret having not gone away today. But i hope not. Okay. So robert asked me to talk about the fourth plan of legal reforms and their implications for u. S. china relations. Ill start off with a broad brush picture of the fourth plan reforms and talk about their possible implications for u. S. china relations, but dont hold your breath because i dont think there are a lot of implications. The big picture summary of the fourth plenary reform decision is i think that it contemplates no fundamental reform in the basic relationship between the legal system on the one hand and sort of the Party Government on the other hand. So it seems pretty clear to me that institutionally speaking, the party is going to remain above the law. At the same time, though, i think the decision does contemplate some genuinely meaningful and in my opinion positive reforms, and so, you know, i dont think that it would be correct to look at the decision and say, oh, well, it is not advancing towards some ideal we have of the rule of law and it is meaningless. There is meaningful stuff going on there and much of it positive. So i guess first of all i just want to emphasize, though, that the decision still puts party first, law second. And it does this, really literally, every time the party and the law appear in the same sentence, the party always comes first. So, for example, section one of the decision really starts off by saying several important principles that must be upheld in order to achieve the goal of ruling the state according to law and the first one is leadership of the party. So that is youll notice doesnt have any kind of substantive content to it, it is an institutional goal, the party must be in charge. Later on, the decision talks about what judges should be loyal to and lists four things, the party, the state, the people and the law. And, you know, youll notice which comes first and which comes last. Now, obviously grammatically speaking there is no particular reason why things at the front of the list get privileged over things at the end of the list in chinese or in english. But nevertheless, we all know that in a document like this, nothing, not even a comma, you know, is accidental, and so when we see the same pattern repeated over and over, i think we have to conclude that it is there for a reason. Some of you may have heard about the three supremes and im not referring to the music group. Im referring to the shop, the three supreme things a document sorry, a slogan Long Associated with the former president of the supreme people Peoples Court, and these have been we didnt hear about these for a while. And now they have been kind of resurrected in the fourth plan decision. And the three supremes are the three things that, again, courts should put at the forefront of their work and, again, the First Priority is loyalty to the cause of the party. Second, interests of the people. And the third, the constitution of the laws, and, again, party comes first, laws come last. So in general, what we are presented with is, you know, an admonition to officials to obey the law. So certainly officials are told they should obey the law. Theyre not told theyre above the law. Nothing like that. But nevertheless, one, you know, gets the feeling that this is really kind of an internal goal of the party talking to itself. It is saying officials, you shouldnt have a mentality of special privileges, should not hold yourself above the law, you should obey the law, it is not proposing the constitutional changes that would take that choice away from officials. Officials in a sense still have that choice about whether they want to obey the law or not. And again, one of the i guess key symptoms of that might be the system of double designation system, the informal system, i guess the extra legal, we can call it, system of detention, for officials being put under investigation, even though everybody in china basically the entire Legal Community, i wont say everybody, but most people who look at this constitution in china would agree it has no basis in law and really legally speaking has to be considered unlawful detention or perhaps kidnapping. So now what about meaningful reforms . There are some meaningful major reforms. I think the main one which i think is really quite welcome is the system calls for some significant reforms in the system for managing judges. So there were some vague words about protecting official tenure. Not clear what they amount to when it comes to what goes on in practice. Much more concrete and meaningful is a proposal to establish what is essentially a kind of Career Civil Service model for the judiciary. So junior judges would be selected by provincial level courts. And then would start their careers in basic level courts and so youll have at the provincial level essentially a kind of judicial bureaucracy that will be looking at junior judges, assessing them, monitoring them, trying to pick out promising ones, skillful ones and, you know, gradually promoting them up higher and higher. And the decision doesnt exactly say who will do the promoting, but i think it is pretty clear it is supposed to be in the hands of provincial courts. This is a very significant reform because the model does not exist at the moment. The way things work now is courts are still basically slowly working their way out of the kind of dunaway model, the work unit model. So the main or at least important way at present to become a senior judge at a High Level Court is start out as a junior judge at the same High Level Court. The same way that the classic story of Business Success and you start off at consolidated amalgamated in the mail room and then through hard work and gumption and, you know, appropriate scheming, you work your way up to the ceos office. And so chinese courts kind of work on that model. You start off low. And you work your way up. And then, you know, the way to the way to become, again, a senior judge at a High Level Court is to start off as a junior judge at a High Level Court, how do you get there . Go to a fancy law school and do well. If you start off at a low level court, youre probably going to stay there. There is not now a good system for identifying promising judges at lower levels and promoting them to different courts at higher levels, which, you know, isnt necessarily a disaster. In the United States, there is no systematic way of identifying promising judges at lower levels and promoting them to higher levels. Countries like japan and germany have Civil Service judiciaries like that. At the same time, there say bit of a problem because the decision endorses another good thing, which is to say we should have more system where by more senior and experienced people from outside the judiciary can move laterally into it. And theyre looking at sort of the american model where you have kind of senior experienced lawyers, for example, who at the peak of their careers will then, you know, get a federal appointment and move sideways into the federal judiciary. So there is a lot to be said for this idea, but the problem is that it contradict the idea of having this Career Civil Service model where you start off as a junior person in the very lowest court and work your way up, because the whole important of having experience dignified people is theyre going to start off at a reluctantly high level, not going to want to start off at a low level court in the back woods somewhere making 5,000 a month. Okay. So there is some contradiction there that needs to be worked out. The decision also calls for some significant reforms in the court system. And both of these are apparently designed to address the problem of local protectionism. Courts at a given administrative level tend to be answerable to Political Authority at the same level. Because their personnel appointments are controlled at that level and funding is controlled at that level. Theyre not subject to any meaningful control from superior courts. And, again, thats different from, say, the system in japan, you know, where the Supreme Court, you know, operates not only as a court of final appeal, but also as a general administrative body. And so naturally because of this system of local authority courts tend to protect any party that local Political Authority wants to protect. For example, prominent local businesses. And, you know, the chinese Legal Community has for a long time, you know, thought of this as a big problem and proposed various ways of addressing it. One proposal that came out of the fourth decision is for the Supreme Court to establish what they call circuit tribunals with jurisdiction over several provinces. So at the moment, the top court is the Supreme Courts court and below that are provincial level courts. There is a proposal to establish some courts that will cover several provinces. There is a misconception about this, though, which is that these are similar sort of to american circuit courts that is that they would be a level of court below the Supreme Court, and above the existing courts. Thats not what is contemplated. They dont even use the word court. They use the word tribunal, which tells you that will be a branch of the Supreme Peoples Court and therefore any decision of those courts is going to be a decision of the Supreme Court and not of sort of a lower level court. Then there is another slightly different proposal which is to actually to establish another layer of courts for a fifth layer that would cross jurisdictional boundaries and try cases that are across jurisdictionals. It is important to keep the two different reforms straight. Now, one thing that is very interesting about the communique is, again, and sorry to say, one of the things that it doesnt save, i wont talk only about that it does say this is interesting that it doesnt talk about, and that is a proposal that was muted at the third planum to centralize courts and financing to the provincial level, not beyond, but at least to the provincial level so that within any given province, it would be the provincial levels that decisions about personnel and finances were made. And this was very explicitly with the idea of reducing the problem of local protectionism. So, you know if it happened at the provincial level, it will not get rid of it. A lot of the local protectionism takes place at the local level, not the provincial level. There was this proposal for it to happen. There was some experimentation in shanghai about putting this into practice. And not a peep about this proposal in the fourth planum decision. So it is hard to know why. The reform is very popular among academics but not so popular among judges. One reason is apparently that judges fear that a more kind of hierarchical system of authority in general will increase the power of the Court Leaders over them and maybe now they feel that their individual power is enhanced by being able to move sideways and they have some sideways connections and therefore they can kind of sometimes talk back to the leadership of the court. Im not sure about that. The other thing which rings much more seems much more plausible is that judges in prosperous areas fear that putting court finances under a higher Administrative Authority would mean a kind of leveling out, so a unified salary scale for all judges within a given province is going to mean either raising the salaries of judges in poor areas or lowering the salaries of judges in rich areas and theyre afraid it is going to mean lowering the salaries of judges in rich areas. So, certainly odd that this reform seems to have stalled and thats odd and kind of unfortunate. Finally, the decision denounces attempts by leading officials to interfere with court cases. This is a big prb and caoblem a for a system of keeping track of such attempts. I think this is a meaningful reform and ambition but not an implementation because they havent changed the system of incentives for judge, so the same system that makes them responsive by officials to interfere is going to make them reluctant to report on these attempts to interfere, to record them in the big book, black book of interference attempts and pass them on. Without a change in the system of incentives facing judges, it is hard to see how any traction will be achieved on this reform. On the same decision, elsewhere, stress is the importance of the legal the Political Legal committee, you know, and that is a party body that exists at all levels of the party. And that supervises all the basically organ of the Peoples Democratic dictatorship. The courts, police, procuresy and the justice bureaus, they regulate lawyers as well. So it calls for Party Organization in all Political Legal bodies, including courts, to report important local matters to the local party committee. So on the one hand, youre saying lets enhance Party Control over courts, lets enhance the control of the Political Legal committee over courts and on the other hand, youre saying, lets minimize interference by officials in the operations of courts. There is a kind of contradiction there and not clear how thats going to be resolved. Certainly one would have to be incredibly naive to think that the case was decided solely by the judges who confided at trial or that the case nobody in the Standing Committee at splpolitburo is touching that. Someone has to doubt the sincerity of those moves. Okay. There is a couple of minor reforms, but i think ill skip over them for purposes of time here and talk a little bit about, you know, implications for u. S. china relations. And so the way to think about this is to think what are some of the irritants of u. S. Ch. Su. Relations . Intellectual property protection. The fourth planum reforms show an effort even if imperfectly realized to professionalize the courts and reduce the influence of local power holders in their operations. Another thing that does not appear in the fourth planum report is a lot of kind of populist language that appeared recently in discussions about the legal system. Criticisms of judges for being too professional, for applying the law too mechanically, things like that. And, again, a little mysteriously that language is not in the fourth planum document. And so i think perhaps in some way, perhaps a repudiation of a recent turn to populism and maybe a return towards a valuing of professionalization in courts which is probably a good thing. I think this reduction in local protectionism and increased professionalization has to be good in general for intellectual property protection. Since in many cases, you know, the violators are enterprises with influence at local level, but not necessarily at higher levels. Youve got a particular factory producing pirated eods, theyre employing local people and paying taxes to the local officials and bribing the local officials. Thats not going up to the provincial level, thats some small town level f you lose control over courts upwards, it is much more possible for people to move against those, against intellectual property violators. None of this is going to make a difference if ip enfringement rises to the level of a formal state policy in some areas. Thats not all cases of ip infringement are of that kind. There have been some complaints about selective enforcement of antimonopoly and other laws against u. S. And other foreign businesses recently. The u. S. Chamber of commerce recently issued quite a detailed report on this, talking particularly about the acts of the National Development and Reform Commission who seems to be the main target, so i had a long summary here, but i dont have time obviously to go into it at this point. I guess i would just say that there is not much in the fourth planum decision that would address this problem because the problem of selective enforcement and perhaps enforcement isnt even really the right word since many Times Companies are being told dont call your lawyers. So theyre not really interested in the legal analysis. It is more the southern share approach, how much do you got, son . So not much in the fourth planum addressing this problem. It isnt really about enforcement of law through administrative agencies, a lot of it is the measures theyre talking about for legal system Reforms Center on the court system and not so much about kind of the everyday actions of administrative agencies in enforcing law. Another area of irritation is extradition of officials with corruption. You know who fled to the u. S. . And china says why would you want these people . Why did you give them back to us. Why does the u. S. Want them. They dont. Canada, the canadian government tried for a long time to get rid of get him back to canada. Canadian courts stood in the way. So many times we have different branches of government. We have genuine separation of powers and so even the executive cant always do what it wants to do. The problem here, of course, is that china and the u. S. Dont have an extradition treaty are unlikely to have ever have an extradition treaty and highly unlikely anyone will be extradited without a treaty. Some problems are, you know, will the u. S. Justice system feel that the defendant will be granted adequate due process in china. And in addition, you have the problem of the u. N. Torture convention which bids members from extraditing anybody to a place where they believe the language is substantial grounds for believing that there is a danger they will be tortured. This is a problem in the chinese legal system. Official chinese sources have themselves characterized torture as widespread, deeply entrenched, stubborn illness and malignant tumor. All sorts of language like this. A recent report by the special reporter for the u. N. Commission on human rights, who looked at this issue. There is some Serious Problems there. And it makes it very difficult to conduct to extradite people. Nothing in the fourth planum reform agenda that addresses the problem of torture by police. And so i dont see any prospects for reduction intentions in that area. Finally i would say, just to conclues with a look at human rights in general, again, i dont see much in the way of prospects for improvement in this area in the fourth planum decision. There may be things happening outside the fourth planum decision, but not in the fourth planum decision. We have proposals to make the judiciary more professional. Less subject to the influence of local power holders and those are all good things. But i dont think they really have much in the way of implications for the on the issue of human rights and the fourth planum decision still makes quite clear the primary loyalty of judges is to the party. So ill stop there. And lets thank you. Two questions, first, before we open it up to the if you have questions for each other, for the audience, having had these discussions with both american and chinese critics for about 30 years, many chinese friends and some american historians said that some of the things we criticize chinese officials for being corrupt about, our officials, our elites also gain, but they do it through ways that are now legalized, through mechanisms their children can go to top schools because they are legacies. They have ways of propictutecti their wealth. Part of the story of going from the age of boss tweed to the current day is elites finding illegal mechanisms for protecting theirs. And they can be accused of being corrupt. I was thinking of that critique in light of something that jeremy wrote recently. He said in the Anticorruption Campaign, xi jinping has not yet gone after any either the Second Generation of the original red founders of china or the leading officials from the early stages of the peoples republic. Do we see in tandem with the Anticorruption Campaign or in connection with the legal reforms, do you see any ways that the group of families of what xi jinping is a representative are actually protecting or legalizing any of their is there any evidence of that going on. Actually, i think when you look at china more generally, looking beyond the current corruption campaign, china faces a real challenge in that a generation ago there was no wealthy class in china. One of the byproducts of Rapid Economic Development and the fact that the chinese economy is either as big or is bigger than the American Economy is there is a whole new strata of wealthy chinese. Many of whom are linked through blood or marriage to the political elite. Now, for one the popular response is to assume that the prince lings all got there through nefarious ways of wire pulling and inside connections, et cetera. Well, maybe im a cynic, but we got a whole strata of those in the United States as well. No criticism of Chelsea Clinton there per se, but im pretty sure when she got a job at a hedge fund, it wasnt three weeks into the job that someone said your dads who . We have a similar situation where the sons and daughter of elites is robert they have advantages getting into top schools. Theyre often bright and they often work hard. For us, this is normal. They go to wall street. They become investment bankers, et cetera. For china, this is all new. And i think the more general thing that china needs to be sorting out is not only the problem of corruption, but also the relationship between power and wealth. Theyre not separate. Theyre not separate in most economies. In china, the separation is more imperfect and now i hope don has a good legal answer to the question that ive im trying to struggle with on the fly. No, i dont have a thats an excellent question and worth thinking about, is there some way that the Second Generation has figured out to entrench their privileges in a non in a not so obvious way. So i dont have a good answer for that. I want to sort of address an earlier point of yours, quite a it is a good point that, you know, i think if we look at any society, we will find somehow rich and powerful find ways to transmit their wealth and power to their off spring. And so i think if one looks at chinese corruption as a way of saying as a way of answering the question is china uniquely bad, then thats silly, right . That shouldnt be the question. I think it is really it is the issue, you know, when i look at corruption, say, from a legal standpoint, is what is the government doing about it. What is the government allowing other people to do about it . So, for example, if you think about the corruption in the United States and tammny hall, so who was it that exposed tammny hall . Was it a top down anticorruption effort by the government. One has to ask whether those institutions, you know, are allowed to exist, such that Chinese People could make their own informed decision about what kind of privileges do they think are okay and what kind of privileges do they not think are okay. I just add one other thought is paradoxically the people who have a real vested interest in creating Legal Protections for Property Rights might well be the they dont want to be subject to arbitrary confiscation because their father or mother on the political side has gotten into trouble. If you look at pressure for property reform, it might well come from the top, the top down in a strange backward manner. Second question. You mentioned human rights concerns, i was struck in listening to andys presentation that in general it seems to me when americans hear about the cases of distance in china, human rights questions, we hear about what happens to any number of dissidents that get locked and we hear the legal or quasi legalistic claims of the officials they did this following thing. Provoking sedition and people go into a nonlegal superior status. We say this is horrible, this is clearly false. Why arent they getting due process. When the same legal order can say someone has a gold statue of several tons of ren and b, those people sort of disappear into some extra legal system. Is there any kind of double standard at work or what is what criteria should we look for when were judging the claims about evidence or guilt or innocence that come out of the Chinese Government in these various cases because we seem to look differently at claims about corruption and the kinds of claims that get leveled at dips dents and human rights cases. Good question. I would like to point out before you said that, i had already blown the whistle on shang way as legalized kid unlawful detention under chinese law and extremely problematic. This is what is used against allegedly corrupt officials it is a huge problem because, of course, not everybody allegedly corrupt is actually corrupt. And the people who run the internal Party Disciplinary system are not necessarily, you know, well trained in investigative techniques. They dont know how to, you know, trace, you know, trails of assets from clever people who have been hiding them and so you resort to the next best thing, which is, you know, the rubber hose. And so i think that accounts for a lot of the maltreatment that takes place within the system. But in terms of how to look at things, i think that it is sometimes we can have an idea about substance of the charges, whether they make sense or not. Whether they really exist. Do we, you know, is it fair to just for example, the current one of the current charges against the lawyer is, you know, stirring up trouble and provoking disturbances. Thats not as vague as it sounds because thats just the name of a crime, but you look at the criminal law, there is some conditions that have to be met and there is a Supreme Peoples Court document which makes it more precise. What conditions have to be met to commit this crime. In fact, the government cant just say youre just stirring up trouble. They have to say, you did a, b or c, and it is really impossible under the facts as we know them to find out that they did a, b or c, because it lifts very specific things that have to be met. Very often were not necessarily going to know those facts. I think at that point we can look at procedure. For example, has the government made the trial open . Stirring up trouble and provoking disturbances, there is no state secret involved in that. The Supreme Court, Peoples Court has been saying and chinese law has been saying since 1979, the Court Organization law says all trials should be open. But Everybody Knows you cant just walk into a chinese court, right . Even though trials are supposed to be open. If trials that dont have any plausible reason to be closed were are open, thats reassuring. If people are genuinely allowed to be represented by the lawyer of their choice, which, again, is allowed under chinese law, if witnesses are required to testify in court, which again is required under chinese law, even though in criminal cases it basically never happens. I think we could look at a way of kind of avoiding this issue of can we really know, right, to what extent are they guilty. We can look at this other question and say if there is a good case, why cant the government follow its own procedural rules and i think one could ask at least that much. And with respect to corrupt officials as well. I think people have disappeared and we havent heard anything about him. I think he deserves a fair process. I tend to agree with robert. There is a double standard being applied. When i read about a case in, you know, a case, my natural assumption of course theyre guilty. In fact, we should not assume that. And certainly the way that the process works where youre basically detained by the party and you are detained until such time as they decide you are ready to move on. Either ready to move on to your trial, or youre ready to remain in detention. And i know from reading some of the confessions you get the impression that six months, eight months a year into indefinite detention, people are willing to confess to anything in order to get their case moved out of the Party Disciplinary system and into the court system. One of the patterns you see is people get to court and want to repudiate their confession. They say i merely confessed in order to get to the court so i could deny my confession and, of course, what does the court turn around do . No, you cant repudiate. It is true we tend to assume without too much question that people detained by the party are guilty. In fact, if you look at the numbers that isnt actually true, i gave you earlier the number of cases that were filed. There is an earlier stage in which the procuratorate accepts a case. They used to give us those numbers in the annual reports. They stopped doing them for whatever reason. But in the old days, about half of those who were initially investigated never ended up with an indictment. What i assume and what ive been told is a lot of those people end up getting an administrative punishment, a warning, demerit, demotion, et cetera, because it is determined they havent really committed a major offense. What we dont know in the block is how many of those people actually get off because of the procuratorate determines they actually arent guilty of anything. It is a wide open guess. But i think youre absolutely right. When it hits the discipline inspection website and not so and sos under investigation for serious disciplinary violations by the gway, my natural assumption is theyre obviously guilty. But, you know, it is a reflex that i suppose we probably need to avoid. Of course, the most important question the study of chinese law is when we will have a better word than procuratorate . Procurasy. You cut with otwo syllables off of it. Thank you, professors. Fascinating. I have two questions. One for professor wedeman and the naive one for professor clarke. Ill start with the naive one. I had to take the act for federal employees. Im wondering if there is any kind of whistleblower protection within the legal tim or any kind of parallel system and for professor wedeman, a short question, are there any corruption prosecution hot spots . You know, is hubei generating more numbers than other prove indianapol inces or is it pretty level . It does appear that the campaign is falling somewhat unevenly. The problem with trying to say where it is falling most heavily is you got two choices, you can kind of do it as a kind of art, which is, you know, you read the individual cases and you start guessing, well, you know, my sense is it hits hard p. Thats my impression of reading it. You really need to get the annual numbers from the that will come out with the work reports which will be filed in march. I havent looked at the ones from 2013 at this point. But, yeah, it is uneven. Exactly what explains the uneven pattern, i had not had a chance to really think about or to analyze. Yes, sir. Hi. You taught about it is both political and so looking forward, do you think it is going to be more political or more principle . It seems to me if you want to sustain the campaign it has to be principled. Thank you. If i can ask just robert just mention the chinese looking at sort of the k street, former officials, you know, lobbying for inference, that was like corruption after retirement. Many chinese officials are corrupt before they retire obviously. Thank you. Timing issue. I agree with you. To sustain the anticorruption drive over a over a long period of time, the principle has to take over from the political. At some point the political side can be dangerous. It can generate a backlash. You can push things in directions that you might not want to go. The my own view is this, the principle part is the bulk of it. You look at the cases, they make up the most visible the most exciting part of the campaign. The really Boring Campaign is the day in and day out trench warfare, war of attrition against mid and low level corruption. Thats been going on for a long time. Xi jinping escalated that in 2012. I think it will continue to keep that up, but i would see at some point the political side would have to begin to fade somewhat. I think it will never go away. Youll continue to have scandals crop up, et cetera. But the principled part i think in the end is what carries you on year in and year out as you slowly move toward a less corrupt system. Right next. What do you think is the impact of all this corruption on the economy of the country or is it insignificant . It is not unmeasurable. The reality is when you look at the chinese economy, and you look at the growth of corruption, over the 30 years that the chinese have waged the war on corruption, china also had the second largest gain in per capita income in the world. It is almost it is well over double the number three which was south korea. It is multiple times what we had. So, you know, if you look at the chinese economy, the pattern is worsening corruption and rising growth hence the subtitle of my more recent book. Does that mean that growth has raised corruption that corruption has raised growth . Absolutely not. It shaved something off. 100 million or 200 million sitting in someones basement is not a profitable investment. How much is it shaved off i think is really hard to tell. But certainly it is there has been a cost and as the economy roared out at double digit rates, you could absorb that cost as the growth rate begins to fall, the drag of corruption necessarily increases. So youre at a point now where perhaps zemin or jintao could look at corruption and say it is a problem, but it is in the really killing us. I think now more and more xi jinping has to worry about it. The economy drops growth rates drop below 7 and corruption will become a much bigger drag in relative turf. There has been an impact. Tony and then to the back. I just wanted to push the conversation about political versus principled a little further. You havent really defined what you mean by principle. And ill just say i guess what i think and then you can comment on it, but it seems to me that kind of a more macro level you heard a lot about how the problem with corruption is that all the local officials to not really listen to what the party is trying to get them to do. So i see a campaign of against corruption as being the principle being reestablishing Central Power over local power. That seems to me to be a lot of the driving force behind it. On the legal side, i know, legal scholars often dont like this discussion, but, again, you hear it a lot lately about his are these reforms about rule of law or rule by law . Oh, there is no question that part a big part of the anticorruption or big part of the corruption problem is the protective umbrellas, the ability of officials at the local level to collude, the inability of beijing to actually to work its will on the local level. Thats a perennial fact of chinese political history. I think, you know, the Anticorruption Campaign seeks to breakthrough that. But the Anticorruption Campaign is continued to be structured along the very lines. You have not seen a centralization. You have not seen a move, although you have had these three or four nationwide inspection campaigns where the center literally sends people out to bypass the local level, to go after to go after local corruption. But they have done this before. When they went after shanghai, when they went after the shaomin case, they had to send hundreds of investigators down from beijing because they beijing said you cant trust the locals, the locals will cover things up. If a sustained Anticorruption Campaign means repeatedly having to send people out from beijing to literally attack the local level, that is going to be hard to sustain. You really got to get a systematic solution which gets rid of this problem where you were talking about earlier, where the local prosecutors answer to the local Party Officials. If the Party Officials are corrupt, what are you going to do, charge your boss with being corrupt . It is career suicide. The other thing i think you need to be aware of is it is not like the procuratorate or the disciplined Inspection Commission is corruption free itself. And battling corruption within the anticorruption institutions is a major challenge. Could i ask a question. I want to im sort of springing this on you, dont know whether you had whether youve thought about this, but you probably have, which is that the i guess the consensus among economists is that chinas growth model, which up until now has been sort of driven by investment in things like industry and infrastructure, you know, needs to change, to be more sustainable and change to something that is more Service Oriented and more demand driven. And so my question is, what is the relationship of corruption to the type of kind of growth model that china uses . Does change the growth model will that make corruption, you know, in the way it is carried out now more difficult and if so does that mean that we will have less corruption or does it mean we can expect major pushback against this reform for people who want to keep on dipping into the pot the same way they were able to do it up until now. If you look at where corruption is concentrated, it is concentrated in things like real estate development. It is concentrated in the Energy Sector with mining concessions, oil field contracts and so forth. It is concentrated, you know, my sense is that a lot of it is concentrated in the state sector because many areas of the state sector has either quasi nomo monopoly. If you marketize the economy and deconcentrate the pools of power areas where you can use political and administrative power to manipulate the result, yeah, that should do it. And, you know, when i look at corruption in the book, my assumption was the argument was that a lot of the corruption that we saw in the 1990s, early 2000s was basically a fight over win fall profits and rents. The model suggests you should see the eventual disoperation of rents. When you got a piece of real estate, the first time it moves from the state to the market, there are tremendous win fall profits to be made, but once it is on the market, then Market Forces take over and the opportunities for excess profits should disappear. That hasnt happened. And the reason it hasnt happened is that the the shift from an investment kind of directed growth model hasnt been complete. Is xi jinping going to push that . Thats what he was talking about at the third planum. I dont know how much progress we made on that. I think youre also youre right, there will be pushback. People do not willingly give away ill gotten gains. People will fight to keep them. So, yeah, i think, you know, if you did really see this new model, you would you should see, i should see, you should see reductions in corruption. I wonder if i could bring tonys question back to you. If it is going to be a principled not even a campaign, just a state of affairs, more principled and less political, you need an explicit theory of how things got this bad in the first place, where corruption comes from. The answer seems to be people are bad or is it a story about more virtuous, less corrupt central authorities having to rein in the locals or do you see in the fourth planum documents a real attempt to look at the system itself and to ask what it has been in the system what deficiencies allowed corruption, are we seeing the beginnings of a real systematic approach to corruption that can be sustained, that can be principled . I dont see that in the fourth planum decision, no. I dont even recall them talking that much about corruption. There has recently been a proposal to have a sort of special unit set up this would be a governmental unit within the procure sy, not a Party Disciplinary unit and headed by someone with the rank, i guess, Vice President of the procure sy, a high level official. And maybe some kind of attempt to construct Something Like, you know, hong kongs independent commission against corruption. But there is, you know, i dont see anything more than that. In other words, theyre saying lets try to get a state body that will investigate corruption that has a relatively, you know, high level official in charge. And so therefore well be able to overcome some of the obsta e obstacles. That doesnt change the basic nature of the system. It says lets get a it is like i guess if you were to worry about, you know, why poor people dont have enough food, you know you make them richer, rather than you make poor people not poor, rather than changing the basic sfrtructure society so you have free Food Distribution depots. It doesnt propose to change the system, just make some tweaks. I dont see any fundamental changes like that coming out of the fourth planum decision. Looking at the way cases are presented, i think the thinking within the chinese system is it is bad people because the tendency is, first of all, you get a set of charges which are basically about corruption. Then next you get the moral degenesee, the multiple mistresses, so on and so forth. What theyre doing is saying this person was just not taking advantage of their authority or the fact that the system gave them the ability to extract money either in the forms of bribes or embezzlement, rents, et cetera, but they were more they were fundamentally morally degenerate. When i read that narrative, the narrative that comes out of this is the system is good, the individual is bad. To me, that sounds a lot like denial. Do you see this with dissidents as well. Not just that they were stirring up trouble. They had mistresses or liked pornography, we see this in both cases. A question right in the middle of the back and then over to you at the side and then ryan. Over to the side and then ryan. [ inaudible ] sorry. The cooperation between china and the u. S. On the fight against corruption, how long do we need to wait to see some Real Progress on this aspect . Thank you. I find the question a little vague, could you identify, for example, the barriers that youre awaiting to go away . Just, you know, some officials from china, they travel to the u. S. , how many how many years, i mean, maybe in the next year, can we see some flies and tigers from china be sent back to china . Okay. So the problem with that is this is what i talked about earlier on, i dont think there is any immediate prospect of any progress on that because, again, that gets into, you know, extradition issues. There not an extradition treaty between the china and the u. S. And i dont think there is much of a prospect of there being an extradition treaty between china and the u. S. For that kind of thing, both have to have a fundamental faith in the countrys legal system. I dont think that bilateral faith exists. And so i dont think it is going to happen anytime soon. I think there has to be much greater degree of convergence between the two Legal Systems and dont see that happening soon. I mean, it is not because the u. S. Likes corrupt officials. It is just some fundamental disconnect between the way the two Legal Systems work. Again, i use the example of canada, the ca nadian government wanted to send back they were in Canadian Court arguing, get rid of this guy, we dont want this guy in our country. He got in and the Canadian Courts wouldnt make him level. Theyre perhaps bribing our own officials if they have other concerns. Ryan and then over to this side. Thanks very much. I actually have a question for each of you gentleman. Professor clark, constitutionalism popped up in the decision. This is after a couple years of constitutional from kind of being a dirty word on the chinese side and accusations and the idea of sticking to the western imported concepts. Im curious for your thoughts on what inclusion of the term constitutional alongside of the law means in the context of what it means going forward. And that question ive got is, in all of the mentions of different locations where weve seen Corruption Cases, the one place i havent much about is shawnhigh. There are rumors that shawnhigh will be next. Im curious why we havent seen activity in shawnhigh aep if there is any analysis there. I guess i have to disagree. So they do talk about the constitution but and they have always talked about the constitution and the need for you know people everybody in the country to obey the constitution and also to act according to the constitution. But constitutionalism as translate need chinese, kim jung still remains a for bidden term. But you talk about the relationship between kim jung and it is a neeld, it doesnt but just those two words together. I deny that they have i could be wrong but my recollection and people if you do a word search, you will not find the term kim jung. Of course you find the constitution but that particular meaning is not welcome, you know, because it is understood by both promotor and detractor to mean things like, you know, accountable government. Election is, et cetera, et cetera. They talk about the constitution, absolutely. But it is very important important they not accept the term constitutional. We can talk about the irony of a party, you know, that proclaims itself to be a markis party talking about how terrible western ideas are. But lets not talk about that irony. If we have short questions and short answers, we will have time. There a question four too. Short questions, short ans and we will have time. Is very hard to explain why something hasnt happened. There is a lot of speculation. I think a lot of that speculation comes out of those who believe that the ultimate goal of the campaign is johnson and therefore johnson and power base in shanghai. I dont have an easy answer because i dont know if shanghai hasnt grown or if there is so i dont have a good answer for your question. Quick questions and quick answers. [ inaudible ] out of right wipg and things to target out of the left wing. [ inaudible ] why he himself isnt a why he left rebel not right rebel. Are there political reasons . You have to pick your fight and take on those who are your more immediate enemies while building a united front with those who you might want to go after later. Im not surprised about the left. I think thats the more immediate the issues that in the community, and one of the key terms come up in the communique as the rules law under the communist party leadership. So what i need some Political Science or legal interpretation of that phrase. What does that exactly entail. Or how long a stand comparable to it it is similar to constitutional monarchy. So yeah. Just phraseology. Interpretation there. Okay, i think the rule under law of the party and the constitutional monarchy, under the constitutional monarchy, the monarch is under the constitution. So constitution modifies monarchy. Where as in rule of law under the party, party modifies rule of law. You can look at it grammatically. So rule of law under the party. I dont want to make word plays or something. But what i mean to say is that as i think made clear and not just by words also by the actions of the party. It is not their intention to themselves, you know, the governed the sense by law. You know, i dont want to be unrealistic. There is no society which can be run mechanistically by the law, with no human intervention. Obviously we have humans everywhere. I think there is a different between, you know, political regime in which the government feels that somehow meaningful constrained by external rules and systems which it does not. And i think that, look for example, at the distinctions between, you know, when the need to have say a Legal Adviser in the white house who writes legal opinions coming up. Justify the actions of the white house. And when the president wants do something, the president has to say, well, how will this fly . They believe they have to come up with some plausible legal argument. They cant just say oh, im going to do it. And i dont really think she even thinks that way. I dont think that in the Standing Committee of the bureau when they decide what to do with, you know, whether someone is saying, is that legal . We bet are talk with this law professor to get an opinion on it. Nobody is discussing thats not part of the discourse that z doesnt need to be defended. Even if we say, sometimes say, you know, the legal opinions of people in the white house. We may think they are disingeneralous. Nevertheless, it is easier as people acknowledge the legitimacy and i just dont see that going on at all and i dont see any ambition to have that go on. Thank you. Thanks to all of you for coming. On december 4 we will have our second chinese u. S. Relations yearly review. Then on december 12th, we will have the author of whos afraid of the big bad dragon, why china has the best and worst education in world. Well look at issues in the United States and chinese educational systems and wait we are increasingly influencing and learning from one another. We hope you will join us for those programs as well. Thank you and happy thanksgiving. Hearings on tuesday to tell but on cspan 3 at 9 00 a. M. Eastern, Homeland Security secretary jeh johnson talks about Border Security and president obamas recent executive order on immigration. And into the afternoon, the Senate Commerce committee holds a hearing to examine do mest uk violence policies in professional sports. Witnesses include representatives from the nfl, nba, National Hockey league and major league baseball. That will be live at 2 30 eastern again here on cspan 3. Members of congress return to capitol hill monday after a weeklong thanksgiving recess. We spoke with a congressional reporter about some of the items that remain on the agenda with two weeks left before the current congressional session ends. Immigration and taxes will dominate the final days of this lame duck session of this 113th congress. Following us is billy house, his work is available job line. Thanks for being with us. Glad to be here, thank you. This om any bus measure, which is a washington term, exactly what does Congress Need do and when . December 11 is a deadline for what has been a testimonimporar continuing spending bill since october. The technical start since the new year. So weve been relaying on the temporary spending bill again. That runs out on december 11th. So lawmakers are faced with where to go from there. There is talk of a short