Squeeze Play

"We have brought clean and honest government to China," boasted the Communists in 1950, and many Western observers, otherwise unsympathetic to the Communists, hastily acknowledged the Communist achievement--too hastily. Last week Chinese Communists admitted that not only is corruption widespread in Red China, but that it has infected tens of thousands of supposedly hard-core party members. Reported Po Ipo, head of a kind of a Communist Kefauver committee called the Austerity Inspection Committee: "More than 1,670 corrupt persons have been exposed in 27 government agencies." Identified as top grafters: Communications Chief Chang Wen-en, Secret Police Chief Sung Te-kuei, Tientsin's Party Regional Headquarters Chief Chang Tse-shan.

More serious was the corruption of rank & file party members. After seizing Shanghai, the Third Army command had paired off thousands of Yangtse village Communists with members of the city's Nationalist police force, the idea being that the cop would pick up some Communism and the Communist would learn to handle a city beat. As of last week, the party admitted, all the poorly paid Communists seemed to have learned was the cops' respect for the "material comforts of capitalism."

Relax & Enjoy It. Hankow's Chang-chiang jih-pao reported on the gay life of the Suichuan District Party Committee in southwest Kiangsi province. By adopting the attitude, "Now that victory has been achieved, why shouldn't we enjoy ourselves a bit?" Party Secretary Chiao Erh-kung had "led a depraved personal life." Police Chief Lu Pin had "specialized in dinner parties for women guests," each time "spending the equivalent of the vegetable allowance of 70 members of his bureau." After squandering the bureau's entire budget (7,000 Ibs. of rice), Lu had embezzled party cash and other goods, helped his paramour's capitalistic father to escape.

In the lower ranks there was "extravagance, waste and much feasting." Instead of wearing their uniforms, party members "strutted about in their own suits styled as capitalistically as they could make them." But the worst offender in Suichuan was probably Subcommittee Secretary Wang Ching-jung, who "took to opium smoking and morphine injections," and what's more, cynically boasted that the worst thing that could happen to a Communist party secretary was to be subjected to criticism.

A Memory Course. Wrong as Wang proved to be about this observation (he was shot), Communist policy generally is to promise soft treatment for those who publicly confess their corruption. Once on the confession stand, the penitent is regarded with derision if he can remember no other misdemeanors but his own. In this way, in the first half of January, 6,400 Tientsin shopkeepers, called to public confession, were coaxed to give information which led to the unearthing of 6,000 other bribery and corruption cases. Last week, with thousands of Chinese rushing to get in first with their confessions, the Communists had turned China's ancient "squeeze" racket into a neat squeeze play. Complained Austerity Inspection Chairman Po: "One bureau which employs 566 people has denounced only 37."

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