The never-ending campaign against graft in China
New foot-soldiers are on the way
While he was holed up in caves in Yan’an in 1938, Mao Zedong gave a series of speeches that would form one of his best-known works. In “On Protracted War” he argued that China, which had been invaded by Japan, should not expect a quick victory. It had to dig in for a long struggle.
Xi Jinping, China’s current ruler, is also fighting what he calls a “protracted war”. But the enemy in this struggle is official corruption. During Mr Xi’s first decade in power millions of cadres were investigated for graft, from low-ranking “flies” to high-ranking “tigers”, as the Communist Party calls them (see chart 1).
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline "Xi’s forever war"
From the November 5th 2022 edition
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