Leadership corruption in China and Russia

OPINION:

In March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published an unclassified report titled “Wealth and Corrupt Activities of the Leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.” It was an insightful analysis of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign. It was also a primer on the excessive wealth of Mr. Xi and other former and current senior officials. Indeed, it was an expose on the hypocrisy of the leaders of the CCP.

The Russian Federation has a similar hypocrisy. Former Russian anti-corruption opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in February 2024 in a Russian penal institution, documented the excessive wealth of Russian President Vladimir Putin and close associates Sergei Shoigu, secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, and Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council.

China and Russia have active anti-corruption organizations that do, in fact, remove some senior and many low-level officials convicted of corruption. China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspections found more than 4.7 million officials guilty of corruption. The irony, however, is that little is said about the wealth of Mr. Xi or former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Journalistic research going back to 2012 found that the family of Mr. Wen and the then-incoming president, Mr. Xi, had amassed significant wealth.

In Russia, according to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, Mr. Putin’s party is “full of crooks and thieves.” Mr. Navalny’s 2021 YouTube film, which got more than 100 million views in its first week, showed Mr. Putin’s extravagant palace. The building cost the state $1 billion to $1.4 billion, and Mr. Shoigu “practically openly created a corrupt network of charitable foundations through which they collected bribes from oligarchs and built palaces and vacation homes.” While prime minister, Mr. Medvedev “profited from a complex business network which concealed bribes by using offshore schemes and charity foundations,” according to the BBC.

Mr. Wen’s family — his mother, wife, son and siblings — controlled assets of at least $2.7 billion in 2012. Mr. Xi’s siblings, nieces and nephews reportedly held assets worth more than $1 billion in business investment and real estate. As of 2024, Mr. Xi’s family retained millions of dollars in business interests and financial institutions. These holdings are likely managed indirectly on Mr. Xi’s behalf.

“Nearly every senior Chinese party official has moved part of their ill-gotten gains overseas for safe keeping, mostly to English-speaking countries, like America, Canada, and Australia, that enjoy the rule of law,” Steven W. Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, said in an April op-ed in The New York Post. “Or to tax havens like the British Virgin Islands, Panama, or the Cayman Islands. The Panama Papers in 2016 exposed offshore companies linked to relatives of Politburo members, like Mr. Xi’s brother-in-law and Mr. Wen’s son. Hard numbers are hard to come by, but it’s known that China is hemorrhaging trillions of dollars as officials and others seek safe havens to stash their cash.”

The same Panama Papers traced $2 billion to Mr. Putin, with estimates of more than $200 billion available to Mr. Putin from oligarchs and other sources to dole out to his cronies.

A June 2024 report from the Rand Corp. reads, in part: “Corruption in Russia is not a problem that can be eradicated by a change of policy or personnel, it is a feature of the system itself.”

Corruption is like a cancer that slowly eats away at leadership credibility. In 1858, reportedly during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Abraham Lincoln said: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Eventually, the people will demand transparency and openness from their governments and demand unwavering integrity from their leaders.

Peggy Noonan’s June 7 column in The Wall Street Journal, “Republican Sleaze, Democratic Slump,” mentions “charges of influence peddling, access peddling — $TRUMP coins, real-estate deals in foreign counties, cash for dinners with the president, a pardon process involving big fees for access to those in the president’s orbit.” If this is the perception of some people, then these concerns must be addressed.

The U.S. is the “shining house on the hill.” All nations look to the U.S. for hope and freedom from tyranny, hunger, wars, injustice. It is where the rule of law governs and all people have the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Indeed, the U.S. is the model for other countries, especially China and Russia, where corruption is rampant and the leaders are enriching themselves.

• The author is a former special envoy for six-party talks with North Korea, former director of the National Counterproliferation Center and former associate director of national intelligence. The views are the author’s and not those of any government agency or department.