Australian cooperation in nabbing Chinese fugitives shows exhilarating breakthrough
- By Ni Tao
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, October 24, 2014
Many Chinese long disaffected by corruption at home should be happy to see that the arm of Chinese justice is getting longer, and loathsome plunderers of state assets are finally brought to justice.
However, they tend to regard the exemption of fugitives from the death penalty as a loss of a deterrent against corruption.
However morally repugnant they may feel about showing leniency to corrupt officials, it is a necessary trade-off if we are to secure their repatriation.
And that corruption is punishable by death isn't a guarantee that it is always so. The death deterrent is only credible when it can be applied, here at home. But paradoxically, it has too often encouraged desperate flights abroad.
And no one would probably dispute that compared to seeing fugitives lead a high-flying life overseas, it is more desirable to have them brought back to face indictment. It's like choosing the lesser of two evils.
On October 10, the Ministry of Public Security called on corrupt officials and economic suspects who take refuge overseas to turn themselves in to Chinese police.
This appeal was previously laughed off as irrelevant and unrealistic. Who would surrender to police once they are beyond the reach of Chinese justice they try so hard to escape?
Contrary to popular skepticism, the pleas do work. During the "Fox Hunt 2014" operation, 40 percent of the suspects approached and persuaded by Chinese police task forces agreed to be repatriated in exchange for clemency.
With the prospect of more extraditions of this kind, China's anti-graft crackdown is becoming a global gambit.
Whether it will make more headway depends on not just the judicial and political reform at home, but also deft diplomacy and closer collaboration with the rest of the world.
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