Chinese President Xi Jinping has declared an “overwhelming victory” in his fight against graft within the ruling Chinese Communist Party, while still vowing that the campaign to weed out deep-seated corruption will continue, Asia News reported.
More than 1.3 million party officials at various levels, from the powerful “tigers” to low-ranking “flies”, have been caught in the campaign since it was launched in late 2012.
The “overwhelming victory” reference is a marked change from Xi’s assessment two years ago when he told the Politburo that the war on corruption had gained “crushing momentum”. Ten months later, at the 19th party congress, he urged the party to keep up the momentum and strive for a “crushing victory”, a point reached just over a year into Xi’s second term in power.
– We must forcefully reduce the number of cases and effectively stop them from growing, – the Politburo said.
China’s new National Supervisory Commission was formally established in March, extending the graft fight to all state employees and giving legal backing to the party’s controversial internal investigation and detention techniques.
Some Chinese academics have voiced concerns that the reforms will roll back years of work by legal reformers to protect the rights of suspects during investigations.
