Why the trial of the "night hostess" of Chongqing became news number one for the world media

Victoria Sizikova

In early November, China sentenced 46-year-old Xie Caiping to 18 years in prison and a fine of one million yuan, a woman to whom the media gave the high-profile title of “godmother of the Chinese mafia.” In China, she was also called the “night hostess” of Chongqing, the third largest city in the Celestial Empire, and the “empress of the Xie clan.” She was charged with organizing criminal gangs, maintaining brothels, illegal casinos, drug trafficking, violence, bribery and blackmailing officials. Together with her, about 20 mafia bosses of a smaller caliber were convicted, and also, according to the Xinhua agency, more than two thousand more people were charged in the case of the “night hostess” criminal syndicate, including not only ordinary bandits, but also representatives of the regional elite - party functionaries, officials, police. More than 300 people from the “Xie Caiping list” have already been arrested and will soon appear in court, including six heads of police stations who worked for the mafia...

"The Night Mistress" and her household

According to officials, police have been collecting evidence in Xie's case for several months. Mafia bosses, police officers (including those working undercover), and bribed officials came under secret surveillance. It turned out that Xie Caiping even had bodyguards from among the police officers investigating her case. And also a sultry temperament and excellent health - she supported 16 young lovers (she entrusted one of them, 29-year-old Luo Xuan, a part-time driver, with the management of an underground casino and gave her a chain of beauty salons). The enterprising lady boss ran more than 20 dens, organized in hotels, nightclubs and teahouses. She owned several luxury villas. Her syndicate also worked part-time in the market for “financial services to the public”—lending money at an extortionate 5 percent interest rate for China.

The “night hostess” of Chongqing had many high-ranking officials as business partners, and her relatives included the head of the city’s municipal judicial administration, Wen Qiang. Being the wife of Wen’s younger brother, Xie Caiping “resolved” any issues in Chongqing and felt completely safe (the investigation recorded an episode when Wen warned Xie Caiping about an upcoming police visit to one of her underground gambling clubs. Having received the warning, the “night hostess” collected all the cash in a suitcase and disappeared 10 minutes before the arrival of special forces). A former high-ranking official who once served for 16 years in the police, Wen Qiang is now under arrest and awaiting trial, which will begin in a week (his trial will not take place in Chongqing, but in another city, which one has not yet been announced) .

Xie admitted charges of organizing underground casinos. She also partially admitted her guilt in the brutal reprisal of a police informant embedded in a gang (he was beaten, taken to a deserted place and thrown tied up in a jute bag) - according to her, she ordered this way to deal with the “rat”, but not for deception, but for theft. At the same time, Xie Caiping refused to admit guilt in organizing a criminal syndicate, saying at the trial that she established “rules for the game” and not “laws for a criminal group.” The court materials say that the “night hostess” was merciless towards her enemies. For example, she ordered those who revealed the location of the syndicate to have their legs and arms cut off...

The scale of the criminal clean-up in Chongqing evokes respect, and the sonorous titles assigned by the press to Xie Caiping are also impressive. But somehow it’s impossible to trust the fairy tale about the “godmother of the Chinese mafia” hidden behind bars: the numbers are confusing.

According to published data, the Xie Caiping crime syndicate has unjustly earned about 2 million yuan (about 300 thousand dollars) over the past 5 years of its activity. For an ordinary citizen of China, which is still semi-poor to this day, this is really an exorbitant amount. But for the “godmother” even a county spill is ridiculously little.

After the authorities allowed the population to play on the stock exchange, there are several million legal dollar millionaires alone in the densely populated Celestial Empire, even after the crisis. Against this background, a profitability of 300 thousand dollars over a five-year period as part of a well-structured criminal community is not even a legend, but an anecdote. Such a fairy tale is not only hard to believe, but not at all believable. And yet, the echo of the trial of the “night hostess of Chongqing” does not weaken - not only the Chinese, but also the world press continues to talk about the Xie Caiping syndicate - from the London The Times to the American CNN. Why?

Pearl of Sichuan

Chongqing is located in the heart of the country, between the Yangtze and Jialingjiang rivers. It is located in the mountains of Sichuan province and is a picturesque area with streets going down to the banks of rivers along the hills along the mountain spurs. Chongqing became the most populous city in the world in 1997, when much of the surrounding areas were declared urban education areas by the PRC authorities. The administration's goal was to create a modern metropolis that would become key to Central China. Over the past ten years, the dream has come true: with a population of 31 million, Chongqing today, thanks to huge investments and subsidies, has become one of the largest centers of commercial life in the country. And that means to a powerful political center. Control over it is not even an application to enter the circle of the country's top managers, but a ticket to the very top of the Chinese political Olympus. And it is precisely this circumstance, and not the voluptuous “empress from the Xie clan” who was sentenced to 18 years, that turns the trial that took place in the city into a first-rank event.

If we ignore the colorful details from the life of the mafia and other “cranberries”, it becomes clear that in fact the plot has a completely different main character - not Xie Caiping at all, but the recently appointed head of the Chongqing administration, 60-year-old member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, Comrade Bo Xilai , who organized a large-scale campaign to “clean up the city.”

Comrade Bo commented on the activities of citizen Xie: “Xie Caiping organized an underground casino right in a five-star hotel, extracting super-profits. Such an act could not be justified even in the era of the Qing Dynasty” (at that time a hand was cut off for gambling in the Middle Kingdom - “O” ).

The son of a veteran revolutionary, Comrade Bo, previously served as mayor of Dalian, governor of Liaoning Province, and Minister of Economy of the People's Republic of China. Arriving in Chongqing, Bo Xilai, among his first personnel steps, “purged” the already mentioned Wen Qiang, placing his protégé Wang Lijun in the judicial department. In return for the head of the new protege, the Xie Caiping syndicate announced a reward of 12 million yuan. Comrade Bo responded to this with all his administrative resources. “The mafia itself forced us to fight it,” the city newspaper Chongqing Daily quotes Bo. The leader said that the large-scale operation he announced to capture the criminals was designed to restore order in Chongqing and win the trust of residents.

Many experts believe that as a result of the success of the campaign, Bo Xilai could become a real contender when choosing the new fifth-generation leader of the PRC in 2012. This is the key to unraveling the phenomenon that happened: in the story of the “godmother” from Chongqing, the world media spotted a rising Chinese managerial star of a new formation.

It’s interesting that the smartest reporters have already managed to find comrade Bo’s associates: “It doesn’t matter what his motives are, but the crime-fighting strategy Bo implemented must be applied throughout the country,” says Qiang Wenzhang, Bo’s classmate at Peking University, who was promptly discovered by the British Telegraph. . The newspaper neatly quotes an ally of the possible future leader: “Bo was a smart student who loved domestic and world history, who always wanted to change the world for the better.”

The fact that Xie Caiping’s story is a passable one is also confirmed by further developments: just a week after the sentencing of the “night hostess” in Chongqing, a trial began in the case of another criminal group. 23-year-old twin brothers, Zhan Bo and Zhan Tao, were sentenced to 17 years in prison and a 100,000 yuan fine for organizing an underground casino network that had been operating since 2007. The rest of the gang members (there are 12 of them) were given sentences from 1 to 13.5 years.

Comrade Bo, therefore, does not stop there - in accordance with the party’s course, he goes to the end in the fight against negative phenomena.

The fight against the mafia is the duty of a communist

Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have repeatedly stated the need to combat corruption throughout the country. Theoretical developments in the fight against organized criminal groups were laid down by Deng Xiaoping in the 80s of the 20th century. It was he who set the task of conducting so-called comprehensive total operations that would help counter this threat.

Under Deng Xiaoping, structures were created to ensure state and public security, as well as monitor and predict the development of the crime situation, and develop strategies for conducting preventive operations to combat crime.

Subsequently, under the Chairman of the People's Republic of China Jiang Zemin, the fight against crime consistently continued. Thus, Jiang’s speech at the 16th Congress of the Communist Party of China on November 8, 2002 is known, at which he stated: “In order to carry out the difficult tasks of reform and development, it is necessary to maintain a harmonious and stable social environment for a long time. It is necessary to strengthen law enforcement work, and specifically, on the basis law to mercilessly strike at all types of criminal activities, resolutely sweep away all ugly social phenomena and reliably guarantee the people’s safety of life and property.”

The policy of eliminating organized crime and corruption was continued under the leadership of the country's current leader, Hu Jintao. In September 2008, he stated that "the life and death of the party and the state depends on the presence of a strong political will to punish and prevent the phenomena of corruption."

However, despite this party determination, according to Chinese experts, economic losses from corruption in the PRC annually amount to 13-17 percent of GDP, and about 20 percent of government funding ends up in the pockets of unscrupulous officials. According to the Supreme National Auditor of China, the total misuse of budget funds in 2008 exceeded $8.5 billion. According to Chinese experts, about $25 billion is laundered by criminals in China every year with the assistance of corrupt officials.

The leadership is especially concerned about the merger of the administrative apparatus and criminals - they are punished harshly. For example, just recently, the vice mayor of Beijing, the chairman of the PRC State Administration for Supervision of the Quality of Food and Drugs, and the head of the PRC State Administration for Food and Drug Products were sentenced to death for taking bribes.

One of the most high-profile corruption cases of recent times is the trial of the former head of the Nanjing District Real Estate Office, Zhou Jiugeng. The reason for checking this official was photographs of an ordinary city resident posted on the Internet: a sensitive citizen posted a photo on the Internet in which a watch worth about 15 thousand dollars is visible on the official’s hand. For the control authorities, this signal was enough to launch an investigation, which ended with a court sentence of 11 years for bribery.

There is a strategy - we need results

Many Chinese researchers note that if in the early 80s the level of corruption in China was insignificant, then already in the late 80s it spread to the administrative apparatus, serving as one of the reasons for the 1989 student unrest in Tiananmen Square. Subsequently, the phenomenon of corruption continued to grow, and has now reached the institutional level, posing a threat to social stability and the ruling position of the CCP. Today, corruption has become one of the most significant problems for the country's leadership, and the fight against it has been declared the duty of every communist.

The updated anti-corruption strategy of the CCP places special hopes on the implementation and development of the “incorruptible administration” system (through increasing the responsibility of managers, improving laws and through preventive measures, active personnel policies, as well as strengthening punitive and repressive measures against organized criminal groups).

However, corruption is difficult to treat even with radical Chinese means: although China leads the world in the number of death sentences carried out (according to existing estimates, the number of executions ranges from 5 to 12 thousand per year), crime cannot be cured. Moreover, the leaders of mafia groups are achieving higher and higher positions in power, and at the same time, an increasing number of officials are involved in criminal activities. The statistics are as follows: about 20 thousand officials of various levels and departmental affiliations are convicted annually in China for various crimes related to corruption.

It is not clear how to effectively combat this negativity.

Today all resources are mobilized for a “decisive battle.” Even gaming technologies are involved - a computer game called "Incorruptible Fighter" has been released, which allows users to destroy corrupt officials. During the first week, more than 100 thousand people downloaded the game, which immediately led to disruptions in the operation of the site that distributed its demo version as advertising. This, of course, will not solve the problem of corruption, but it clearly strengthens the “determination to resist.”

The hope for a bright, non-corrupt future is also supported by the successes of Comrade Bo in Chongqing. He has no equal yet, and the election of the fifth generation leadership in 2012 is just around the corner...

"Godmother" from the Xie clan