..
..
The story goes something like this: More so than other parts of the Party apparatus, PLA promotions have, in the decades before Xi came to power, been bought from PlA senior echelons. This involves ambitious and connected soldiers spending their more junior years … (2/11)
… having to spend up big to wine, dine and buy their way up, often relying on civilian funder patrons expecting that if the solider(s) they fund are ultimately promoted, they get a share of the loot that would come with becoming senior in the PLA. And what is that loot? (3/11)
The loot mainly came in the forms of (i) payments from the next generations of PLA officers wanting to buy their way up; (ii) a range of profitable businesses where heavier duty guns than those available for public security officials are needed, such as smuggling … (4/11)
… and wholesale level drug trafficking. Pilfering from military programmes (including weapons programmes) formed a relatively small and typically low level parts of the loot: why risk something where the chain of accountability is relatively clear and the punishment … (5/11)
… is heavy compared with the murkier world of “alternative” business ventures where there are always other scapegoats, or receiving bribes in return for supporting internal promotions where money is hard to trace. Then Xi came to power and went on his … (6/11)
… anti-corruption and anti-organised crime drive. As an ethical move, it’s hard to quibble with it. But for the ranks of newly senior PLA officers who bankrupted themselves and borrowed lots of money from funders/supporters buying their way up, they lost … (7/11)
… the revenue stream from junior officers trying to buy promotion. And the loss of that revenue also made it harder to pay off organised crime partners in various “alternative” business fields. This left the Xi-era senior PLA officers increasingly strapped … (8/11)
… of funds, and with funders/supporters who also forked out money betting on payoffs from these officers’ promotion breathing down their necks. That’s where various versions of the story that was told to me by private bankers ended. For them it ended with laments … (9/11)
… about loss of business from an “asset management” perspective. But in retrospect (though I must stress i have heard nothing on this and it’s pure deduction), it’s not a stretch to think that Xi-era senior officers, now cash strapped and facing threats from … (10/11)
… “interesting” characters demanding returns on their “investments”, could have been pressured into resorting to higher risk ways of making money. And to that extent, more fundamental pilfering from military programmes could have become a desperate last resort. (11/11)
..
..
..
weehingthong 