Inside China

Chinese baby snatchers

A chilling tale of Chinese government officials “confiscating” babies in villages for big profits is gripping China. The maverick newspaper Caixin Century broke the story Monday on how local communist “family-planning” officials, acting as thuggish goons in Hunan province in central China, snatched more than a dozen babies, many of them first births for families, from hapless villagers. The officials then sold the abducted babies to state-funded “orphanages” and international adoption agencies for $3,000 each.

As the story went viral nationwide, similar horror tales emerged from other provinces as well, indicating a national pattern.

Since the 1970s, China’s “one child” policy has been rigidly enforced. The underlying premise for the population control measure is that the penalty for having a second child should be so severe that fear of punishment will deter couples from even trying to conceive again after the first birth.

In most cases, penalties include stiff fines, forced sterilization and institutionalized discrimination against the second child in education, medical care and housing.

In recent years, with China’s full-blown “socialist market economy,” many local communist cadres in charge of family planning have found a new way of carrying out the Communist Party policy — enriching themselves by selling “confiscated” babies, many of them ending up in the U.S. as adopted children.

Of the more than a dozen babies snatched and sold by local communist officials in Hunan, at least one girl — girls apparently predominate in the illicit trade — was positively identified as little Yang Ling, born July 24, 2004, who was “confiscated” and sold a year later. She now is in the United States with the American couple who adopted her.

The United States is the leading destination for many of these adducted children. According to the State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues, more Chinese babies are adopted in the U.S. than any country in the world, many of them classified as “orphans.” In 2010, 26 percent of all adoption cases in the United State originated in China, followed far behind by Ethiopia and Russia.

Shenzhen mayor sentenced

Xu Zongheng, the mayor of Shenzhen — China’s fastest-growing city for the past 30 years with a population 14 million and a leading manufacturing center of the world — was sentenced to death “with two years’ reprieve” Monday for taking bribes valued at $5.1 million. The reprieve is a loophole in the Communist legal system that has allowed many high-ranking officials to avoid the ultimate sentence.

However, the case is widely viewed by China watchers as the tip of an iceberg in China’s corruption-riddled culture. It is peculiar because the official estimate of the value of the bribes taken by Xu is far less than most observers suspect. The common view is that the mayor pocketed closer to $340 million, mainly from giant corporations and government entities in need of help with rezoning, licensing, trade privileges, government contracting and career promotion.

However, the large-scale bribery may not be the critical reason for Xu’s fall from grace, because similar cases are not uncommon in China’s widespread corruption lore. His undoing likely was related to the last charge against him: tampering with the communist state’s career promotion system. The Communist Party Central Committee’s absolute requirement is that all official personnel appointments be carried out through a rigid process of internal party screening. The court case made clear that Xu sold government office positions to the highest bidders in violation of party rules.

The sentence was also peculiar. Year after year, according to Amnesty International, China executes more people than the rest of the world combined, many for minor offenses. Yet for egregious crimes committed by high-ranking communist officials, a death penalty that is sure to be carried out is extremely rare. In the past three years, 18 officials above the vice-minister level received death sentences with two years’ reprieve, including the former chairman of China’s largest state-owned enterprise SINOPEC, the general manager of the country’s nuclear industry, the deputy chief justice of China’s Supreme Court, the vice mayor of Beijing, the chief of the department in charge of food and drug safety, and various chiefs of provincial legislatures. None was executed and all are likely to walk out much sooner.

China’s best actor

Lately, human rights abuses and political repression in China have dramatically increased, yet China’s boyish-looking 69-year-old Premier Wen Jiabao recently was busy telling the world how much China needs openness and democracy and trying to keep alive the hope that China’s leadership has formidable reformers such as Mr. Wen after all.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Wen excited an international audience in Malaysia by espousing his firm belief in political reform in China, with harsh words toward some of the repressive measures within his own government.

Yet, most Chinese remain unconvinced. Renowned writer Yu Jie recently published a book calling the premier “China’s best actor,” with a strong indictment against Mr. Wen for his hypocrisy and empty words that the author said are aimed at deceiving the world.

Mr. Wen is prone to bouts of crying when facing national crises, and he often speaks outside lines of party orthodoxy when the party is facing serious problems. Yet, more than others in the Chinese communist upper echelon in recent memory, Mr. Wen contributed greatly to the longevity of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule, mainly because of his extraordinary ability to act appropriately when the situation demands.

A career party hack, Mr. Wen is the ultimate political chameleon, and he is the only Politburo member in the entire 90-year history of the Chinese Communist Party to serve and survive the reigns of four consecutive Communist Party general secretaries without being purged, even though two of his former bosses, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, were purged and become virtual nonpersons in the country.

In February 2008, while dutifully espousing his desire to see democracy in China, Mr. Wen penned a hit piece in the People’s Daily swearing that “we must keep a firm grasp on the basic principles of the Party in the initial stage of socialism, without wavering, for 100 years.”

• Miles Yu’s column appears Thursdays. He can be reached at mmilesyu@gmail.com.