Editor’s note: The anti-corruption campaign surging through China is the most significant political event in the country’s recent history. Led by Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping and his deputy Wang Qishan, it has heavily targeted officials closely tied to Jiang Zemin, for years the Party’s behind-the-scenes godfather. These include the punishing takedowns of officials like Zhou Yongkang, Su Rong, Xu Caihou, and others. Along with the arrests of those “tigers,” as they are called in official parlance, the campaign has been swatting “flies”—officials at a lower rank who engage in corruption—across the country. This regular column documents Xi Jinping’s war against graft in the Party as events take place.
China’s antigraft campaign is often said to be merciless, but March 21 was the first time a relatively high-level official has been frogmarched away from his daughter’s wedding by inspectors.
Wang Debao, the vice mayor of Nanjing, a large southern Chinese city, thought the men standing around and smoking silently at the back of the room were probably guests of the groom’s family. But the “three to five men” turned out to be agents with the Jiangsu Commission for Discipline and Inspection Bureau.
When word got out that CCDI agents were present, several people excused themselves, and some even left their overcoats behind in their haste as they scurried away. The first wedding guest to head for the exit was a vice mayor named Zhang, who happened to recognize the men, who were from the Jiangsu Commission for Discipline and Inspection bureau.
Wang, however, was arrested so swiftly and without fuss that many guests didn’t even realize he was gone.
Chinese Internet users poked fun at Wang’s humiliating arrest. “Wang’s son-in-law probably wanted to climb the social ladder [with his marriage],” said a netizen. “Will he break off the engagement now?”
Many Nanjing officials have been investigated for corruption in the past two years, including municipal secretary Yang Weize.
***
