Thousands of Chinese Officials Have Defected, Taking Billions

More than 4,000 Chinese officials have fled China, taking with them tens of billions of dollars according to latest official state news.

China’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission revealed that for nearly 30 years, corrupt Chinese officials have escaped with a total of over US$50 billion, or an average of US$100 million per person, the communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily said on July 26 in their overseas edition.

In recent years, defections by senior high-level cadres have gradually increased, the report said. Gao Yan, a ministerial level official as former general manager of the State Power Corporation, and Gui Su, former director of Hainan Province Tax Department, were cited as examples.

The largest exodus of escaping officials—over 70 percent, according to related statistics—is made up of financial systems staff and persons in charge of state-owned enterprises, especially large and medium-sized ones.

The United States, Australia, and Canada are top destinations of immigration of high-level Chinese officials, while many lower-level officials have sought refuge in neighboring Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Philippines, Mongolia, and Russia.

While official Chinese media are only allowed to report on “corrupted officials” who are leaving China in droves, draining the country of billions, they fail to report on those who flee seeking freedom from oppression.

“It’s a jail for everyone. The cadres themselves don’t have the right to think and speak for themselves,” Zhang Kaichen, former director of the Shenyang Chinese Communist Party Committee’s Propaganda Department branch, told The Epoch Times in a May 17 interview. Zhang defected from China in 2009 and is now living in Flushing, New York, where he works at a menial job and hardly scrapes by.

Read the original Chinese article.

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