Cracking down on corruption

THE TRUE measure of the impact of the anti-corruption campaign launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping we found not in Chinese media or the Internet (already severely curtailed by Chinese censors), but in a fancy restaurant called the Lan Club.

Visiting Beijing last year upon the invitation of Filipino-Chinese businessmen on the occasion of China’s National Day, we were invited to lunch at the Lan Club in the LG Tower in Beijing’s business district. Hosted by Carlos Chan, whose Liwayway Group established the Oishi snack food empire in China and elsewhere in Asia, the lunch was also attended by retired CNN bureau chief Jaime FlorCruz and his wife. In fact, it was FlorCruz who chose the venue.

At once, we could see why he would choose such a place for the lunch. The Lan Club was designed by renowned designer Philippe Starck, who bucked the trend of minimalist interiors in favor of over-the-top embellishments. An Internet critique described the place as “part mad house, part

Picasso nightmare, and part Addams family retro,” with ornate furniture and fixtures featured not just in the public areas but even in the restrooms.

But the reason I remember the place, a cavernous space divided into several dining rooms, bars and banquet spaces, was that what should have been a bustling lunch scene was empty, save for our group and a scattering of small groups of diners.

Someone in our group explained that “some months back, this place used to be always full of people that it would be difficult to book a room.” But in the wake of the anticorruption campaign of the government, bureaucrats and military officials and even private businessmen had become leery of calling attention to themselves by patronizing such a high-profile establishment. And so we found ourselves wandering the many nooks and crannies of the Lan Club, standing stark and silent while we roamed its rooms like children playing hide-and-seek in an abandoned mansion.

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A COMMENTARY in yesterday’s “World View” by Minxin Pei explains that the crackdown on officials suspected of corrupt practices is but part of Xi Jinping’s “goal of consolidating Communist Party rule in China by strengthening his personal authority, reinvigorating domestic repression, and pursuing an assertive foreign policy.”

We Filipinos already know what this “assertive foreign policy” consists of, most recently symbolized by those huge orange dredgers held up by buoys that had been laid down on the seabed of disputed territory in the West Philippine Sea. The real reason and utility of those dredgers are still unknown, but speculations on the reason for their being in our territory range from their being used to suck up black sand from the seabed, to harvesting minerals, even possibly oil.

While the people we talked with during that Beijing visit insisted that China sought nothing but “peaceful coexistence” with its neighbors, including the Philippines, no one mentioned the part played by foreign policy in the move to consolidate Xi’s hold on power.

Part of the overall strategy of consolidation, writes Minxin Pei, is the imposition of a “muscular” foreign policy. And key to enforcing that policy, he says, is ensuring a military loyal to the president and ready to put into action the State’s “aggressive tactics” in the region. This explains the crackdown on abusive military officials, many of whom are believed to have bribed their way to their positions, and the ensuing shyness of China’s officials from showing off their newly-minted riches.

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DEPENDING on the newspaper you read, or the headlines you believe, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines is either supportive of the use of marijuana for medical purposes, or staunchly against it on “moral” grounds.

A deeper reading of the news stories would show that the CBCP is both supportive of medical marijuana use and against marijuana per se.

In a statement, the CBCP said it was all for the use of prohibited substances, including marijuana, for compassionate reasons, specifically to ease the discomfort of the terminally ill. But it also said that it would be “morally irresponsible” to allow the use of marijuana for nonmedical reasons, specifically for leisure or relaxation.

In short, you have to be dying before you can get a toke while freed from worrying about narco agents.

The “medical marijuana” bill has been filed specifically to address the problems of people suffering from chronic pain or terminal illness. But two medical associations have formalized their public stance against the bill.

I don’t know the exact reasons why the physicians’ groups oppose medical marijuana use, but they should at least separate their moral or judgmental reasons from scientific and palliative facts.

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FOR many years, people suffering from chronic pain and members of their family have decried the stringent rules governing the use of narcotics in this country, even if warranted by medical reasons.

In many instances, they say, doctors treating the dying and chronically ill would deliberately under-dose their patients, keeping pain at bay but not entirely eliminating it. Part of the reason, say these patients, may be due to “moral reservations,” with doctors wary of their patients becoming “addicted” to pain killers. But if a person is already on the verge of death or debilitation, argue their loved ones, what does it matter if they do become addicts? At least they would die happy—and pain free.