Former China defence ministers convicted of corruption in latest purge of military leaders
Ex-defence ministers, Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, among the most severe sentences in a years-long purge
If you are the authoritarian, dictatorial, type, then you’d quite like all your underlings to be corrupt. For when you do want to get rid of them you’ve got the mechanism right there. Plus, hanging a few scares all.
The idea just doesn’t work so well if all are honest.
Could we use David Lammy and Yvette Cooper as our initial examples?
There hasn’t been a gallows built that could take Lammy.
Thought suspended death sentence just meant hanging.
Boo.
I don’t think Chairman Pooh has any qualms about executing the innocent.
Yep. They don’t need a reason.
“Forget it, Jake, it’s China.”
“The idea just doesn’t work so well if all are honest.”
This is never going to be a limiting issue given they are all politicians.
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights.
When a dictator condemns a minister for “corruption” you have to wonder if that’s really the case, or if it’s that the minister is conspiring. Or thought to be.
Which makes it yet another struggle for power.
It’s the Al Capone move. You need to get rid of them, so you build the case you can build rather than the case you can’t.
‘among’
???
So what happens in the intermediate two years ?
Are they set free and then one day a letter turns up: Please report to Huangshin Prison for execution. ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_sentence_with_reprieve
Basically the death part is a suspended sentence, though you still go to prison. Further convictions before the reprieve and it’s curtains. Last the two years out as a good boy, and the reprieve automatically converts your sentence to something more palatable like life imprisonment.
It’s like how you can have a death penalty pardoned or commuted, but instead it’s built in to the sentencing itself with a fixed timing rather than a separate procedure performed later on administrative whim.
I should think the good behaviour being encouraged includes no “hung for a sheep as a lamb” spilling of beans, and no revenge plots by families and factions.
Quite a refined tool from a culture steeped in power games and corruption. Indeed, it might even be a self-protection mechanism by those worried about their own fall from grace. Mercy for you, mercy for me.
Indeed. I’m actually surprised at the 2 year bit. I think it’s quite standard and not special to this case, it just feels a weird length bearing in mind anyone given this sentence is in for a long stretch anyway. Anyone know why they don’t make it suspended for, let’s say, 5 years?
Or simply just “suspended”. Why put a time limit on it when, save for a major regime change, these guys are never going to leave prison.
An alien looking down on the world from their starship in 1370 is asked by their co-pilot which culture will be number one when they come back in 700 years. ‘China’ she says. The co-pilot bets on Turkey.
Predictions schmictions.