As the title of the Olympic torch relay, “the Journey of Harmony” now somewhat ironically reminds us, one of China’s prime aims for the Olympic Games was to show the world an image of a modern, harmonious communist society.  President Hu Jintao has adopted as his mantra the development of a "harmonious society". And o ver the past few years, the authorities have put a new emphasis on social welfare, after years of breakneck growth left many struggling to keep up with an increasingly expensive society.   Perhaps the highest profile victim of this change of emphasis is Chen Liangyu, Shanghai’s former Communist Party boss, who, has just been sentenced to 18 years on corruption charges. Duncan Hewitt writes from Shanghai: 

Bespectacled, earnest-looking and apparently mild-mannered, Chen Liangyu seemed an unlikely figure to fall victim to an anti-corruption campaign.   But with the 18-year sentence handed down by a court in the northern city of Tianjin, the former member of China’s ruling Politburo has now become the most senior Communist Party official to be jailed in a decade.   Chen was detained two years ago, accused of involvement in the misuse of some five billion dollars from Shanghai’s municipal social security fund.

He was said to be at the heart of a web of corruption and bribery involving his political allies and local businessmen, centered on the awarding of contracts for infrastructure projects and the allocation of land for real estate development.   In court, the 61-year-old, now looking gray and gaunt, was found guilty of abuse of power and taking bribes; according to earlier state media reports these totaled some three hundred thousand dollars (though his brother is alleged to have benefited by far more through the awarding of land contracts).

Few doubt the seriousness of the corruption involved, which has led to the conviction of around 20 officials and business people (including Chen’s former secretary, the head of the Shanghai’s labor and welfare bureau, senior land bureau officials and the director of the city’s Formula One race-track).   Yet many analysts believe there was a political dimension to Mr Chen’s downfall too: he's reported to have clashed with the country’s top leaders, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, over their plans to cool economic growth – particularly soaring real estate prices - and redistribute more of the wealth of the big cities to poorer parts of the country, as part of their campaign to promote a ‘harmonious society.’  

Chen, who was seen as a representative of the ‘Shanghai faction’ associated with former President Jiang Zemin (the man who presided over China’s headlong economic growth of the 1990s), is believed to have argued in Politburo meetings that it would be dangerous for the economy if Shanghai were forced to rein in the double-digit GDP growth it had achieved every year for more than a decade.   And though he pledged, when he became Shanghai’s Mayor in 2002, that he would always ‘stand on the side of the people’, his period in office was characterized by a frenzy of real estate speculation, which saw foreign capital pour in and average house prices more than treble between 2002 and 2005, leaving many ordinary residents priced out of the city centre, and creating much public dissatisfaction.

Following his arrest in 2006, salacious stories about Mr Chen’s private life – he’s rumored to have had up to a dozen mistresses and to have used his power to seduce a string of women – began to appear in China’s official media, reinforcing the impression that powerful rivals were determined to discredit him.

Since then, some things have changed.   Senior political figures from other parts of China have been ‘parachuted’ into Shanghai to run the local Communist Party and its anti-corruption watchdog, in a break with the city’s past tradition of promoting leaders from local district governments - who, like Mr Chen, were more likely to have amassed cliques of local ‘cronies’.   And after a major reshuffle last year, China’s central leadership is now made up of politicians who publicly pledge allegiance to Premier Wen’s calls for a harmonious society (though the leadership is still seen as containing factions, with a delicate balance between leaders with experience in the go-getting economies of China’s south-east, and those from more traditional backgrounds allied to President Hu Jintao and the Communist Youth League.)

Shanghai’s leaders now also parrot the central government’s latest line, promising low-cost housing for those left behind by the real estate market.   Some of the more extreme symbols of the Chen Liangyu era – including a plan to build a giant wheel a la London Eye on the city’s river bank - have also been shelved.   And Zhou Zhengyi, the corrupt real estate tycoon whose gangster-like treatment of local residents provoked the protests which first brought Shanghai’s real estate problems to central government attention in 2003, has been sent back to jail for sixteen years, after initially being given a relatively light three year jail term while Chen was still in power.  

Still, even Zhou Zhengyi has never been charged on issues directly related to the real estate allegations against him.   What’s more, despite a series of government measures, property prices in many Chinese cities still grew by some ten per cent last year.   And the fact that Chen Liangyu was given ‘only’ 18 years in jail, when others implicated in the social security fund case have received suspended death sentences or life imprisonment, may also reinforce the opinion of many that the most senior officials will still dodge the harshest punishments.   Indeed, one of the three charges against Chen- dereliction of duty - was rejected by the court, something highly unusual in a case of such national significance in China, which may imply that he still has powerful voices pleading on his behalf.   (Chinese television’s coverage of his sentencing was also relatively low-key, the report coming near the end of the half-hour national news bulletin)  

The case may still have done little to reassure many ordinary people about the honesty of their leaders:   “There’s no point investigating officials,” one Shanghai resident said with a shrug. “We have a saying in China -- out of every ten officials, eleven are corrupt!”   Still, he, like not a few people in Shanghai, seemed to retain a grain of sympathy for Chen Liangyu, suggesting that he was at least in part a victim of political rivalry, and was by no means the worst type of corrupt official: “At least he helped to build up this city,” he added, “and he didn’t take so much of the money for himself.”