Chapter 155: Chaos in Shenyang (8)

The Special Committee had no choice but to swallow its pride and accept these quasi-corruption suspects, many of whom were quasi-scumbags, setting them up as examples of lenient treatment by the Committee. They widely publicized this across the nation and the world, declaring that the Committee would no longer pursue the widespread corrupt officials of the pre-apocalyptic era, with their actual treatment depending on their tangible contributions to protecting the nation and its people in the apocalypse.

This renewed the enthusiasm for serving the people among survivor bases established by former government officials. However, it also hardened the resolve of corrupt officials who, like Mayor Wu, had gone too far down the path of no return, pushing them to burn their bridges and go all the way.

This topic successfully sparked a debate in the National People's Congress (NPC) of the Special Committee. They ranged from astronomy to geography, from foreign countries to China, and from ancient times to the present. Someone even hypothesized about the future; realizing that the NPC was not the place for science fiction discussions, this futurist was criticized and instructed not to stray from the topic during debates.

The NPC issued an explanatory regulation for the "Anti-Corruption Law" with distinct Chinese characteristics. The regulation stated, "In view of the devastating blow dealt to humanity by the apocalypse, anyone capable of rescuing and leading ordinary people in survival may have their punishment mitigated."

The criterion for commuting crimes was further lowered to 100,000 yuan per person. Discovering that corrupt officials were actually rather poor at math, they specially calculated various conversion ratios: 100,000 yuan for 1 person, 200,000 yuan for 2 people, 1 million yuan to rescue 10 people, 10 million yuan for 1,000 people, and 100 million yuan for 10,000 people. For those with outstanding contributions, the standards were significantly relaxed.

Shortly after the calculations were completed, revisions had to be made because they found pre-apocalyptic data on fugitive corrupt officials: in less than thirty years, 4,000 officials had fled abroad, each embezzling an average of 100 million yuan, not to mention the assets that hadn't had time to be transferred.

Among the major corrupt officials caught and sentenced domestically, some embezzled several billion yuan yet received only a dozen years in prison, while other unlucky souls were executed by firing squad for stealing eight to ten million. Officials of this caliber would need to rescue hundreds of thousands or even millions of people to offset their crimes. It was hard to say whether such scum, who had already betrayed their country and people, might harbor ulterior motives once they wielded such power.

According to general patterns, what gets discovered is always just the tip of the iceberg, making the total number of corrupt officials and the losses they caused all the more horrifying.

The NPC argued endlessly and finally decided that it might be best to just let a certain portion of them go kick the bucket...

Intelligence from within the Qipanshan encirclement poured in continuously.

It turned out that the sequence of numbers mentioned by the grey-haired American was Mayor Wu's green card number, which had been processed single-handedly by an American named Carter Dan Green.

Before the apocalypse, the United States spared no effort in subverting China. Of the 4,000 fugitive corrupt officials, the majority were orchestrated by U.S. intelligence agencies, while a small minority fled to the U.S. on their own. With the American intelligence network, keeping tabs on these individuals was effortless.

Generally speaking, Americans warmly welcomed such people. For one, the flight of corrupt officials caused massive economic losses to China while bringing rich profits to the U.S. Secondly, it triggered social turmoil in China, deepening public hostility toward the government. Moreover, it provided the American government with much-needed confidential intelligence across governmental, military, and various other sectors.

For officials in crucial positions, the Americans even organized specialized task forces to lure them into defection.

The person Mayor Wu had rescued from prison on day one of the apocalypse—abandoning his wife and children in the process—was the contact assigned by the CIA to arrange Mayor Wu's escape logistics. He was an intelligence operative developed by the Americans years prior, a second-generation official who had been arrested after being exposed by the state. By that time, the state had already begun large-scale crackdowns on corruption, bribery, and crimes selling out national interests.

Mayor Wu's rank was originally too low, but he was spotted by that Chinese agent during a chance encounter and deemed a moldable talent—someone capable of bleeding his motherland dry. Through internal maneuvering—and with many higher-ranking corrupt officials already under their control—he was elevated to the mayor of a certain city in Northeast China.

The general process went like this: While studying in France, Mayor Wu's child participated in gambling with friends, lost a massive sum of money, and borrowed high-interest loans. Threatened by the underworld, Mayor Wu pulled out a staggering two million francs. At the time, Mayor Wu was merely a low-ranking section chief, but this act caught the attention of the CIA station in France—where all offspring of Chinese officials, according to their parents' ranks, were classified as targets of varying priority.

After sending someone to investigate the nearly forty-year-old government section chief Wu Nianfu, this Chinese agent quickly befriended him. Once intentions were mutually laid bare, Mayor Wu was promoted step by step through orchestrated efforts until he attained the seat of mayor.

The case against Mayor Wu's child's friends was later wiped clean by the CIA, and they were even given a sum of money as a reward.

Mayor Wu provided a vast amount of intelligence on China's northeastern border defense, and because he was in a position to carry massive wealth, he was listed as a priority target by the CIA. Carter Dan was the CIA agent responsible for him.

There were still numerous such individuals in China, waiting to be activated once the time was ripe.

Originally, even with corrupt elements, China's corruption had never reached such depths; after all, they had all been born and raised under the red flag.

Right before his planned escape abroad, the apocalypse arrived. Mayor Wu had always felt his child was utterly useless, and when the crisis struck, he was partying with his second and third mistresses. With a brief word of persuasion—"Once we get abroad, my child, we can have as many kids as you want!"—he cheerfully dumped his wife and children behind and fled with his mistresses.

"When a wall develops cracks, the flies swarm to lay maggots," Li Fengyi muttered as he read the report. "Imperialism's heart to destroy us has truly never died."

Politically naive, he could not comprehend why there were countries in the human world that would so unashamedly and nakedly attempt to subvert so many other nations.

Even if other nations had unreasonable phenomena, their thought process was not to help others improve and make the people's lives better, but rather to lure other countries into making more mistakes so as to completely subvert them—even if that process caused the deaths of numerous civilians.

If one were to claim that China's corruption phenomenon had nothing to do with the United States, how else could one explain why so many corrupt officials almost exclusively fled to the United States, never fearing that the U.S. would reject corrupt elements or grant citizenship to people who committed acts that would be considered absolute crimes in any country?

Right at the dawn of the reform and opening-up, they targeted China. China, equally naive in the face of a market economy, almost fell in love with and got hooked on this heroin-like, euphoric sensation. Coupled with the fact that the mistakes China made at the time were shocking enough to astonish the world, it would have been a wonder if an egg with cracks hadn't attracted flies.

Worse still, it set a benchmark for certain people: as long as you make trouble for China, we will take you in. The social ethos deteriorated day by day. Even when Steve Jobs died, some people actually knelt in kowtow, leaving one to wonder if they had ever knelt for their own parents' deaths.