Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2011. It reports news from that month about a Chinese mayor’s death sentence, including roughly 3 million euros in bribes and the possibility of commuting the sentence to life imprisonment.
News broke today that the mayor of a Chinese city has been sentenced. He has been sentenced to death for taking bribes from construction companies and changing development plans in return.
According to the Spanish newspaper ABC, the amount he received illegally could be around 3 million euros. Compared with the money some mayors and planning councillors in Spain have pocketed, that’s small change next to our Spanish officials, with the difference that in Spain, after a few months in prison (if some of them ever set foot in one), they can stroll calmly through the streets.
China’s policy is very strict on this kind of crime, and this mayor has been lucky: because he confessed to his crimes, his death sentence can be changed to life imprisonment, which is still too harsh a sentence.
The irony is that it should be neither one extreme nor the other. While in some countries the punishment is excessive, in others, Spain in particular, it’s laughable, and those responsible even get the chance to write a book about how they did it without any trouble at all.
China is not the ideal example to follow for this kind of crime, but other countries could well consider raising their penalties “just a little,” and so prevent “white-collar thieves” from appearing again in the future.
China boasts of having more than seven times the population of the United States and five times less crime of any kind, and with that country’s exemplary sentences, I’d think about it at least twelve times before committing a crime.
See also: Chinese banking arrives in Spain
Featured image: Pauloleong2002, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
