Novelization of a Scandal Has Beijing Agog

The plot of “Wrath of Heaven” would do any Hollywood screenwriter proud. Full of corruption and intrigue, the novel chronicles the investigation of a high-ranking Chinese official snarled in a web of deceit, bribery and graft. The scandal is so serious that an associate kills himself. Or is it murder?

The 492-page potboiler, written by a pseudonymous author, is a hot item in the Chinese capital these days--and not just because it’s selling briskly. “Wrath of Heaven,” which has incurred the wrath of the government, is also technically illegal, banned by official censors. Its crime: containing more fact, apparently, than fiction.

Readers here instantly recognize it as a thinly veiled account of the highest-profile corruption scandal to hit the Communist Party since it barreled to power in 1949. The debacle--involving up to $2.2 billion in misappropriated funds from the Beijing municipal government--brought down onetime Beijing party boss Chen Xitong, the Politburo member who two years ago became the most senior official to be stripped of his titles in a corruption probe.

Now, Chen awaits his fate as thousands of his former constituents read the spiced-up version of his alleged misdeeds. (The book is also available in Chinese bookstores around Los Angeles.) As it spins toward its conclusion, the real-life tale has been almost as dramatic, with a supporting cast that features a mistress on the run and a weeping prosecutor.

Rumors are flying that the verdict on Chen will be delivered by top officials soon, most likely in advance of an important Communist Party Congress this fall at which Chinese officials will jockey for position in the hierarchy for the first time since “paramount leader” Deng Xiaoping died in February.

The outcome of Chen’s case is twisting in Beijing’s often unpredictable political winds, analysts say. The case comes at a particularly sensitive moment, as government leaders, including President Jiang Zemin, try to promote a widely publicized anti-corruption drive, the smooth hand-over of Hong Kong and their individual power bases--all at the same time.

Political wrangling over Chen’s fate--and the alleged efforts by him and his cronies to cover their tracks--apparently has already delayed a verdict for months.

“By rights, Chen should have been prosecuted long since,” said Roderick MacFarquhar, a China scholar at Harvard University.

The case broke open in April 1995, when Chen resigned from his post as secretary of the Beijing Communist Party in one of the most spectacular political downfalls in recent Chinese history.

Chen was implicated in a huge corruption scandal after his protege, Vice Mayor Wang Baosen, killed himself on a remote hillside upon learning of an investigation into the city ledgers. (Not too many in Beijing believe that Wang’s death, unlike the case in “Wrath of Heaven,” was anything other than suicide.)

Complete details of the scandal still have not been released--hence the popularity of the novel, written, sources say, by a nonparty official with access to previously undisclosed information. Observers speculate that the scandal involved embezzlement, kickbacks from a huge Hong Kong-financed development project near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and a massive pyramid fund-raising scheme in the city of Wuxi.

The amount of money missing from Beijing municipal coffers is breathtaking: $2.2 billion, 60 times greater than the original official estimate of $37 million. Investigators suspect that more than a dozen members of the city government accepted bribes and skimmed development funds.

Much of the money, investigators say, fed Wang and Chen’s “dissolute and extravagant” lifestyles, for which the party’s Central Committee has condemned them since the beginning of the scandal.

Chen, the former Beijing mayor who declared martial law during the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square, allegedly accepted gifts while in office and showered his mistress with presents and homes--including one in Hong Kong, where some say she has fled.

The current dilemma, however, seems to be whether Chen, who is reportedly under house arrest in Inner Mongolia, ought to face criminal charges, entailing imprisonment, or an administrative charge of dereliction of duty--a slap on the wrist by comparison, without the threat of major jail time.

Making Chen an example and meting out a severe punishment would help prove the central government’s stated commitment to rooting out corruption, viewed by a majority of Chinese in one survey as one of the nation’s most serious ills.

“The corruption issue has long been a problem for Jiang,” said Stanley Rosen, a China expert at USC. “He is pushing this ‘spiritual civilization,’ anti-corruption cause and has to net some big tigers.”

The danger is that discrediting Chen would likewise discredit the whole top tier of officialdom. The leadership wants to avoid such a poor image--fueled by “Wrath of Heaven”--and particularly now, weeks away from the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule. But it is too late in many citizens’ eyes.

“I believe what it tells is true,” said Liu Li, 34, a state employee who found “Wrath of Heaven” both “interesting and exciting.”

“It’s hard to imagine how a person could just make up all of those stories” about corrupt practices in government, Liu said.

Many Beijingers believe that Chen’s fate is more closely tied to a behind-the-scenes factional struggle for political supremacy than to issues of the Communist Party’s image.

The president, as the former mayor of Shanghai, has been accused of steadily promoting allies from his old power base at the expense of veteran Beijing politicos such as Chen so he can shore up his chances of becoming Deng’s successor.

One of Jiang’s major rivals, Chen was popular in the capital for improving its crumbling infrastructure and strewing its landscape with nonstop development. Ironfisted and aggressive, he was also known for going his own way and ignoring the central leadership.

“Nobody really believes that [the Chen case] was all about corruption. Power struggle--it’s pure power struggle,” said Beijing resident Li Yongbo, 37. “Chen Xitong refused to comply with Jiang Zemin, with the Shanghai faction. That’s the real reason why he was purged.”

Punishing Chen harshly would further underline Jiang’s position as president and undermine his opponents, analysts say.

“I think Jiang feels he’ll benefit from having Chen’s head on a platter”--before the 15th Party Congress, to strengthen his grip on power, but after the Hong Kong hand-over, to prevent any hint of instability or any stain on China’s image, said a Western diplomat based here.

“This would seem an opportune time for Jiang to move, particularly since he is trying to carve out a persona for himself which sets him apart from Deng,” Rosen said.

And what may have been one of Jiang’s biggest obstacles to coming down hard on Chen is now gone. Former Beijing Mayor Peng Zhen, termed one of China’s Eight Immortals for his role in the 1949 Communist takeover and his enduring influence, died in April, leaving Chen bereft of a key sponsor.

“Peng Zhen was sort of the king of Beijing, and he brought Chen up,” the diplomat said. With Peng dead, few forceful voices remain to speak up on Chen’s behalf and shield him from a stiff sentence.

More than two years after the probe began, it is unclear whether the investigation into Chen’s alleged crimes has uncovered everything. Prosecutors have found it hard going. Just how hard became evident in a remarkable scene last year that rivaled anything in “Wrath of Heaven” for pure drama.

In April 1996, Luo Ji, the man in charge of the Chen investigation, appeared on national television to describe his work as head of the newly formed anti-corruption unit in China’s counterpart to the U.S. attorney general’s office. And as he recited the difficulties he and his staff faced, from lack of personnel to “interference” from unnamed sources, Luo began to cry.

The investigation into Chen and Wang, he said, had been particularly tough, because Chen and his cronies had carefully hidden their trail by changing bank accounts, altering contracts and harmonizing their testimony.

“Many people in the [anti-corruption] administration have to sleep and eat in the office all day and all night,” Luo said tearfully of his bureau’s travails. “It is like fighting a war.”