Public lives, secret lives

Stories of how public officials get rich through corruption have kept one novelist writing furiously, Li Na and Wen Chihua report.

Zhou Meisen, a sharp dresser and an unconventional artist, once had many influential contacts in positions of power. Some of them are still in power. Some are in prison.

"They are in prison because there are no restrictions on the use of power. That has ruined a lot of officials," says the 62-year-old Zhou.

He is regarded as one of the three major writers of anti-corruption novels in China, the other two being Zhang Ping and Lu Tianming.

His newly published work In the Name of People and the 55-episode TV series of the same name present audiences with a picture of Chinese officialdom in the ongoing anti-corruption campaign.

"The novel not only unfolds the complexity, difficulty and versatility of the battle against corruption. Rather, Zhou makes a thorough inquiry of what makes a politician's soul twisted and strained," say the literary critic He Shaojun.

In the book, Zhou creates a crook, humble and low-profile. A man who eats mostly noodles every day.

"Who could image the amount of bribes he takes," Zhou says. "He takes a few hundred million yuan in bribes, and yet he dares not to spend a penny. Why? That's what I want to explore.

"Certainly, the characters all are drawn from real life," says Zhou.

His crooks are a combination of real deputy state leaders including Zhou Yongkang, who was a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee when arrested in 2014 for his severe disciplinary violations, and Xu Caihou, former vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission, who was expelled from the CPC in 2014 for graft.

At a cost of some 120 million yuan ($17 million), the TV series began airing on Tuesday. The program shows signs of the lifting of the ban on programs that deal with corruption and violent crimes. Over the past 10 years, the broadcast of such programs was prohibited during prime time, but this one sailed through the approval process and was widely praised.

In In the Name of the People, Zhou shows the political ecology of official circles. He notes that corrupt officials have their own speech codes. They speak differently in front of and behind the public. They use the term "for the people" repeatedly, and then actually harm people "in the name of people".

Gao Yuliang, a corrupt official in the series, is the secretary of the politics and law committee in a province where he has been in office for many years. The prototype of the character was an official Zhou is quite familiar with. When creating the character, he portrayed him just like one of his brothers: "Before he took bribes, we were intimate friends in private, drinking and talking about life together."

Zhou says there are various reasons for the corruption of an official, weakness of character, lures in an official career, traps set by other people, etc. "But actually, the ultimate reason is the unchecked development of human greed, with the power being not supervised effectively," he says.

As one of China's most celebrated political novelists, Zhou was close to power at one point in his life.

To gain some insight into official life for his writing, Zhou took a temporary post as a deputy secretary general in the city government of Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, in 1994. Although the job only lasted one year, he found that he enjoyed all kinds of privileges.

As a government official, he thought he would be a civil servant and should serve the citizens. But he found that he was treated like a master: Every task, from as trivial as opening doors to the completion of important assignments, would be done for him by his subordinates.

"I was just a common man before I took this job, and I had no idea of what privilege was like until I became a deputy secretary general in the city government."

At the moment, Zhou realized power was a magic wand.

"In the government, powerful officials can get whatever they want, and sometimes get it done in a minute, just by making a phone call."

Unrestrained power is like an aphrodisiac that could make a man easily addicted, and arouse his desire for more power.

Zhou's experience in Xuzhou became a turning point in his creation of political novels. He believes a personal perspective enables him to present to readers a true picture of officialdom today.

Zhou published his first novel, Perishing Land, in 1983. His early works were generally "digging historical materials from the humanistic angle and writing about history from the individual perspective".

In 1994 when Zhou was in office, China was busy building up the country's infrastructure. Xuzhou was planning on paving its third ring road. However, the local people did not understand the value of road construction and complained a lot. Some lodged lawsuits against major leaders of the city.

Zhou discovered that reform causes hardship at various levels. That changed his literary outlook, and he published his first realistic novel Right Road in the World inspired by this event.

The novel proved a sensation after it was adapted into series and broadcast on TV. But it also brought troubles to Zhou. Local officials tried to sue him jointly to force him to alter the novel. Zhou refused, arguing "What I wrote is a novel, not reportage. They can do whatever they want to do."

Zhou went on to create political novels such as Supreme Interest, Absolute Power and Public Prosecution of the State.

In the Name of People shows a deep reflection on the fight against corruption, such as the complicated relationship between combating corruption and fostering economic development as well as the traditional code of conduct.

"Chinese people like to say 'Don't forget old friends when you become rich and powerful'. This is an important view in our traditional culture. However, this translates to 'When a man gets to the top, all his friends and relations get there with him'."

Zhou Meisen's latest novel In the Name of People probes into what corrupts a politician's soul.

In the Name of People has been adapted into a 55-episode TV series of the same title, featuring actors such as Wu Gang and Lu Yi. Photos By Li Na And Provided To China Daily

(China Daily 03/31/2017 page18)