President Xi Jinping’s great campaign is the struggle against corruption in China. It is true that, under the pretext of fighting “corruption,” he got rid of enemies and critics. But in general, most foreign media are persuaded that he achieved some results.
Data, however, refuse to cooperate. Transparency International publishes the widely used Corruption Perception Index (CPI). In 2012, when Xi launched his anti-corruption campaign, China ranked 80th out of 174 countries for its effectiveness in fighting corruption. In 2019, it had dropped to the 84th place. The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicator’s Corruption Control Index also signals no improvement in China’s level of corruption since 2012.
The data may seem counter-intuitive to those who visit China with some regularity or discuss corruption with Chinese colleagues and friends. The average Chinese would tell you that Xi’s anti-corruption campaign did achieve some results. There is a widespread impression that local police officers, at least in some provinces, are becoming slightly less venal in asking for bribes. And the most despised form of corruption in China is by medical doctors and public health bureaucrats, who ask for money to shorten the long waiting time for medical examinations and treatments. Some of them have been arrested, and there is a general feeling that the situation in the health sector has improved.
In a pastoral letter, Mgr. Vives calls for Roman Catholics to denounce the “hidden” persecution against Christians, and defend religious freedom for all faiths.
by PierLuigi Zoccatelli
Situated between France and Spain, Andorra is a small nation whose co-princes are the President of France and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Urgell, in Catalonia, whose diocese includes the whole territory of the country.
For the time of Easter 2021, the current Bishop of Urgell, Archbishop Mgr. Joan-Enric Vives i Sicília, issued a pastoral letter on religious liberty, published on May 8 in the Spanish journal Ecclesia. (Mgr. Vives received in 2010 from Pope Benedict XVI the title of Archbishop ad personam).
The letter mostly deals with the persecution of Christians throughout the world, and makes three point. First, that we so frequently “hear the news of Christians murdered in so many places in the world” that “we run the risk of becoming accustomed to it. A kind of routine has been established whereby murders of this kind are no longer news.”
