“The determination of the central authorities to fight corruption is entirely evident in my death sentence. When Wang Huaizhong was about to die he said: Looks like the central authorities are serious about anti-corruption this time. My death sentence once again demonstrates the determination of the central authorities against corruption.”

The Publicity Department would be proud of that paragraph. Perhaps it is.

Somehow, I can't exactly locate the remorse. Self-pity, yes. Remorse, no. Penitence, absolutely absent.

Is this document a hoax? If it is real, then it is a frightening exposition by a top official who asks "why me?" and his only advice to others is, essentially, keep your head down and stay in the no. 2 position. (Wasn't there a joke in this vein circulating years ago about why Col. Qaddafi, autocratic ruler of Libya, didn't call himself Generalissimo? - he claimed that generals are assassinated, but colonels are not a target.)

Is corruption so widespread that everyone from the no. 2 spot on down can collect the cash and avoid the gallows, hence just avoid the no. 1 spot and all will go well? This alleged document would seem to so preach.

In the words of one of the comic characters in one of my kids' favorite movies ("Ernest Goes to Jail"), "There's somethin' bad wrong here, Bobby."

1. He never killed anyone directly.
2. There's too much responsiblity in his position.

Man, I would not want to have been this guy's lawyer if these are his best defences.

I'm not convinced this is real, either. It reads like it was written by a high school student, and not a particularly good high school student at that. Sure, he's a biology major, but even so, shouldn't a Fudan graduate be a little more eloquent than that? Or at the very least, have a little more depth?

10 June? July?

agree with cat. very unlikely this was composed in its entirety by Zheng. If it did come from his condemned hand then the conspiracy theorist in me suspects whether he was executed at all. Told to disappear with a new identity. win-win for everyone.

[Fixed. That's the second time this month. -JM]

I'm pretty sure this is a hoax. For one thing, it contains a major error. Zheng was not sentenced to death for dereliction of duty. He was sentenced to death for accepting bribes. He got seven years for dereliction of duty. It is unclear when he will serve them.
OK, I suppose he may have been carried away by his rhetoric.
The point of the hoax/parody is surely to point out subtly that even if Zheng was guilty, he just did what everybody else did. Lots of people lower down the chain do appalling things which lead to people being killed, but get away with it because they are not in the firing line, and lots of people at his level take much bigger bribes, but get away with it because they are in non-lethal positions.

I agree with Richard. It's an obvious spoof. Just look at the following:

"When Wang Huaizhong was about to die he said: Looks like the central authorities are serious about anti-corruption this time. My death sentence once again demonstrates the determination of the central authorities against corruption."

The whole point is that killing Wang did absolutely nothing to stop corruption, and that killing Zheng demonstrates "the determination of the central government" to continue doing absolutely nothing. Just read it. If Wang's execution represented a real change, Zheng's execution would not have followed.

"Haven't I already received my retribution?" If this doesn't make you laugh at how ridiculous Zheng's execution is - how it totally fails to compensate victims or reform society on any level, I suggest you have little sense of irony.

This is simple mockery. The author is openly ridiculing the government.

"The determination of the central authorities to fight corruption is entirely evident in my death sentence." LOL. Merciless. Absolutely true.

Since I'm firing off fragmentary emails of my lunch break, please allow me to add that I also agree with Todd: there is no remorse.

This is precisely the point. If you read the letter, it is openly accusing the PRC government of being systemically corrupt from bottom to top, and being so shameless that it will kill if necessary to continue prevaricating about it - even though everyone already knows it is lying. No remorse.

The letter asks: what kind of atrocity will it take for this government to feel compelled to tell the truth? It responds: it doesn't matter who dies - this government will never answer to the people.

There is no remorse for any of the victims of the system, former perp Zheng included. The point is that he wasn't the problem, and everybody knows it.

When I read the letter, the writer's rage cut right through me, and the satire spoke with the conviction of total disdain.

Or maybe that's the cardboard talking. Back to lunch!

Cheers

Actually, "no. 2 position" is even more dangerous, if you checkup the long list of corrupt officials prosecuted in recent years, the pattern is, they are mostly on the "no. 2 position". One reason for this is that the "no. 2 position" is who actually did the dirty job for their superiors and themselves, just like AG and scooter libby, and when the "sky become cloudy", they are scapegoats to be burned. Here's my 2c.

First off, you've got to understand that Chinese government is unlike DPRK where Kim is essentially the king and also different from itself 30 years ago. It IS a authoritarian state but running on a huge political machine governing a huge country, no absolute power now in one single person's grip, instead, the Party's will has to prevail, and to ensure that they need to take public's opion (even to an extent manipulated) into consideration now. So any consideration, political consideration come first.

In Zhen's case, as well as the case of former Beijing mayor Chen Xitong, there are two contributing factors. 1) Is he connected well and connected correctly, in both cases they are connected well, otherwise they would not be put into these positions, then in Chen's case, power shift took place and of course he was corrupt, then came his downfall.

Though Zhen's political affiliation is not clear to an outsider, there came the second consideration: Does situation rises demanding for an immediate political sacrifice? Yes, definitely. The health care reform which abandoned old national health care system and modeled directily after the American system left the whole country in agony with soring prices of medicines and health care, there are too many cases where patients actually died on hospital beds while doctors refusing to treat them because they couldn't afford the rip-off. And over 10000 new drugs are approved by SFDA yearly, almost all of which are just face-lifts of old drugs for a jump in the price. There's a mounting public fury toward government which poses real danger, so the fate of the scapegoat is sealed. (Most of the corrupt high offcials with triple even ten times in terms of the amount of bribes than Zhen's recieved lenient terms.)