Beijing: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said Wednesday he wished he could send 500 corrupt individuals in the country to jail by emulating Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ‘crusade’ against corruption.
Speaking at the China Council for Promotion of International Trade here, Imran Khan, who is here on a two-day official visit, marked out ‘corruption’ as one of the biggest impediments to investment in Pakistan and one thing he had learned from China was how it could be tackled.
“One of President Xi Jinping’s biggest crusade has been against corruption. I wish I could do the same in Pakistan,” Imran Khan was quoted as saying by Pakistan’s ‘Dawn’ newspaper.
Imran said that he has heard that some 400 ‘ministerial-level people’ had been convicted on charges of corruption and put behind jail in the last five years in China under Xi’s regime.
Imran was referring to Jinping’s massive anti-corruption drive launched in 2012 that reportedly netted more than 1.3 million officials at various levels, from the elite to the ordinary.
Jinping, who is also general secretary of the ruling Communist Party and commander-in-chief of the military, has launched a high-profile campaign targeting party, government, military and state-owned company officials suspected of corruption.
After assuming office, Xi vowed to crack down on ‘tigers and flies’, that is, senior officials and local civil servants alike. His anti-graft campaign has netted former national-level leaders, including former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang and ex-military leaders like General Xu Caihou and General Guo Boxiong.
I wish I could follow President Xi’s example and put 500 corrupt people in Pakistan in jail,” said Imran. He also said processing (cases) in Pakistan was ‘very cumbersome’.
Imran Khan said the most important thing that Pakistan could learn from China was the way it lifted people out of poverty. “What inspires me most about China is the way they have lifted 700 million people out of poverty in 30 years,” he said. “This has never happened in human history.”
Imran, trying to woo investors said since his government had come to power it had taken a conscious decision to make it easier for them to come to Pakistan.
“We will want investors to make profits in Pakistan,” he told top Chinese businessmen as his cash-strapped government tried to overcome a serious financial crisis.
“The Prime Minister’s Office is driving opportunities for people to invest in our country. The ease of doing business is driven from the Prime Minister’s Office. We have just formed a CPEC Authority because we were having problems in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor projects because they were under a lot of different ministries,” Imran pointed out.
“We have now decided that there will be one authority which will resolve all the problems of the CPEC, and that authority will be the Prime Minister’s Office, so that my office can make it easier for people investing in Pakistan,” added Imran.
PTI