Britannica says, “In the United States the impeachment process has rarely been employed, largely because it is so cumbersome. It can occupy Congress for a lengthy period of time, fill thousands of pages of testimony, and involve conflicting and troublesome political pressures. Repeated attempts in the U.S. Congress to amend the procedure, however, have been unsuccessful, partly because impeachment is regarded as an integral part of the system of checks and balances in the U.S. government.”
The U.S. House of Representatives has impeached 19 individuals since 1798, but only eight were found guilty and removed from office. Click the link to learn who the guilty were.
What about China?
In China’s Constitution, removal from office is mentioned 15 times. For instance: “The National People’s Congress (NPC) has the power to remove from office the following persons: (1) the President and the Vice President of the People’s Republic of China …” China’s Constitution goes on to mention many other positions where individuals can be removed from office.
After a long Google search, I found one example of a CCP official being removed from office. “On April 10, 2012, the Communist Party suspended one of its top leaders, Bo Xilai, from his posts on the Party’s Politburo and Central Committee, and announced that the Party’s graft-fighting arm, the Central Discipline Inspection Commission, would be investigating him for alleged ‘serious discipline violations.’ The Party had removed Bo from his post as Party Secretary of powerful Chongqing Municipality just weeks earlier, on March 15.”
It wasn’t easy finding information about CCP Officials that were removed from office due to corruption/crimes until I changed the search terms I was using. Then I found the following information.
May 2018, the Guardian reported, “China sentences former political rising star to life in prison for corruption. Sun Zhengcai is one of the most powerful officials to be toppled under President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign. …
“He became the first politburo member to be investigated since Bo, who was charged with corruption and sentenced to jail in 2013. Sun was expelled from the CCP in September after the party accused him of taking bribes and trading power for sex.”
In addition, The South China Morning Post reports that “Xi Jinping’s anti-graft drive has caught so many officials that Beijing’s elite prison is running out of cells. …
“It looks like being a particularly grim Lunar New Year in the ‘tigers cage’ this week. The notorious Qincheng maximum-security prison houses many disgraced senior Communist Party officials …
“The source said the prison was packed to the gills with inmates – a product of President Xi Jinping’s ferocious anti-corruption drive that has netted more than 1.3 million officials at various levels.” – February 2018
The score for impeachment and/or removal from office:
China: millions since 1949
United States: eight since 1798
Maybe the United States should transfer President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial to China where the American people might get a fair verdict. And if found guilty in China, let Donald Trump serve his prison sentence there, too. At least in China, Donald Trump would not have access to Twitter from his prison cell.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.
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