4 Western businessmen plead guilty to bribery charges in China

Source: Washington Post

BEIJING -- Four businessmen -- one Australian and three Chinese -- pleaded guilty Monday to accepting bribes in a case that has highlighted the perils of doing business in China.

Lawyers and an Australian consular official told reporters that the Australian, Stern Hu, along with three colleagues at the Australian mining giant Rio Tinto -- Liu Caikui, Ge Minqiang and Wang Yong -- acknowledged to a court in Shanghai that they had taken bribes. However, the four disputed the alleged amounts, which ranged from about $1 million to almost $10 million.

Tom Connor, the Australian consul general in Shanghai who attended the hearing, said Hu was accused of taking bribes of roughly $146,500 and $790,000.

"Mr. Hu made some admissions concerning some of those bribery amounts, so he did acknowledge the truth of some of those bribery amounts," Connor said.

The case against Hu comes at a time of heightened tensions between China and the Western business community that for decades has been key to China's development, bringing in technology, management practices and billions in investment, helping transform China into an exporting powerhouse.

Western businesspeople now complain that they no longer feel welcome in China. In one of the most publicized cases, Google recently vowed it will shutter most if not all of its operations in China unless the government allows the Internet giant to stop censoring search results.

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country you're trying to do business in.

who expected that they would be receiving at least a large percentage of those bribes.

In China, bribery is a way of life in the business world. If you're a foreign company, you're expected to grease a lot of palms in order to set up shop there. However, there is more to this. It seems to be a retaliatory measure against Australia.

For a long time, only Chinese citizens seemed subject to such laws, and, at that, only most of the citizens, but not all. There is a big anti-corruption drive right now, centered in certain parts of the country. I expect it will play out running up to the next party congress in 2012, where there may actually be a leadership fight involving these issues.

It has nothing to do with fighting corruption, and much to do with political intrigues. As alluded to earlier, it is possible that not enough or the right government hands were greased. However, it also seems to be Chinese retaliation against Australia for Australia's refusal to allow controlling Chinese ownership of coal mines in Western Australia.