President Xi tells officials scared of being purged: It's ok to make mistakes

With the economy on the line and many bureaucrats too cowed to act, party enforcers vow to be lenient—when appropriate

- Chun Han Wong

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is intensifying a war on corruption that has purged officials in record numbers—with the side effect of leaving many unwilling to act for fear of punishment.

To help his bureaucrats rediscover their mojo and revive a stagnating economy, Xi is also promoting the message that some mistakes are acceptable. His decree to the Communist Party: Enforcing strict discipline shouldn't fuel a climate of fear that saps the can-do spirit that once helped power China's economic rise.

The approach is to "combine strict control with loving care," Xi has said, to "encourage cadres to forge ahead and be enterprising."

To that end, Xi has ordered party enforcers to absolve blame for honest mistakes and rekindle entrepreneurial verve across the rank and file. The party elite approved a new economic plan that embedded Xi's directive, dubbed the "Three Differentiates," which calls for leniency for well-meaning officials who make honest mistakes, and differentiating them from those who willfully break the rules.

Xi's campaign seeks to tackle a key challenge in his top-down leadership of the world's second-largest economy: how to wield decisive control over a vast, unwieldy bureaucracy without stifling the local dynamism that he says China needs to overcome deep-seated economic issues.

As part of the push for calibrated clemency, authorities have also pledged to curb false accusations against bureaucrats—a phenomenon that grew amid Xi's purges—and encourage remorseful offenders to make amends by working harder. State media meanwhile called for reviving a sense of mission among officials who might otherwise stay passive to avoid trouble.

Xi also made clear that he is pressing forward with a crackdown that has punished more than 6.2 million people since he took power in late 2012—and cemented his standing as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.