Zhou Yongkang, the former head of China’s internal security apparatus, was guilty of many sins. After a secret trial conducted in May in the port city of Tianjin, Zhou was sentenced to life in prison for abuse of power, corruption and divulging state secrets.

　　曾任中共中央政法委书记的周永康犯下了诸多罪行。今年5月，在港口城市天津举行的一场不公开庭审认定他犯有滥用职权、受贿和故意泄露国家秘密罪，据此判处他无期徒刑。

　　For all his faults, however, Zhou never negligently stored hundreds of tons of highly volatile ammonium nitrate alongside sodium cyanide and other toxic chemicals in a populated area. When one such stockpile exploded in Tianjin on August 12, killing at least 114 people with another 65 still missing, it revealed the paradox at the heart of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign. Months bore the Tianjin tragedy, I asked the father of a badly injured migrant factory worker what he thought of the anti-corruption drive and the downfall of powerful “tigers” such as Zhou. I expected Zhang Guangde to be impressed by the signature policy achievement of Mr Xi’s first three years in power.

　　不过，尽管犯下了种种罪行，但周永康从来没有随随便便地把数百吨高度不稳定的硝酸铵和氰化钠及其他有毒化学品一起存放在人口密集地区。8月12日，存放在天津的这样一批货物发生了爆炸，导致至少114人丧生，还有65人依然失踪。这次爆炸事件暴露出中国国家主席习近平发起的反腐运动的核心矛盾。在天津发生爆炸前几个月，我曾问过一位严重受伤的农民工的父亲，对于反腐及周永康等位高权重的“老虎”落马有何看法。我的预期是，这位名叫张广德的先生会对习近平掌权头三年的标志性政策成就印象深刻。

　　He was not. “The campaign hasn’t reached the grassroots,” said Mr Zhang, who had spent years battling his son’s employer for compensation. “The tiger hunt is a show — a show to be seen by the people. There are still so many mean little tigers at grassroots.”

　　可他并未觉得怎么样。张广德表示：“这场运动没有触及基层。打虎就是一场秀，让人民观看的一场表演。基层还是有很多卑劣的小老虎。”多年来，张广德一直在与儿子的雇主作斗争，争取赔偿。

　　Perceptions of the anti-corruption campaign’s success rest principally on the arrest and conviction of people such as Zhou, who once sat on the ruling Chinese Communist party’s most powerful body, the Politburo Standing Committee.

　　反腐运动给人的成功印象，主要源自对周永康这类人的逮捕和定罪。周永康曾是中共最高权力机构——中共中央政治局常委之一。

　　But as Mr Zhang intuitively understands from his family’s own bitter experience, for most people in China it is corruption among rank-and-file civil servants that really matters. “Little tigers” include the principal who won’t enrol a student unless a bribe is paid, the doctor who won’t treat a patient without a backhander or, in the case of the Tianjin blasts, the former police chi’s son who is storing lethal chemicals in a populated residential and commercial area.

　　然而，自己家的苦难使张广德直觉地认识到：对中国多数人来说，真正重要的是下层公务员的腐败行为。这些“小老虎”包括那些没有贿款就不让学生报名入学的校长，不收红包就不为患者治疗的医生，或者(在天津爆炸案中)在人口密集的居民区和商业区存放致命化学品的原公安局长之子。

　　Not only that, but required permits had been missing at various points in the warehouse’s history, although they appeared to be in order at the time of the blast. And while there is no evidence that the facility’s two owners bribed local officials to look the other way, they acted in a manner that suggested they had much to hide.

　　不仅如此，该仓库在运营历史上的好几个节点缺乏必要的许可证——尽管在爆炸发生时这些许可证似乎都已办妥。虽然没有证据表明这座仓库的两名股东曾行贿当地官员，让后者睁一只眼闭一只眼，但这两人的行为方式似乎表明他们有很多隐情需要隐瞒。

　　Ownership of the Tianjin chemicals warehouse was initially unclear, in part because the city’s online companies registry was suddenly unavailable after the blast. When it did come back up, there were curious gaps in its ownership record.

　　这家天津化学品仓库的所有权最初是含混不清的，这部分是由于爆炸发生后天津的企业在线登记网站突然无法连接。在该网站恢复运行后，该公司的所有权记录出现了离奇的空白。

　　The Tianjin chemicals warehouse was, in contravention of official regulations, situated within one kilometre of residential buildings. The explosion forced the evacuation of more than 6,000 people, many of whom had bought expensive properties in the area.

　　这座化学品仓库违反了安全法规，距离住宅楼不到1000米。这次爆炸迫使逾6000人疏散，他们中的许多人曾花费巨资在该地区置办物业。

　　Despite tight government controls over local media, some of China’s braver state publications began to assemble pieces of the puzzle. They established, for example, that the warehouse’s registered owners were frontmen for the real shareholders — or “ants” carrying crumbs for others.

　　尽管中国政府严密控制国内媒体，但中国一些比较大胆的官方杂志顺着零星的线索摸索真相。比如，他们证实，该仓库登记的所有者只是代人持股，或者说是为人搬运面包屑的“蚂蚁”。

　　These revelations appeared to force the government’s hand, as the official Xinhua news agency then reported that the warehouse’s true owners were a former executive at a state chemicals group and the son of the port district’s former police chi. The police chi’s son told Xinhua that he wanted to keep a low profile because “my father worked in the public security bureau and there would be a negative impact if others knew about it”.

　　这些爆料似乎迫使政府有所作为。官方的新华社随即报道称，该仓库的真正所有者分别是一家国有化学集团的前高管和天津港公安局原局长之子。该公安局长之子向新华社表示，他想保持低调是因为“我爸在公安局任职，让别人知道了影响不好”。

　　For Mr Xi and the Communist party, this comment and all the obfuscation that preceded it encapsulate the real political challenge arising from last week’s tragedy in Tianjin.

　　对习近平和中共来说，这句话以及之前的一切敷衍搪塞，精辟概括了天津爆炸所引发的真正政治挑战。

　　As China’s economic problems mount, the country’s unelected regime needs alternative sources of legitimacy. The anti-corruption campaign is an important such source, as it holds up Zhou and other corrupt officials as unrepresentative aberrations now being brought to heel by a just party-state. Another was the 70th anniversary of Japan’s second world war surrender on August 15, which the Tianjin blast overshadowed in spectacular style.

　　随着国内经济问题越来越多，中国未经选举产生的政权需要寻找替代的合法性来源。反腐是一个重要的合法性来源，党把周永康等腐败官员列为不具有代表性的异常现象，现在受到了正义的党国体制的惩处。另一个合法性来源是8月15日日本二战战败投降70周年纪念日，尽管天津的爆炸以戏剧化方式盖过了这一纪念日的风头。

　　But the thousands of people rendered homeless by last week’s blast — and millions more watching the events unfold across China — may start to see things differently. They might just conclude that unfair advantage and corruption are in fact systemic in a society where officials at every level of government, together with their families and their friends, routinely parlay connections into cash, regardless of the risk to others.

　　但是，因天津爆炸而无家可归的数千人——以及全国数以百万计的关注这些事件的其他人——也许会开始产生不同的看法。他们也许会得出结论认为，中国社会的不公平优势现象和腐败实际上是系统性的，在这个社会，各级政府官员及其亲友常态化地把人脉关系转化为现金，毫不顾忌为他人带来的风险。

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