Over 150 Chinese citizens suspected of graft or corruption and who have fled Beijing's reach are at large in the United States, authorities in China claim.

Having made fighting the pervasive graft that has long plagued Chinese politics at every level a top priority, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that corruption threatens the Communist Party's survival. In a show of force, Chinese officials are calling for high-level meetings with their American counterparts in order to bring the suspects to justice. 

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The state-run China Daily newspaper identified the United States, which has no extradition treaty with China, as having become "the top destination for Chinese fugitives fleeing the law," citing Liao Jinrong, director general of the Ministry of Public Security's International Cooperation Bureau.

A perennial thorn in Beijing's side, those suspected of graft are often so-called "naked officials," government workers using overseas family connections to illegally move assets out of China or to avoid scrutiny from regulators. Chinese investigators claim over $1 million has made its way offshore through such channels in the last 5 years.

Most recently, government investigators detained Steven Cao, head of Edelman PR's China operations this month, Cao was part of an investigation concerning Rui Chenggang, a television presenter, who was himself arrested on corruption charges in July. 

However, even if extradiction treaties exist, many countries are reluctant to deport suspects on the possibility they will face the death sentence in what some see as a draconian legal system rife with show trials. Perhaps the most famous case was that of Lai Changxing, who fled with his family to Canada in 1999. Declaring refugee status, his case set off a decade-long dispute between Beijing and Ottawa. Lai was eventually deported and received a life sentence.

Only two suspects have ever been deported back to China by American authorities, and Beijing's call comes at a particularly frosty moment with Washington, stemming from maritime territorial disputes that China has with its neighbors, and several instances of alleged cyber-spying.

According to a 2008 People's Bank of China report, since the mid-1990s, nearly 16,000 to 18,000 party officials, businessmen and other individuals have gone missing from China, along with an estimated haul of 800 billion yuan, the equivalent of almost $130 billion. 

The General of China's Supreme People's Procuratorate, Cao Jianming, announced in March over 10 billion yuan ($1.65 billion) in "dirty money" and property was recovered and that 762 corruption suspects were captured in China and internationally. 

TagsGraft, Cao Lianming