( CNN ) -- As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , General Martin E. Dempsey is the top-ranking officer in the United States armed forces , the most powerful fighting machine the world has ever known . The Irish-American general married his high-school sweetheart , Deanie . They have three children , Chris , Megan and Caitlin . We even know the names of their sons- and daughter-in-law , as well as those of their grandchildren . I have no need to know these personal details , but it 's a great comfort that the U.S. military feels it should make them freely available . It 's part and parcel of the transparency and accountability that maintains trust in an open society . This trust is never absolute , and often betrayed . But there are peaceful mechanisms to question it , to tear it down and to restore it . Now consider China . As part of the triumvirate running the Central Military Commission up until his retirement in 2012 , General Xu Caihou was of a comparable level of seniority to Dempsey . But all we know of him from official biographies is the dry details of his rise through the ranks . When he became the latest `` tiger '' caught in President Xi Jinping 's anti-corruption campaign last month , we were suddenly confronted with stories about his family 's role in the sordid graft -- including a multimillion-dollar pre-paid debit card given to his daughter as a gift . She was arrested , along with her mother , according to media reports . Such high-profile cases are designed to lend credence to Xi 's vow to root out corruption at all levels , taking down the tigers as well as the flies . His biggest scalp to date : former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang . Officials are reported to have seized at least $ 14.5 billion from his family , friends and associates . But the cases also highlight a fundamental flaw in China 's political system : the state-sponsored veil of secrecy that shrouds the links between power and wealth , links that typically begin with the family . These ties are a problem for societies everywhere . Forbes in August exposed how Isabel dos Santos , the daughter of Angola 's president , built a $ 3 billion fortune on ties to her father . Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is embroiled in a corruption scandal involving his son . In China , this matters more . For a start , the success of its increasingly global economy acts as a potent advertisement for the Communist Party 's political model . The Party 's paranoid control of information about its leaders and their families is coupled with a massive state apparatus dedicated to repressing a free press that could otherwise be relied on to expose those ties . Former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao talked often of the need to `` govern in the sunshine , '' only for his family 's corruption to be exposed in the New York Times in 2012 . Earlier that year , the wealth Xi 's family had amassed was documented by a team of Bloomberg journalists -- of which I was one . Both organizations continue to suffer well-reported repercussions from digging around in the forbidden zone that surrounds the ruling elite and their families . While Barack Obama 's kids are photographed strolling along China 's Great Wall , Xi 's daughter , Xi Mingzhe , studied under a pseudonym at Harvard . There were unconfirmed whispers of an internship at a Wall Street bank . This kind of information matters far beyond the tittle-tattle of society pages in newspapers . Without knowing the ties binding wealth to power , it 's impossible to truly understand the motives that guide policy and the deployment of capital . When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last year purged and executed his uncle , Jang Song-thaek , the official account included charges of corruption . Yet there were few commentators who saw anything but a campaign to remove a political opponent . For sure , North Korea is a grotesque and bankrupt mutation of China 's political model , but at a fundamental level they remain alarmingly alike . Why should we be willing to accept Xi 's rationale for the ongoing purges in China , and so hasty to reject Kim 's ? In truth , we ca n't and should n't believe either regime . There is one simple way for Xi to prove without doubt that he 's the real deal : publish the family trees of the Politburo on the Communist Party website and introduce a public register of interests for all officials so that they can truly be under the supervision of the people . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ben Richardson .
Latest Chinese corruption case : $ 14.5 billion seized from people around ex - security chief Zhou Yu . Richardson : these high - profile cases do n't get to the root of the problem . Fundamental flaw in the political system : a state - sponsored veil of secrecy that covers the gap between power and wealth , typically within families .