CORRUPTION: CHINA and the USA

There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.

There is no greater guilt than discontentment.

And there is no greater disaster than greed.  Lao-tzu

   

The USA is perceived as being much less corrupt than China.  This is because very few people interact with members of the US Congress (who are completely corrupt) and even fewer interact with China's Central Committee (who are almost completely honest).

Many of us interact with US Government public servants (who are almost completely honest) and many more interact with Chinese public servants (who are NOT completely honest).

Hence the perceptions.  But if I had to choose, I'd choose honesty at the top level and work to reform those lower down.  And that's the major reason that China is beating the USA in so many ways.

If you've ever watched a Chinese drama, chances are that the villain was a corrupt official: he oppressed the people, he lived a life of self-indulgence and cruelty until, of course, the arrival of the Hero.  Corruption is a problem as old as China.  As old as human society.  If China has more corruption scandals today it's for three reasons:

1. China has more everything--both better and worse.

2. China tries harder to detect corruption.

3. China punishes corrupt officials.  Really punishes them.

Yet Transparency International, an NGO, publishes an annual Corruption Perception Index which ranks the USA as one of the best 20 countries in the world for government honesty and China as one of the worst, just above Swaziland.  The World Bank also publishes a survey, Control of Corruption, which ranks China as one of the most corrupt countries and the United States as one of the least corrupt on earth.  This is strange indeed. 

The results of the United States' government policies and practices--endless costly war, growing poverty, widening inequality, universal government bribery ("campaign contributions"), public disapproval of government, corporate malfeasance and looting--suggest that the country is extremely corrupt.  While the American economy has been growing steadily for the past 30 years, Americans' wages have been falling steadily. Through privatization, Americans are being stripped of the assets which they spent 200 years building.  According, to Gallup, only 13% of Americans approve of their government.

The results of China's government policies and practices--growing prosperity, high approval of their government, high levels of trust of one another, high levels of trust in government, and profitable, well-managed banks--suggest a country that is honest.  While America's citizens have seem their assets privatized, China's have watched their banks (which they own) and infrastructure (which they also own) and their largest corporations (which they also own) multiply in value and their sovereign wealth rise into the trillions of dollars.

Results like these generate a high level of trust in government and one another.  According the Pew Survey:  'Among the 47 countries included in the 2007 poll, China had the highest level of social trust: Almost eight-in-ten Chinese (79%) agreed with the statement "Most people in this society are trustworthy."

And here's a mind-blower for Westerners: "When Chinese internet users were further queried about their trust in different kinds of online content, they overwhelmingly said that they trusted information on government websites more than any other kind of online information. 75% of respondents deemed reliable most or all the information on government websites, compared with 46% for pages from established media, 28% for results from search engines, 11% for content on bulletin boards and in advertisements, 4% for information from individuals' web pages, and 3% for postings in chat rooms." (Pew).   Is that the profile of a corrupt country?  Or this:

China Executes Former Vice-governor for Corruption

China Food Safety Head Executed

China Executes top Chongqing Official for Corruption

China Airport Exec Executed for Corruption

China Executes Former Top Judge for Corruption

Head of Chonquing Municipal Bureau of Justice Executed

China sentences land official to death for corruption
Man executed for taking £3m bribes

Corrupt former Party discipline chief executed in central China

Senior officials in the USA and in most corrupt countries usually escape prosecution, let alone execution (we can only dream!).  When was the last time a corrupt US official--someone who caused untold damage to millions of lives--was executed, or even imprisoned, or even prosecuted?

Suggested further reading:

China's Campaign Against Corruption:

Earlier this month the PRC National Audit Office 审计署 issued its first two reports of the year. Report 1 provides the results of a major audit of state owned agencies and banks conducted at the request of the National People’s Congress. Report 2 details 28 court cases involving fraud uncovered during the audits. These reports have been published in conjunction with the central government's current campaign to demonstrate that the problem of official corruption is being addressed. The very public display of these reports is part of a similar campaign for transparency in government affairs.

Report 1 provides the following statistics on the results of the audit campaign:

• RMB 122.3 billion in assets were recovered.

• RMB 7.7 billion in losses were averted.

• RMB 48.2 billion in irregularities were corrected.

• 1103 people received administrative punishment.

• 104 people were referred for criminal prosecution, with 95 convictions to date.

Report 2 provides a brief report on 28 “typical” matters that were referred for prosecution. These involved the following bad acts:

• Obtaining loans from government owned banks on false pretenses. The most common method was using real property as security for loans where no such property exists. More complex schemes involved creating entirely fake business divisions.

• Converting government owned property to private use/using loan funds for personal projects.

• A common theme involves government relief payments. The standard scheme is to create a group of fake residents and then having payments due to such residents paid into the corrupt official’s bank account(s).

Comparative Analysis of Trust Games between China and America Experimental Research:

Most subjects in trust game experiments have been made up of American college students so far. This paper examines the degree of trust and being worth trusting in an experimental trust game with 128 participants of Tongji University in China. The results reveal that Chinese students' behaviors systematically diverge from that predicted by the economic man hypothesis. Moreover, through the comparative study on subjects' behaviors between China and America, we find that Chinese students are more prone to trust others and also more worth trusting. In other words, Chinese students' behaviors deviate more significantly from the economic man hypothesis prediction. This may be explained by the difference between Chinese and American cultures.