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If authorities want to weed out corruption, don’t start by paying civil servants more
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IN China, decades of market-driven reforms have changed people’s perception about a government job.In the past, when government kept a respectful distance from business, most government compounds could be described as qingshui yamen, or plain water yamen, as they afforded little or no chance of graft.
At that time, the chief merit of government employment lay in the security of an iron rice bowl.
That merit had been weakened during the initial stage of the reform, when some enterprising government employees chose to xiahai (go to the sea), by giving up their official titles and going into business.
After decades of market-oriented reforms, with government encouraged to adopt a pro-business stance, government today is anything but the plain water yamen it once was.
When the business of the government is business, it can be very efficient, to the degree of being very careless about myriad social objectives.
The Oriental Morning Post reported on Monday that in Hekou, Yunan Province, a 270 million-yuan “cultural corridor” landscaping project was built three years ago. Because this project can no longer keep up with development, since May 23 the newly built corridor was torn down in a 300 million-yuan upgrade project.
On the face of it, this make and break will result in a loss of nearly 600 million yuan, but that worry is probably needless, for this process of make and break is where all the money is.
Hence the priority of weeding out rampant corruption.
It is often opined today that as a result of the ongoing crusade against corruption and extravagance, civil servant jobs might be less sought after than before.
It might be true to an extent, but each newly disgraced official also affords us a rare glimpse into how aggressive and enterprising our government officials can be in monetizing the power invested in them.
Anti-graft crusade
For instance, it was reported recently that Su Rong, vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, is under investigation for allegedly violating party rules and state laws. Su is the highest-ranking official to come under investigation since the Party’s 18th National Congress in late 2012.
Although the report did not provide further details, there were unconfirmed reports that he is suspected of corruption in a number of projects.
In one case, Su is suspected of having a plot of land in Xinyu County, Jiangxi Province, transferred at well below its market price, and this deal alone resulted in a 1 billion yuan loss of state revenues. Su has also been responsible for a 22.5 billion yuan tree-planting project since 2008 in Jiangxi Province, a project sarcastically known as “cutting off big trees to make way for saplings.”
These projects would appear wasteful and meaningless to people not familiar with government decision making. By fostering strong ties with businesspeople, ambitious officials can amass huge fortunes that can take them to the next level.
The sporadic exposures of high-profile corruption cases also fuel the illusion that such jobs are no longer as secure as before.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival last year, Wang Donggen, a construction contractor in Wanzai, Jiangxi Province, had secretly set up surveillance equipment opposite the gate of the county magistrate. The video Wang and his son put up that day recorded a number of people — local cadres as their plate numbers show — in the act of taking red envelopes and gifts to the magistrate’s home.
Eighteen days later, Wang and his son were arrested for fraud. Eight months later, the two were prosecuted on four counts that ranged from “organizing and managing a Mafia-like gang” to blackmail, disturbing social order, and fraud. Nothing has been heard about the magistrate and those mysterious visitors.
Supervision
The Xinhua news agency, commenting on the case recently, said that officials should exercise constant self-discipline and learn to adapt to, even welcome, all kinds of “hidden cameras” — as a form of public supervision.
According to a survey published on Xinmin Evening News on Monday, 34 percent of the college graduates list government jobs as their first choice.
Only when our servants are subject to more rigorous supervision, and those irrational perks and privileges implicitly associated with the profession removed, can we expect civil servant to lose some of its luster. Unfortunately, this is not on the agenda of our authorities. As a matter of fact, top officials are considering raising the income level of civil servants.
There is public outrage, with many people suggesting that income of civil servants should be increased only after the wages of the general population have grown. Otherwise the move will only worsen the hidden social fractures.
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