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Corruption in Chinese eyes

By Xue Wang - posted Monday, 6 May 2013


Somehow I recently joined this crowd. It happened because my ageing mother needed eye drops, which she used to be able to get from any pharmacy and then one day could no longer find in any. Contacting the eye drop manufacturer, I was told that, because of a change of government policy, a doctor's prescription was now required to buy them. In addition, because the government set the price too low, individual pharmacies could no longer make any profit. They therefore had to stop selling the product.

In the city of Shenyang, with its population of more than nine million people, there was only one hospital selling this drug. To get a prescription, my mother had to wait in a long queue and get a numbered ticket to see a doctor and then join another queue to wait to see the doctor. She might have to do this once a month. Thinking about the whole process left my mother shaking.

I immediately thought of a friend of my sister's whose husband was working in this hospital. He referred my mother to a doctor, from whom she could obtain six months' worth of eye drops, saving her from having to join the lengthy queues. While the personal connection saved us from bribery, the government policy has caused my mother inconvenience, discouraged pharmacies from providing the product and promoted corruption.

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Confronting this reality, I became speechless in thinking about the criticism of corrupt officials in the media. I found myself as being among those Chinese who are ambivalent about corruption. They might express anger towards government officials, teachers, doctors, police and almost anyone else; but when it comes to them, they cannot escape from corrupt behaviour. The main result of corruption is that two parties are able to pursue their personal interests together.

To confront widespread corruption, the Chinese government has seemingly undertaken various efforts to minimize its scale. The new president Xi Qinping has openly proclaimed that he will do his best to control corruption. At present many officials are being removed or punished.

Punishing individuals seems to be a universal way of tackling corruption. Is this punishment of individuals though, the only remedy for corruption? As with elsewhere, government officials and politicians are expected to have high moral standards. However, the choice of government officials in China has never been based on individual morality, and in different contexts it is difficult to define exactly who is acting more morally. It appears that the scale of corruption in China is larger and deeper than in many other countries because China has a much more centralized political, economic and social system.

Although the Chinese government has loosened its grip on production activities since the so-called economic reform of 1978, the fundamental socialist mechanism established after 1949 remains the same: a one-party system with state ownership.

The disappearance of some government organizations has been followed by their replacement with institutions designed to intervene in market activities. Government officials are given power by the system to prevent ordinary people from pursuing their interests freely.

The extent of the centralization of power remains extraordinary compared to non-socialist systems. The government is seen to control land, resources and people, whilst also regulating and interfering in all business activities. Under this system, individuals are forced to pay for their freedom to choose. The centralized power, therefore, is the breeding ground for corruption.

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We somehow unrealistically expect those people in power to curb their desire for pursuing their own interests by a moral standard. Unfortunately, when individuals are desperate to pursue their interests, people are bound to violate rules. Morality simply plays a minimal role in individual behaviours but becomes a political weapon for people and media to attack broader corruption.

As long as the highly centralized system remains in China, corruption is unavoidable. In fact, government rules are broken by both those people who make and maintain the rules and by those who are supposed to follow them. The highly centralized system is the overwhelming source of massive corruption in China.

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About the Author

Dr Xue Wang is a mental health professional. She obtained her doctoral degree in politics from the University of Sydney.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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