A jaw-dropping opinion on the corruption in China still leaves me in shock days after I heard it:
'If you want to be a civil servant or government official, you have to be greedy and corrupted. If your inspiration is to be an upright and honest official, you will unfortunately not go very far because such unwelcome work ethics stand out like a sore thumb within the government sector. With corruption so deeply embedded in the 5000 years of China history, the main motivation for choosing a political life is power and greed, not to serve the people.'
I have no way of knowing if this view is representative of the Chinese public but if every Chinese citizen were to have such sad mentality while accepting corruption as a normal way of life, even mounting a herculean effort to battle the rampant corruption and to save this country would be utterly futile and hopeless.
Examples of the widespread corruption:
'...Fighting corruption would require Chinese government officials to live like monks, and nobody joins the Chinese government in order to live like a monk.' - The Alantic
'....one party secretary in a poor county received repeated death threats for rejecting over 600,000 Renminbi in bribes during his tenure.' - Wikipedia
'In fact, the police stations in Chongqing were actually the centre of the prostitution, gambling and drugs rackets. They would detain gangsters from time to time, and sometimes send them to prison, but the gangsters described it as going away for a holiday. The police and the mafia were buddies.' - The Telegraph
Some other interesting articles on the topic: here and here.
No comments:
Post a Comment