Corruption taints every facet of life in China
From admission in primary school to setting up a business, bribes grease the wheels of Chinese enterprise. Some citizens dare to speak out against corrupt officials, but sometimes pay a heavy price.
Reporting from Foshan, China — The last time his parents saw Liao Mengjun alive, he was heading to school to pick up his junior high school diploma.
A few hours later, they were called to the morgue. They found that their lanky 15-year-old son's forehead had been bashed in. His right knee jutted through the skin. Both his arms had been broken. He had several stab wounds, internal injuries and a swollen foot.
His index finger was slashed, suggesting his tormentors had tried to make him write something in his own blood.
As if things could be worse, writer Liao Zusheng and his wife, Chen Guoying, concluded that they knew who had killed their son: his teachers. And they believed they knew why: because of their bitter, public complaints about unauthorized fees and systemic corruption in schools and across Chinese society.
Corruption is an everyday experience for millions of Chinese that taints not just schools, but relations in business, on farms and in factories, and potentially any contact citizens have with officialdom. Foshan appears no more corrupt than any other city in China, experts say. It is noteworthy only as an example of a pervasive problem that threatens China's stability and political system.
Senior Communist Party officials know that decades of remarkable economic progress are at risk if graft and bribery stretch the chasm between the haves and have-nots too wide. But they have limited room to maneuver. Any meaningful effort to crack down endangers the party's monopoly on power.
The system depends on legions of police, local party and government officials to enforce Beijing's policies and quash dissent. All too often, critics say, local officials regard their position as a license to steal.
Throughout the country, the prodigious rate of economic growth has created a gold rush mentality. Absent both the strictures and the social safety network of Mao Tse-tung's rigid system, millions of people are seeking ways to prosper -- legally or illegally.
Corruption accounts for an estimated 3% to 15% of a $7-trillion economy, and party membership can be an invitation to solicit bribes or cut illegal land deals. Membership hit 74 million at the end of 2007, a 10% jump from 2002, as moneymaking opportunities increasingly trumped ideology.
Nearly 5,000 officials at the county level or above were punished for corruption over the last year, state media reported Friday.
- China's Leaders Launch New Drive Against Corruption Jul 29, 1989
- China Executes Ex-Official for Corruption Sep 15, 2000
- Cost of Bribery in China Soars With Inflation Aug 25, 1988
