By Wuyue Sanren (五岳散人), the pen name of a columnist and well-known Chinese blogger
Economic Observer Online
May 30, 2012

Translated by Zhu Na

Original article: [Chinese]

Correction: We initially translated the author's presentation of one of the arguments in the Global Times editorial as a direct quote from the original article. We have changed the translation to indicate that this is simply the author's interpretation of one of the points in the editorial and is not a direct quotation.

Sometimes when I read the commentaries in the Chinese edition of the Global Times, I'm really just bowled over by their logic, on occasions they simply knock me off my feet.

In recent days they published a commentary that said something along the lines of: Chinese people should tolerate a certain degree of corruption, this is an issue that no country in the world is able to solve completely. The important thing is to limit corruption to a level that people can tolerate.

After reading this, it wasn't simply a matter of being bowled over or knocked down, fainting on the spot may just have been the most suitable reaction.

Corruption is indeed a difficult problem that countries all around the world face, and up until now, no single form of social grouping has completely managed to solve the problem, and it's unlikely that there will be a solution available any time soon.

As to whether or not a communist society can solve the challenges of corruption, given that a communist society itself is so removed from us that it's out of our reach, we’re probably better off not talking about that.

To add a point that is a little off topic, some say there was no corruption during the Cultural Revolution. This is because the corruption at that time was not in a monetary form, but the special provisions [for special class or leaders] were another form of corruption that existed at the time.

It's in making the argument that because corruption will always exist therefore people must learn to accept a certain level of it that the Global Times is leading people astray.

Even if we assume for a moment that this idea makes sense, can you please give us a number?

For example, of the six million cadres working in China, exactly how many corrupt officials should we be willing to tolerate?

I remembered recently that officials said less than one in 10,000 officials were corrupt, then i guess that leaves us with about 600 bad apples.

But isn't that less than the number of cadres that are being investigated and punished in a single province every year?

Maybe they can help us put a dollar figure on how much corruption can be tolerated each year, is it a 100 billion yuan or more like one trillion yuan?

You cannot just say that we need to tolerate it and not give us some indication of what kind of level you think should be tolerated.

Of course, I guess no one would dare to actually say what this standard is, this is because it's all complete and shameless nonsense.

Attempts at rationalizing corruption aren't new, in the past there were economists who argued that corruption was simply one of the necessary costs of pursuing reform and opening up.

When it comes to economics, there is some logic to this argument, especially in relation to the existence of rent-seeking behavior from officials who were able to exploit their position in the "parallel economies" that existed in the early years of the reform period.

But this statement didn’t mean that people were happy to pay this price, they were instead simply acknowledging that this was the price that they were being forced to pay.

It really is quite rare for a publication to come out so boldly like this and make such a brazen claim.

As a normal person, should we tolerate a certain degree of corruption? I'm sorry, but in relation to this kind of thing we should practice zero tolerance.

Think about it, if we're tolerant of corruption, the appetite for corruption won’t simply reach a certain limit and then stop. Corruption can never be satisfied - when it comes to money and power, people can never have enough.

Below the surface of this preaching of the view that we need to be tolerant of corruption, is a more sinister motivation - one that in an underhand way seeks to turn people into docile subjects.

Think about it, we spend money on supporting government officials, you would think that the least that they could do would be to serve as honest and upright public servants. It turns out they can't quite achieve this and that they need the ordinary people to tolerate their corrupt behavior to a certain degree.

Is this the kind of behavior and way of thinking that you would expect of people who are the masters of their country? On the contrary, only the most downtrodden of imperial subjects would be capable of acting and thinking in such a fashion.

This is not really an argument about tolerating corruption, but is instead one that intends to drive our country backwards in a spiritual sense, to dull our sense of citizenship.

I really do fear that such a view can be labeled as having "Chinese characteristics."

Links and Sources
Global Times: 反腐败是中国社会发展的攻坚战
China Media Project: Global Times: reform alone cannot fight corruption
China Media Project: What’s wrong with the Global Times take on corruption