SUN
WUKONG Corruption is still wild and
divisive By Wu Zhong
HONG KONG - The student-led street
demonstrations in Beijing in the spring of 1989,
symbolized by the occupation of the Tiananmen
Square and the bloody military crackdown on June
4, are generally labeled as a "pro-democracy
movement". However, the fundamental cause of
protest was public anger over skyrocketing
inflation and what may now be called the "sprouts"
of official corruption.
The outrage was
very understandable. The late 1980s were just
several years after Deng Xiaoping started
capitalist-style reform and opening up of the
economy. It was a time when, for most of the
country's adult population, "inflation" and
"corruption" were still alien things. Not long
before, they had lived in a society
basically free of
inflation and corruption under the rule of Mao
Zedong.
To turn a socialist planned
economy into a free-wheeling market-oriented one,
the removal of state controls on prices was
inevitable. So by the mid-'80s, the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) and government started to
pilot a reform to ease price controls. China was
still suffering a serious shortage of consumer
goods. So when the government moved, prices began
to shoot in accordance with the law of supply and
demand.
The official figure of inflation
in 1988-89 was about 35%, and probably failed to
tell the whole story. In any case, people became
panicky, seeing their savings shrink in value day
by day. The older ones were reminded of the "big
inflation" in 1948-49, when the tumbling value of
the money in their pockets helped the CCP drive
the then ruling Kuomintang out of the mainland.
Their fears spurred panic buying sprees across the
country in 1988. People poured into shops to buy
anything they could grab, regardless of whether
they actually needed what they were buying or not.
Adding to their anger was that some
people, particularly children of senior officials,
were taking advantage of the shortage of supply to
make profits. They used the influence and
connections of their parents to buy in consumer
goods that were in great demand and in short
supply, such as color TV sets and refrigerators,
and resell them for handsome profits. People
accused them of exacerbating inflation and making
the lives of ordinary citizens even more
miserable. Such activity was called "official
profiteering", and it was this that marked the
first widespread recognition of official
corruption.
The sudden death on April 15,
1989, of liberal-minded former general secretary
of CCP Hu Yaobang, who was sacked by Deng two
years earlier for his tolerance toward "bourgeois
liberalization" or Western ideas, triggered the
eruption of public discontent. At first, some
students spontaneously went to mourn Hu at
Tiananmen Square. Then they took to the streets
with demands for greater freedom and a crackdown
on "official profiteering". They were soon joined
by people from various sectors including party and
government officials. Without boiling public anger
with inflation and corruption, the protests
started by students could hardly have won such
popular support.
The CCP, having
successfully broken up the protests with military
forces on June 4, also learned a bitter lesson. In
present Premier Wen Jiabao's words, inflation is
like a tiger which must be kept inside a cage. If
it is let out, it will bite people. And inflation
combined with corruption could cause the collapse
of a government. In other words, the CCP sees
inflation and corruption as its two deadly
enemies.
In any case, since the June 4
bloody Tiananmen crackdown, Beijing has always
been carefully on guard against inflation and
stepped up efforts to fight against official
corruption.
The government has been quite
successful in keeping inflation in check over past
two decades or so. At the same time, with the
country increasingly being run as a free-wheeling
market economy, people have become more used to
price fluctuations. More importantly, with more
money in their purses nowadays, mild inflation
worries them less.
But Beijing's crackdown
on official corruption in past two decades can be
said to be a failure. Compared with any type of
corruption today, "official profiteering" pales
into insignificance. Corruption seems to have
spread to every corner and all levels of
officialdom, including the politburo at the top.
The amount of dirty money involved in a single
case nowadays tends to be astronomical.
That the CCP could be more successful in
keeping inflation at bay is perhaps because this
is an enemy from outside, which is easier to
identify and defeat without mercy. But official
corruption is an enemy inside the body of the CCP
itself and so i more difficult to deal with. As
many have pointed out, without political reforms
to enhance public supervision, the CCP itself can
never really win the battle against official
corruption.
Nevertheless, Global Times, a
sister publication of the People's Daily - CCP's
flagship newspaper - has tried to justify the
failure in the battle against corruption. In an
editorial on May 29, it said:
China obviously is in a season with
a high-incidence of corruption, as conditions to
completely root out corruption are not ripe.
Some people say that with "democracy" the
problem of corruption could be easily solved.
This view is naive. There are many "democratic
countries" in Asia such as Indonesia, the
Philippines and India, where corruption is much
more serious than in China ...
In no
country can corruption be rooted out completely.
The crux of the matter is to control it within
the extent of public tolerance.
To give
huge pay raises to officials, public opinion
won't accept. Our system does not allow retired
officials to make use of their influence and
connections to make big money. Let tycoons work
as officials, people would feel "strange".
Chinese officials' statutory salaries are very
low, so that some local officials have to seek
welfares through "hidden rules" (meaning taking
bribes).
"Hidden rules" nowadays seem to
somehow prevail in Chinese society. Even
practitioners in public sectors such as medical
doctors and teachers also have their "hidden
rules". Many people's statutory salaries are not
high, but they have "grey (illicit) incomes".
Supervision of public opinion must be
strengthened ... But the public must also
rationally understand the reality and
objectivity that corruption cannot be completely
removed in China at the current stage ...
[1]
I quote the Global Times editorial
at length here because it speaks for itself. No
further comment is really needed other than that
it tries hard to justify official corruption as
long as the evil is still "within the extent of
public tolerance". In other words, officials can
continue to take bribes as long as there is no
massive protest or rebellion.
But the
lesson from 1989 is still very fresh. No wonder
the article immediately causes a big uproar in
China. In an unusual move, even some other
state-run media outlet such as China Youth Daily
and even Xinhua News Agency turned on Global Times
with signed commentaries criticizing the
newspaper.
The Chinese edition of Global
Times was launched in 1993, and an English version
was started in 2009 as a new media outlet to
project China's "soft power" internationally and
domestically. However, its often hardline rhetoric
on current international issues proves
counterproductive. Now with an editorial to
justifying corruption, the newspaper further hurt
its own image.
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