There is a lovely side narrative in the movie A Serious Man about this phenomenon. Although the characters in the movie were Korean, it is an excellent example of this phenomenon in Asian cultures.
What intrigues me the most is that it is sort of implicitly the de facto standard. Curious how cultural mores develop!
Only Chinese feature in this scheme is using fake paintings.
This type of bribery is common everywhere. In Europe it's usually a real painting. Bribe is just overpaying for it. Switzerland is center of this. Geneva Freeport is full of paintings, watches and artifacts used as intermediaries for bribes and money laundering.
Verified real painting bought for $50,000 sells for $500,000 in auction after bidding 'competition'. Buyer is some Russian businessman. Seller is a wife of someone working for major European bank. Rich shady businessmen are drowning in art because they love the art so much and can't stop themselves.
You are trying to refute this article with whataboutism, but there is something unique and different about Chinese culture and corruption. The article even names it; "Corruption is the hidden golden rule of China". It's endemic; inherent to the Chinese culture. It's not seen as morally problematic. It's admirable if you can get away with it. It's very close to Might is Right as a belief system.
In the last nine years my new job has me interacting intimately with Chinese nationals in the USA and China. Every few months I get reminded that most, but not all, Han Chinese have very different moral rules. It's very disheartening.
What’s the moral argument against bribery in your opinion? The usual argument is that it harms social cohesion by incentivizing individuals to undermine the institutions they are a part of. The Han Chinese have had extremely strong institutions historically.
Accepting bribes and risking it being used against you is for low-level officials now, for those from humble beginnings who had had nothing but poverty and being treaded on, so they enjoy their priviledges extra hard, you now regularly hear news of corrupt Chinese officials with hundreds of millions in bribes, hundreds of mistresses and condos. But they are taken because of political struggles not for their crimes, no one is allowed to be clean in this game.
Those with immense political clout, who are born red with innate immunity, they play financial games. It's largely legal, much more profitable and effortless. The NYT has written many articles about Chinese listed companies with red investors and princelings.
I remember reading from traffic accident in China involving lorry that was loaded full of money. Some officials get so much bribes that their problems are similar to Colombian drug lord.
That is why corruption is endemic to authoritarian regime. In a state where it is impossible to climb the ladder without accepting bribes and giving them, you make sure everybody and guilty and its easy to do some "clean-up" whenever you need it.
Anti-corruption operations in authoritarian regime is just this, replacing problematic cronies with more faithful ones.
Corruption is a defacto development mechanism for making state funds behave more like free market allocation in China. It's the reason why China is the only country where increased corruption is correlated to increased growth - a paradox according to classical development theories. This is posited by Yukon Huang, former World Bank director for China, Russia, and Former Soviet Union Republics. Everywhere else corruption leads to inefficient allocation. The secret sauce is connecting corruption with bureaucratic incentives, i.e. graft a little on the side but they better build X new residential units, Y infrastructure to meet Z urbanization goals as dictated by the central committee. Chinese mixed-economy is/was* an elegant hack to have a more capitalist market while preserving a nominally socialist economic narrative, and an apt development tool for her needs.
*Was - the caveat to this system is that prolonged corruption is damaging to social stability - hence Xi's anticorruption drive that later analysis have determined to be more pragmatic than pure power grab - CCDI doesn't punish 1 million officials for shits and giggles. But up until recently, it's mostly targetted low-level "flies" versus high-level "tigers" - which I surmise is much more politically difficult, but high-ranking shakeups are underway since last year. As for sincerity of these reforms, wiki-leaked analysis on Xi when he was vice-premier can be summarized as: not the smartest but utterly incorruptible (his family not so much).
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 39.3 ms ] threadWhat intrigues me the most is that it is sort of implicitly the de facto standard. Curious how cultural mores develop!
This type of bribery is common everywhere. In Europe it's usually a real painting. Bribe is just overpaying for it. Switzerland is center of this. Geneva Freeport is full of paintings, watches and artifacts used as intermediaries for bribes and money laundering.
Verified real painting bought for $50,000 sells for $500,000 in auction after bidding 'competition'. Buyer is some Russian businessman. Seller is a wife of someone working for major European bank. Rich shady businessmen are drowning in art because they love the art so much and can't stop themselves.
In the last nine years my new job has me interacting intimately with Chinese nationals in the USA and China. Every few months I get reminded that most, but not all, Han Chinese have very different moral rules. It's very disheartening.
Those with immense political clout, who are born red with innate immunity, they play financial games. It's largely legal, much more profitable and effortless. The NYT has written many articles about Chinese listed companies with red investors and princelings.
That is why corruption is endemic to authoritarian regime. In a state where it is impossible to climb the ladder without accepting bribes and giving them, you make sure everybody and guilty and its easy to do some "clean-up" whenever you need it.
Anti-corruption operations in authoritarian regime is just this, replacing problematic cronies with more faithful ones.
Systemic corruption is a proven mean of control.
*Was - the caveat to this system is that prolonged corruption is damaging to social stability - hence Xi's anticorruption drive that later analysis have determined to be more pragmatic than pure power grab - CCDI doesn't punish 1 million officials for shits and giggles. But up until recently, it's mostly targetted low-level "flies" versus high-level "tigers" - which I surmise is much more politically difficult, but high-ranking shakeups are underway since last year. As for sincerity of these reforms, wiki-leaked analysis on Xi when he was vice-premier can be summarized as: not the smartest but utterly incorruptible (his family not so much).