This is an original translation of a post by Li Yinhe which can be found here.
Translation
Reading Chen Hui’s “A Perspective on The Independent Commission Against Corruption”, I suddenly saw the light. Today, corruption is difficult to stop. In some places, cadres who aren’t willing to engage in corrupt practices have already become exceptions to the norm, a thorn in the side of the corrupt cadres. A thorn in someone’s flesh is unlikely to last long. Central authorities have given repeated orders but have been unable to solve the problem, giving way to doubts among the people as to whether or not the current [political] system can solve this problem by itself. Hong Kong’s clean and honest government has been a success, and perhaps something we can draw from in opposing corruption.
In the middle of the twentieth century, corruption in Hong Kong was similar to ours today. Government offices, public organs, and especially law enforcement branches were a complete mess of corruption. In 1974, the Independent Commission Against Corruption [廉政公署], directly subordinate to the governor general, was created, and in only four years, it uncovered 23 different circles of corruption. Of those, 18 were in the police department, and every group of public workers with more than ten people engaged in corruption had already been smashed. The number of [complaints about*] public officials involved in corruption gradually reduced from year to year, from ninety percent in 1974 to down to thirty. [The other seventy percent of complaints are about corruption in the private sector]. Now Hong Kong’s government employees are world-renowned for their honest practices and efficiency, and in the “International [Government] Transparency Index”, Hong Kong placed second in Asia, bested only by Singapore.
Doing things so well and so successfully must have cost a lot, right? Not at all. As of 2002, there were only 1,308 people working in the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The main thing is that it was directly subordinate to the highest level of leadership and granted autonomy to pursue cases independently. Additionally, there were forty people from all parts of society that made up four independent committees, responsible for overseeing the work of the ICAC. In Hong Kong, a city with seven million inhabitants, a thousand-odd people completely solved the problem [of corruption]. Following this example, all we need to do is create an Independent Commission Against Corruption in every province and major city that reports directly to the highest levels of government, and the problem will be resolved.
The problem of corruption shouldn’t be difficult to solve, mainly because high-level officials have no interested in being connected to corrupt cadres. They have the desire to address the corruption problem; we only need the appropriate measures and a few years’ persistence before corrupt groups and cadres can certainly be cleaned up. When Mao Zedong was leading, everything was honest and upright. Objectively speaking, this is because at that time bad people who wanted to engage in corruption had no money to do it with, the country was too poor. Now we have money, and the motivation and opportunity for corruption has increased. But all we need is determination like that seen in Hong Kong, useful measures borrowed from their system, and we the common people of China can [realistically] hope for an increase in China’s standing in the “International [Government] Transparency Index”.
*This isn’t present in the original Chinese but this statistic appears to be what she is referring to, albeit a bit abstractly. From Wikipedia: “In the 1970s, eight out of 10 graft complaints were against policemen and public officers. This trend has reversed over the years. Complaints against police officers reduced by 70% – from 1,443 in 1974 to 446 in 2007. Nowadays, only three out of 10 complaints are related to public servants.”
Our Thoughts
The ICAC does indeed provide an interesting example for the Mainland as frustration with widespread corruption increases. One particularly effective measure the ICAC invoked right off the bat was a partial amnesty for those who committed minor corruption prior to 1977, which presumably prevented some of the initial difficulties the Commission would otherwise have had. Such a strategy might also work well in Mainland China, where many local officials may, as Li Yinhe notes, have been more or less forced to engage in corrupt activities because that’s simply the way the system works. An amnesty, combined with enough propaganda about ‘turning over a new leaf’ might be enough to turn the tide of low-level local officials against corruption, especially if they saw early indications that the new Mainland ICAC was really being given autonomy and enough power to actually punish violators.
So what do you think? Could it work?
UPDATE: Interestingly, it appears Zhao Ziyang proposed almost exactly the same thing Li Yinhe is writing about back in 1989. According to his newly-published memoir, Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang, Zhao’s suggestions for concrete ways to follow up the reform-minded ideas expressed in his speech commemorating the seventieth anniversary of May Fourth included the following:
Meanwhile, on the topics of most concern to people and raised by the students — such as corruption, government transparency, democracy, rule of law, and public scrutiny of government — we needed to take active measures. I suggested establishing a Commission Against Corruption with real authority, under the National People’s Congress, that would independently accept reports and conduct investigations into the unlawful activities of families of senior Party leaders; strengthening the public’s ability to scrutinize the government; increasing government transparency and speeding up the process of establishing laws on the press and demonstrations; and adopting the practice common around the world of protecting the people’s democratic rights by establishing specific laws
Thanks for this excellent post. Actually it beats me as to why the Central authorities are not inspired by the example of Hong Kong’s ICAC. Maybe copying a British legacy is unthinkable for them.
Someone thinks this story is fantastic…
This story was submitted to Hao Hao Report – a collection of China’s best stories and blog posts. If you like this story, be sure to go vote for it….
Thanks Alice, honored to see you’re reading the blog :). Anyway, I fear you may be on to something. Sometimes it seems like the prevailing belief is that China is so different from the rest of the world that it shouldn’t even bother caring about what the rest of the world thinks or does. In some situations, I suppose that makes sense, but here I agree with you (and Li Yinhe): there’s an effective model already set up and tested, albeit on a smaller scale. Why not give it a shot?
One point of disagreement I have with Li Yinhe is how she says that during the Mao era, everything was honest and upright. Actually, in the mid-50’s when the Hundred Flowers took off, one of the main complaints of citizens to the central government was rampant corruption.
The way to battle corruption, however, has already been tried and true in several other countries and it’s been suggested by many, many people. However, like you said, Alice, it’s probably more an issue of pride than all else. Those methods for tackling corruption that I was referring to are simply unshackling the media and establishing an independent judiciary. Of course the system in Hong Kong is important as well, but I think the possibility of public officials being subject to embarrassment by reporters would take care of a good portion of issues right there.
If a major contract is given to a person because the political reason or he has connection to the high level officials/princeline, then you will have a issue here.
It is very clear that Party is above people and law in many areas. Mainland is very different from Hong Kong. The same as the Phillipines and Indonesia, or Mexico. ICAC will not always work.
I love to see people in the mainland proposing solid strategies to stop this. However I’m not convinced her assumption that all upper-level leaders would be enthusiastic is true. All those people, after all, got to where they are by playing the system; i.e., being corrupt. Some members of the upper-level leadership might be truly interested in curbing corruption but it would take some daring political maneuvering for them to stand against the tide. (This is a common idea among Chinese people I talk to; everyone believes that it is only local or lower-level officials that are corrupt, while national level leaders are not. I don’t know if that is true or what the basis for this idea is).
I am surprised you didn’t discuss one of the most interesting features of HK’s anti-corruption campaign. If a public official is living beyond what one might reasonably expect of a civil servant, the public official can be required to explain from where the extra assets came and if the explanation does not hold water, the extra assets are seized.
@Dan
That’s a pretty standard international practice. I imagine if I was driving around with a trash bag full of money on my front seat and a cop stopped me, he’d probably take the money until I could provide some sort of explanation for how I’d gotten it.
@ Josh: Again with the subtle The Wire reference! Fantastic!
@ Dan: I actually didn’t know about that. As I think I’ve previously mentioned, I actually know very little about Hong Kong, although I’ve been trying to bone up a bit recently.
@ Chris: You’re alive! Also I think you’re right, certainly there are going to be some high-level officials who go against it, but I think if the highest level people (and by that I mean Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, etc., not local officials) were to sign off on it fully, it might work. It also might well not work, but I would expect it to be better than nothing, anyway…
@ Dan,
I don’t know if you’ve read this translated article:
http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1784&Itemid=324
It seems that the highest level leaders do want to do something about corruption, but it is clear from the article that there is an almost insurmountable amount of resistance within the officialdom. If they can carry out to the letter the legislation requiring officials to declare their assets as the first step in the anti-corruption campaign, then there is still a silver lining…. But I tend to be as pessimistic as the author of the article.
For those interested, I just updated the end of this post with a fascinating little tidbit from Zhao Ziyang’s newly-published memoirs.
Mr. Hu Haifeng is the predent of the high tech company Nuctech Co. in China.
Nuctech provides the 90% of all X-ray scanners for 147 airports in China.
Who would dare to investigate how Nuctech was awarded with such major contract in China? Most of people in China don’t even know about it. Because newspaper or any media in China would not say anything anout who is Mr.Hu Haifeng.
Part of the problem as I see it is that the central government can really only go so far in hassling local authorities. Not only does it need those guys to carry out its main policies, it can’t afford people with the sort of power base a township or county chief has running around outside the system—or sulking in jail, while their buddies are making trouble outside. That’s also why Zhongnanhai hasn’t made the decision (suggested by some) to just outright eliminate townships as a level of government.
Of course, Hu and Wen genuinely want to cut down on corruption and they probably wouldn’t mind something like ICAC in the long run. But they are stuck with internal measures (“shuang gui” for Party members) and propaganda drives—at least until they allow democracy to percolate up into the actual government, as opposed to villages, which are outside the big pyramid.