China / Forum

Three pillars of anti-corruption drive

By Everynowhere ( bbs.chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2014-02-20 14:29

In my country, all larger public spendings are decided by the people over direct democracy - thus, corruption is already getting harder. Now to make corruption outright impossible, the respective government bureau has to publish the exact process through which various companies could bid for the project and also has to publish all financial data. Corruption is also very unlikely due to the fact that most carreer oriented people end up in the private, not the public sector so that government workers have quite a relaxed working environment and hardly anyone is greedy.

So you see, there are three pillars in my country that make corruption highly unlikely:

1) Direct democracy - which, however, hardly can be implemented by a country of China's size, as the spending threshold for project that lead to a vote would be so high that it would hardly help fighting corruption.

2) Transparancy: If everything is made public, people know what they're paying for with their taxes and they'll be very aware of government fund wasting. It also helps journalists to investigate cases if they feel corruption is going on in a certain area.

3) Anti-corruption culture: if government workers are just doing 8-to-5 jobs , and leaders only earn very few, you simply don't attract greedy people for that jobs. In my country, government leaders usually make their living from their jobs in the private sector and do the government work to "give something back", so they won't take. Lower leveled government workers also don't earn too much and enjoy a very relaxed work environment, instead. It is also important to note that there are usually not bonuses available for public servants, thus anyone ambitious or greedy will be scared away from government work.

Perhaps, China should implement one of those pillars for itself - especially the second one would probably benefit the PRC greatly on its strive for development.

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