Video Review
By: Katie Cooke
Video by: The Economist
Video title: Corruption
in China: "Checked and Balanced?"
Video Link: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2013/05/corruption-china
The
question of this video is "Checked and balanced?". It got me
thinking; China says they are going to start cracking down on corruption and
that they are very serious about this. But being that they are a one party
state, how do they go about providing a checks a balance system? We have seen a
few pretty high up officials, such as Lein Tienan and Bo Xilai be removed from
their posts and investigated for their corrupt activities, but why them? Is the
communist party going to start prosecuting all senior officials who are found
to be corrupt? Or like the video asks, are they just trying to "kill the
chicken to scare the monkey?"[1]
Are they just trying to use these people as an example or as a scare tactic
hoping that the rest of the country will start taking anti-corruption laws more
serious?
Ai
Ping, the vice minister of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee
International Department believes that it is necessary to keep the government
clean because it could be the life or death of the party if they do not. He
says that “The fundamental way to fight against corruption is to design and
reform our system so that there is no unchecked and unregulated power, then
there would be less and less unauthorized power “[2]
He does fear that as they try and fight corruption, there will be a group of people
who will not take them serious.
Yun
Shou of the Overseas Young Chinese forum says “The corruption problem in China
is a traditional one, and contemporary government officials are not immune to
the influence of the traditional mentality.”[3]
In order to crack down on corruption, mentalities are going to have to change
before they can change the structure. Corruption has been bred into the minds
of the Chinese it’s going to take a lot more than a few laws to fight it. It is
going to take, after a mind change away to enforce and hold people accountable
to the laws, even the most senior officials. They need to make sure that no one
is immune to punishments of corrupt activities.
It’s
hard to know if what the Chinese are currently doing to fight corruption is
going to be effective and if it everyone is going to be held to the same
standard; more time needs to pass to effectively gauge whether or not they
are going to work. My prediction is, that unless Xi Jingping and his regime
start holding EVERYONE to the same standards and find a way to create an
effective system of checks and balance, their anti-corruption policy is going
fail and be ineffective. It's hard to fight corruption with more corruption.
Endnotes:
[2] Chua Guan Cheong (More
Checks and Balanceneeded to fight China Graft, Officials say) http://fcpablog.squarespace.com/blog/2012/11/9/more-checks-and-balances-needed-to-fight-china-graft-officia.html
Nov. 9, 2012
[3] [3] Yun ZHOU,
(Towards the Rule of Law in Contemporary China: An Educational Approach) www.oycf.org/ Persepectives Vol. 3 No.1
No comments:
Post a Comment