Riddled with Corruption

 China Inc.

China is a corrupt country.  The ordinary Chinese citizen knows it.  Over the past five years the internet has been used as a vehicle to expose the corruption of Chinese government officials and functionaries.  The word is out.  The response of the Chinese government has been to attempt more stringent censorship of its own citizens.  A government that will not allow its citizens to speak freely is a government riddled with fear.  It fears the truth. 

To be fair, the Chinese government has attempted to crack down on the corrupt activities of government functionaries and officials.  But one suspects that the crackdown is more driven out of political opportunism: it presents an easy way to get rid of a political opponent, rather than a consistent fundamental drive for universal ethical standards.  China is a country where virtually everyone can be considered a lawbreaker at the whim of the state.
  It is only the state turning a blind eye which allows individuals to go into business to make profits and increase their wealth.  Should the individual fall foul of the state, there is a raft of laws, rules, and regulations which can be quoted from the statute books to indict the individual.  Permits to be in business can be revoked.  Property can be confiscated whimsically.  Consequently, prosecutions and indictments can be politically motivated.  

Therefore, anyone going into China to conduct business needs to be careful and wary.  When the melamine scandal eructated Fonterra found out that Chinese business partners and employees can be corrupt.  But Fonterra was in favour at court, so it was able to work through the problems and escape prosecution.  But smaller businesses cannot.  There are accounts out of Australia that Australian companies doing business in China have had staff indicted for corruption and subsequently imprisoned.  The charges and indictments had all the hallmarks of vindictive action from local officials and competitors, who were demanding bribes and commercial secrets and protection money. 

We have a recent account of a New Zealander who was involved in business in China, where businesses in that country were manufacturing components for his products in New Zealand.  On a business trip he got into a scuffle in a restaurant which turned into a nasty fight.  One of his assailants died and he was put into prison for five years for manslaughter.  This, from Stuff:

A Kapiti businessman locked up for four years in a Chinese jail has told of the "cruel" conditions he endured, including torture, beatings and forced labour.  Danny Cancian, now 46, was sentenced to five years' jail for manslaughter after fatally kicking a man during a restaurant fight in 2008. He served four years of that sentence, most of it in Dongguan prison in the Guangdong province in southern China. 

The conditions he endured in jail tell us a great deal about China.  The way a country treats its prisoners and its criminals tells you a good deal about its culture and predominant philosophies and its dominant religion.
For all that time, he says he was unable to exercise, was kept in a cell with at least 18 other prisoners and subjected to violent discipline and solitary confinement.

He learnt quickly the horrors of isolation after a scuffle with a guard early in his sentence. "All the police came running in. They Tasered me and they beat me. Then I was put in isolation for two weeks." Isolation was a three-by-one-metre cell with a hole in the floor for a toilet. From seven in the morning, he would sit there, arms and legs folded, unable to move.

"At nine o'clock they let you sleep, but then they wake you every 20 minutes." When not in solitary confinement, he spent his days forced to work in a factory, making earphones for airlines."Every morning at 5am they would march us all to the factory and at 7pm we would come back. If you don't work you'll get beaten, Tasered and pepper-sprayed and put in isolation. It gives me a lot of nightmares just thinking about what I went through.". . . .

He has since told his story on YouTube, using handwritten placards that tell a tale of what he calls the real China. The placards include the words forced labour, long hours, beatings, Tasering, hunger, torture, sleep deprivation, pepper spray, no religion, little contact with family, chemical testing on prisoners, no human rights, suicide and death.

 The real China.  Not so, according to the Chinese Embassy, which issued this anodyne statement in response:

A spokeswoman for the Chinese embassy in Wellington said: "The issue of basic rights for inmates is an important component of overall human rights in China. China has joined international human rights conventions that require signatory nations to fulfil relevant obligations that include the protection of rights for inmates."

In the light of those requirements to which China has officially bound itself, will the Chinese government be investigating  Dongguan prison in the Guangdong province in southern China?  Will heads roll?  Or will bribes be exchanged?  Or will putting signatures on human rights conventions be as meaningful as all Chinese official signatures on agreements and pieces of paper: compliance is discretionary?  Now if a senior Chinese government official were to have it it in for some petty officials in Guangdong and wanted to make a point, then we may see an investigation and compliance.  But until then, not so much.

It's the difference between a government above the law, or subject to the law.  It's the difference between implicit totalitarianism and limited government.  It's the difference between a people believing that the law is king versus the king above the law.  It's the difference between a nation believing itself to be under the Living God versus a nation believing the nation itself is a god.  That, above all else, is why the Chinese government and Chinese governance is riddled with corruption.  That is why, increasingly, the same patterns are emerging in the West.