Four months after the new school year started, Chen Jin is still trying to enroll her daughter in a top middle school in her city of more than 10 million people in northern China. The problem: No one to bribe.
In previous years, people with money or connections could bypass residency restrictions and send their kids to the most prestigious public schools. This school year officials aren’t rising to the bait, as education authorities take President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) anti-corruption campaign to heart.
“I will not give up,” said Chen, whose 12-year-old daughter attends another public school near home in Shijiazhuang in Hebei province. She said she’s prepared to offer as much as 100,000 yuan (US$16,000). “There must be a way.”
Photo: AFP
Chen’s difficulties show how Xi’s anti-graft push has permeated China and trickled down to low-level officials, with some unintended consequences. While many cadres may have been scared straight, the campaign has yet to change a broader mindset of corruption as an acceptable way to grease the wheels of business or circumvent chronic inefficiencies like overcrowded classrooms, poor pay for civil servants and endless red tape.
China’s anti-graft watchdog announced this month that some 100,000 officials have been punished over the past two years, with some of the worst offenders the “flies” that Xi has promised to target along with “tigers.”
The list includes water-utility official Ma Chaoqun in Hebei, who is facing charges after investigators found more than the equivalent of US$16 million in cash and 37kg of gold scattered across 68 apartments. A former deputy head of Beijing’s Zoo was sentenced to life in jail on charges that included embezzling the equivalent of US$2.2 million.
BAGGING TIGERS
“In theory, killing the flies is actually more important than bagging the big tigers,” said Andrew Wedeman, a professor of political science at Georgia State University who studies Chinese politics. “In the long term an anti-corruption campaign seeks to change the ‘culture of corruption’ that leads the rank and file to believe that ‘everybody is doing it and nobody gets caught’.”
China ranked 100th on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in 2014, behind countries like Serbia, Rwanda and Brazil. Even so, Xi’s efforts have dented revenue at baccarat tables from Macau to Las Vegas, slowed sales at luxury boutiques in Hong Kong and curbed the lavish banquets that were de rigueur for cadres. A Bloomberg survey of economists last year said the push would lower growth by 0.1 to 0.4 percentage points in 2014 and 2015.
For businessman Cai Xiaopeng, a quieter mobile phone marked the change. Before the Mid-Autumn Festival last October, he got fewer phone calls from government officials asking for gifts.
DON’T FORGET
In a regular year, Cai, the chairman of Kingsberry Group, a Beijing-based company that makes fruit products in Beijing and Hebei, would pay the equivalent of US$48 on average to more than 100 officials across dozens of departments to keep up relationships. In 2014, he had to pay about 20 people.
“The officials used to call me weeks before the holiday reminding me to not forget their gifts,” Cai said in an interview. “Things are getting better.”
Cai said he used to spend about 1 million yuan each year, about a third of his company’s annual revenue, to bribe officials and provide a buffer against meddling or punishment. Last year he estimates he saved close to US$130,000 in bribes, and may invest in more equipment as a result.
MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS
“I hope one day I won’t need to pay bribes for anything though I still have to pay to maintain relationships,” Cai said. “Officials will only stop taking bribes if the anti- corruption campaign becomes permanent.”
The lack of effective regulation or a reliable way of monitoring abuse of power has hindered Xi’s campaign, according to Ren Jianming, a governance professor at the BeiHang University in Beijing who has advised the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
“There’s an urgent need to establish a system to regulate the officials,” Ren said. “The so-called anti-graft campaign is a top down approach and will take some time to fully reach the bottom level of the official hierarchy.”
In the meantime, the campaign may actually increase the price of a bribe. Officials demand a bigger payoff because taking money has become more risky.
LARGER EGGS
That’s the problem faced by a jeweler in central Henan province who would only give his last name, Xia. Officials now take money only from people they trust and demand more of it.
“It takes more out of hens to lay larger eggs,” said Xia. He said he had to pay triple the customary price to an official when he sought permits to open new outlets in other cities in Henan.
President Xi’s calls for “zero tolerance on corruption” have proven too revolutionary for some officials in northern China’s Shanxi province. An education officer in the city of Linfen said bribery has become harder to spot but remains prevalent.
In a regular festive season at Linfen, a city that holds huge reserves of coking coal, the streets were clogged with cars as officials went around town buying gifts for each other, according to the official, who asked to be identified by his last name, Guo. Last year the roads emptied out after the anti- graft agency ordered officials to refuse gifts or money, especially during the holidays.
LISTING LOOPHOLES
Making sure the government closes any loopholes has become an obsession for Cai of Kingsberry. In a meeting with officials from the anti-graft agency in October, he listed every loophole that could give lower-level officials opportunities to ask for money.
‘It’s impossible to kill all the flies without an absolute change of the current system that gives officials too much power,’’ Cai said.
Not everyone shares Cai’s enthusiasm for the campaign. Just as officials look for bribes, so people look to pay them.
Chen Jin, the mother in Shijiazhuang, says she won’t rest until she finds an official willing to take money so she can get her daughter into her preferred school.
“I don’t believe those school officials could keep the door closed forever,” she said. “They can’t maintain their lifestyle if they forgo the money.”
— Additional reporting by Neil Western
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