China’s avid Internet users are taking a leaf from India’s anti-corruption drama by opening Web sites so citizens can confess, sometimes in pitiless detail, to buying off officials.
Chinese people can be disdainful of poorer India, but some have sought inspiration from the anti-corruption anger that has swept the South Asian nation, fanned by the Internet.
Several Chinese confess-a-bribe Web sites, including “I Made a Bribe” (www.ibribery.com), have been inspired by an Indian Web site “I paid a bribe” (http://ipaidabribe.com), Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po newspaper reported yesterday.
“Stop seeking improper gains and promote equal competition and return to us the dream of a fair China,” the Chinese-language front-page of the “I Made a Bribe” Web site says. “Please reveal your experiences of paying bribes so embezzlement and corruption have nowhere to hide.”
India ranked worse than China in Transparency International’s survey last year of perceived corruption, with China 78th out 178 nations and regions counted, and India 87th.
However, the tales posted on China’s new anti-bribery Web sites suggested that residents their have plenty to complain about.
The Chinese Communist Party regularly vows to stamp out corruption, but a long line-up of convicted officials also testifies that bribery and illicit enrichment remain common.
On another new Chinese confess-a-kickback Web site (www.522phone.com), one businessman said he had paid 3 million yuan (US$463,000) to officials to win contracts, including taking a planning official on a 10-day tour of Europe.
“Don’t think I’m trying to show off my wealth with this posting,” the businessman wrote. “It’s just I’m so toothless and helpless in the face of current-day society.”
“We hate corrupt officials, but we’re desperate to be recruited as officials. We hate monopolies, but wrack our brains to get into high-paying employers. We mock bent ways, but then try to pull personal connections to get our own business done,” he added.
Other postings on the sites included stories of kickbacks for permission to sell medicine, underhand sell-offs of state-owned mines to cronies, payments of money and cigarettes to pass driving school and “red envelopes” of cash to doctors to ensure expectant mothers were well treated.
PLAY OR BE PLAYED
“There’s no choice but to pay bribes,” one message said on the “I Made a Bribe” Web site, which said it was from a teacher who paid off education officials for jobs and promotions.
“Each time you naively assume you can get something done using regular procedures ... the result is you find nothing gets done unless you spend money to settle things with them,” the teacher said.
None of these anonymous claims could be verified.
The Chinese Web sites do not specify who is running them and whether they have official approval. In the past, some local governments have tried to use the Internet to encourage citizens and officials to confess to corruption.
China has more Internet users than any other country in the world — more than 450 million of them — and, even with censorship, they have already made the Internet a lively forum for airing complaints about corruption.
CROSSING RED LINE?
However, the new anti-corruption Web sites may be too blunt for Beijing to tolerate. Beijing has shut down other, investigative Web sites used to air corruption claims.
One message on “I Made a Bribe” voiced fears it would be shut by China’s censors.
“China’s national conditions are nothing like India’s,” it said. “If the government lets this Web site continue, this country will have a little hope. If it’s shut, then there’s no hope at all.”
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS