Friends can cause corruption

The provincial Party committee of Jiangsu in East China recently issued a document listing multiple concrete measures to ban the social and private activities of officials aimed at gaining promotion and economic benefits, such as meetings with classmates, colleagues, comrades-in-arms and those from their hometowns.

The management of officials beyond their eight-hour working day is not an intervention into their private lives, but a good-willed reminder that there are some things officials must not do.

Quite a few officials who have fallen in the country's anti-corruption campaign have disclosed that their corrupt ways were related to their circle of friends. In his statement during his trial, Ji Jianye, the former mayor of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, said his corruption was mainly due to his 20-year-old circle of friends.