From Chinese Press

Society of have nots

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-08 07:52

Relics showing the honesty of Chinese governments are on display at the National Museum of China. The exhibits include the dinner receipts of President Hu Jintao during his trip to Xibaipo, Hebei province, in 2002. But despite all this, honesty has become a rarity nowadays, says an article on www.southcn.com. Excerpts:

President Hu's dinner receipts are quite laudable, constituting a sharp contrast to some local officials' large expenditure on banquets.

In the early days of China's reform and opening-up, people used to keep a critical eye on banquets held by government officials.

The media still back the public to keep the administration clean but it seems that it doesn't pay enough attention to corrupt practices.

Since the entertainment allowances some officials are entitled to nowadays have almost doubled in the past few years, they can justify having the lavish banquets.

But international standards against corruption have not changed.

Government officials from some developed countries, irrespective of being presidents, prime ministers or other ministers, would be condemned or forced to resign if they are caught buying even one burger with public money.

This is in sharp contrast with the situation in China. So what has gone wrong?

The obvious reason is that China's officials have become increasingly corrupt over the past three decades. The discipline inspection department has to raise its bar as the number of corruption cases rise.

Bribery and corruption have become common in government offices. This, from a more serious perspective, reflects that China lacks an effective system that would turn proposition into reality.