Hidden Fortunes of Chinese Leaders
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm shocked, really. I would have thought the People's Republic of China is above this sort of thing.
Freebies, pocket change welfare schemes launched by the government is basically a token bribe given to the public to just shut up, while the leaders are busy in their corrupt practices.
I'm pretty sure he was being ironic.
More recently, it's split into a number of different meanings, including dramatic and situational, but it is commonly used in modern times to refer to a situation where the speaker means something other than what they say by their utterance.
In both this more recent meaning, and in the older greek sense of 'feigning of ignorance', the comment by acslater00 was ironic.
> Irony, sarcasm, satire indicate mockery of something or someone. The essential feature of irony is the indirect presentation of a contradiction between an action or expression and the context in which it occurs. In the figure of speech, emphasis is placed on the opposition between the literal and intended meaning of a statement; one thing is said and its opposite implied, as in the comment, “Beautiful weather, isn't it?” made when it is raining or nasty. Ironic literature exploits, in addition to the rhetorical figure, such devices as character development, situation, and plot to stress the paradoxical nature of reality or the contrast between an ideal and actual condition, set of circumstances, etc., frequently in such a way as to stress the absurdity present in the contradiction between substance and form.
> Irony differs from sarcasm in greater subtlety and wit. In sarcasm ridicule or mockery is used harshly, often crudely and contemptuously, for destructive purposes.
> It may be used in an indirect manner, and have the form of irony, as in “What a fine musician you turned out to be!” or it may be used in the form of a direct statement, “You couldn't play one piece correctly if you had two assistants.” The distinctive quality of sarcasm is present in the spoken word and manifested chiefly by vocal inflection, whereas satire and irony, arising originally as literary and rhetorical forms, are exhibited in the organization or structuring of either language or literary material. Satire usually implies the use of irony or sarcasm for censorious or critical purposes and is often directed at public figures or institutions, conventional behavior, political situations, etc.
Living in Denmark, it's a surprise to hear that we're living under a dynastic dictatorship!
Well, technically, we do still have a Queen, but she is not exactly exercising any sort of dictatorial powers.
Recently, anti-corruption crusaders and media have unearthed some massive hidden fortunes.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/india/...
This year's unusual because 7 major members of the Politburo Standing Committee are stepping down and their replacements will be selected at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is the reason the dueling political factions are aggressively ousting eachother, or else stories about corruption would never have made it to major media outlets.
The Congress was originally scheduled to commence November 4th (or sometime just before the US presidential elections) but was suddenly changed to November 8th. I don't think there's been official commentary on the last minute date change, but it's pretty obvious the Chinese party leaders want to know who's going to be the next US president first so they could "adjust" the makeup of of the Chinese political body accordingly.
I'm impressed by Bloomberg's and NYT's coverage. There's so much stuff that gets suppressed, even when tidbits of stories go viral on Weibo, the entire story almost never makes it over to this side of the Atlantic in one piece.
For that article, our sites were blocked in China. I'm curious whether NYT will get the block as well.
For those unaware, "our sites" means Bloomberg properties.
And HN too for linking to it.
Giant productive societies will be ruled by billionaires. If the society tries to choose otherwise -- whoever else they choose as leaders will become billionaires.
I'm not sure the theory is true, but we may want to prepare mechanisms that still work for checking leaders' power, and attaining an acceptable level of competent and just governance, if it does turn out to be true. I suspect that will require more transparency than China practices.
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/08/paul_ryan_vs_rage_aga...
Is there a name for this idea?
"When everything is recorded, nothing is remembered.", the final line, reminded me of Mary Renault writing about the transition from oral (memorized) to written poetry in pre-classical Greece.
Or maybe its real behind-the-scenes rulers are still billionaires (despite the particular figurehead officeholders). Or maybe the time required for the 'will be'/'will become' prediction hasn't passed yet.
I realize this is a 'no-true-scotsman' dodge. It wasn't meant to be a rigorous theory, just a thought-provoker. In 'giant productive societies' those people/movements best at marshaling large numbers of workers/machinery/voters will have both political power, and billionaire-like financial assets. The same competencies can acquire both... and power and wealth can be converted both ways (via both corrupt and non-corrupt processes).
In the US, when tremendous amounts of value and wealth are created, it also lands in odd places. Think of the early Google chef, or the Facebook artist who are both extremely wealthy. They got the money because tons of value was created and it just landed on them because they were in the right place at the right time.
I am not really making a point other than saying that this is a story of corruption which is terrible, and a story of value creation.
* In the same period, the US has gone from $1 to $2 in real income per capita
Try searching for Wen Jiabao ("温家宝" in Chinese)[0] on Sina Weibo Search[1], and you get:
> 根据相关法律法规和政策，“温家宝”搜索结果未予显示。
Google Translate for this gives:
> In accordance with the relevant laws, regulations and policies, "Wen Jiabao search results are not displayed.
Similar results can be observed with Mao Zedong (毛泽东), Jiang Zemin (江泽民), and Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), all past "Paramount Leaders"[5], as well as Hu Jintao (胡锦涛)[2], the current Paramount Leader, Xi Jinping (习近平)[6], rumored to be the next Paramount Leader. So is Wang Yang (汪洋)[4], the Guangdong Party Chief and likely a big shot in the next generation, alongside Xi Jinping.
Bo Xilai (薄熙来)[3] and Wang Lijun (王立军), recently disgraced officials, are acceptable. Oddly, so is Hua Guofeng (华国锋), a Paramount Leader from the 70s and 80s.
Edit: from Wikipedia[7]:
> because of his insistence on continuing the Maoist line, he was himself outmaneuvered in December 1978 by Deng Xiaoping, a pragmatic reformer, who forced Hua into early retirement. As Hua faded into political obscurity, he continued to insist on the correctness of Maoist principles. He is remembered as a largely benign transitional figure in modern Chinese political history.
Perhaps he is sort of seen as disgraced as well.
0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Jiabao
2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu_Jintao
3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Xilai
4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Yang_%28politician%29
5: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount_Leader
[1] 根據相關法律法規和政策，“溫家寶”搜索結果未予顯示。
[2] 根据相关法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。
Then just change it every so often.
I don't know. Members of the generation of my mother and my grandmother tend to blame privatization for all the downfall of Polish economy. There is something to that if you look at how railoads are managed right now - it's a stinking pile of corruption and theft, and the surprising thing is that it works at all.
What is an Asian thing is the fact that in most other countries, you can do something about it.
Good luck with that in Asia.
But I can see your point, my take is that it's predominantly happens in Asia. There are some spots of it in Europe as well. Mostly the eastern european enclaves. But they will fall eventually (or be consumed by Russia)
South America, Africa, (non-EU) Eastern Europe all suffer from this kind of corruption.
I've always found it funny that we pay those who control the budgets of trillion dollar economies so little as compared to their private sector counterparts. I mean - what would you pay the CEO of a trillion dollar corporation?
Paying public servants so little makes it relatively easy to either buy their favour or have their favor bestowed upon you with insignificant sums of money. Give ~1% of yearly profits to campaign finance - get a $10 billion dollar defense contract, or relaxed loans or a stronger monopoly.
It's just legalised bribery.
But so do Australia and New Zealand, and the salaries here in the government sector are much lower than they are in the private sector.
This is a well researched field[1]:
> In a bribery experiment, we test the hypothesis that distributive fairness considerations make relatively well-paid public officials less corruptible. Corrupt decisions impose damages to workers whose wage is varied in two treatments. However, there is no apparent difference in behavior.
There is no link between wages and corruption - there are many, many other factors that make up corruption.
Punishment and likelihood of being caught also seems to not disuade corruption. China has a large and very well funded public prosecutors office that focuses solely on corruption cases, the onus of evidence is low, it is the #1 domestic issue with much political pressure and the usual sentence on conviction is death (frequently plea bargained down to life or less in return for implicating others, but many corrupt officials have been executed).
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Ra...
[1] "Fair Salaries and the Moral Cost of Corruption" - [pdf] http://128.243.80.167/cedex/documents/papers/2002-05.pdf
Yes there is. If public servants are grossly underpaid, or vulnerable, they'll turn to corruption for income or safety (think of a policeman looking the other way in countries like Argentina). In Argentina, for instance, policemen were very poorly paid after the 2001 crash, and at the same time, an incredible wave of crime washed over the country, much like in Greece today. Police started getting paid much less, for a much more dangerous job (the murder rate for policeman rose dramatically). So they simply demanded bribes (long list of ways how to do this) and stayed out of trouble when they could. To compensate for the danger imposed by their job, they started looking the other way more.
IMHO, as the lack of independency in justice and persecution branch go, it is highly doubtful that the prosecutors were not a tool for political use other than purely anti-bribery purposes.
[1] http://english.enorth.com.cn/system/2007/07/09/001760265.sht...
I don't think there is any evidence whatsoever that paying the politicians well will take care of the problem of corruption. If nothing it may just remain same or even worsen. Politicians are corrupt because they can steal and get away, they have a lot of power in their hand and they use it.
Think of it this way, if you have means to make $100 billion and you could easily hide that through safe way- What will stop you from doing that? A big fat pay check? I don't think so. So as you can make money easily and get away with it, you will do it. Regardless of what your paycheck actually is.
To give you an example Insider trading scandals are happening despite fat CEO compensations.
And then there is scale. There is only one western country where money is on a comparable scale.