What do you want to be when you grow up? "I want to be a corrupt official" said a six-year-old girl in China when asked this question on her first day in school.
This caused quite a stir when spread by a YouTube video in which she explained that corrupt officials "have a lot of things". Some praised her "realistic" outlook on life, while others were concerned about rampant corruption in China.
Punishments that include the death penalty have not curbed China's corruption problem, which is described by President Hu Jintao as one of the greatest threats to the legitimacy of Communist Party rule. A study by the Carnegie Endowment estimates that about 10% of Chinese government spending, contracts, and transactions is used as kickbacks and bribes, or simply stolen - this is about $86 billion a year.
There are thousands of anti-corruption protests in China that threaten social stability. Other costs include efficiency losses, waste, environmental damage and poor services. Health and safety also suffers when regulators are bribed to look the other way.
Enforcement of China's 1200 laws, rules, and directives against corruption is highly selective and mostly ineffective. China has no independent police or judicial system, so party leaders order investigations, often to settle internal power struggles.
Chinese censors recently cut off internet reference to the involvement of President Hu's son in a corruption scandal in Namibia by a company he used to head. Analysts say that officials seek power precisely so that they can become rich. According to Professor Minxin Pei: "Corruption is the glue that keeps the party stuck together. Getting rid of it is not possible as long as they keep this system."
South Africa has less corruption than China, ranking number 54 to China's 72 out of 179 countries on Transparency International's 2008 Corruption Perception Index.
The irony is that the SA Communist Party champions anti-corruption efforts, yet their proposals to increase state intervention would take us closer to the Chinese model of systemic corruption. The more the state is involved in running businesses, the more opportunities for officials to enrich themselves.
Appointments in government-controlled businesses are less likely to be based on merit than on political factors that open the doors to corruption.
Why, for instance, is the SACP pushing for Siyabonga Gama to be Transnet chief executive despite his suspension on allegations of tender fraud? The SACP criticises what it calls "tenderpreneurs" who get rich on government contracts, but what is to stop corruption if government alone is the business?
Communism in practice is always thoroughly corrupt because it centralises all power. The dispersal of power in a democracy based on a mixed economy with a free press and the rule of law makes it more difficult for corruption to flourish.
But the reality is that nothing will stop corruption if there are immoral individuals. You can have bad people in good institutions and good people in bad institutions.
Do you try to change people or institutions? You need to do both.
It's an eternal battle between what George Orwell called the moralists and the revolutionaries.
We must reduce the opportunities for corruption, but also celebrate and improve individual moral character. Little children will then aspire to be honest productive people, not those who leach off others.
Jack Bloom is a DA MPL in the Gauteng legislature. This article first appeared in The Citizen.
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