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It is always interesting to compare national approaches to corruption.  These approaches sometimes provide a window on what is most acutely felt within national ruling elites as necessary markers of behavior self-control to manage the opinions of the masses.  They also provide insight into the cultural machinery that forms the foundation for the choices made. Two recent stories, one form China and the other from the United States, underline both the importance of reinforcing narratives of appropriate elite behavior and the cultural framework for choosing the type of behavior narratives to emphasize.  Both deal with issues of money, the management of the state apparatus and the obligations of public servants.  Both emphasize purity and responsibility narratives.  Both target corruption.  Yet while the Chinese narrative conflates family corruption with fiscal dissipation and disharmony, the American narrative conflates sexual perversion (moral dissipation) with dereliction of duty and the corruption of the state's role as guardian of economic harmony.     

1.  The Chinese Narrative.  In a recent story widely distributed in China and abroad, the "Communist Party of China ordered its senior officials yesterday to report any change in their marital status and whether immediate family members are living overseas in the latest stab at tackling corruption. The order came during a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee." Party wants info on spouses, income, Shanghai Daily, April 24, 2010.  

Id. The connection between personal corruption and corruption of fidelity to the state is emphasized.  Just as personal corruption perverts the family unit, converting it into the organization of a criminal enterprise, so it also perverts the relationship of the individual to Party and State. "There have been many scandals in past years involving corrupt officials, or their family members, fleeing abroad with ill-gotten gains. According to Ministry of Commerce statistics, some 4,000 corrupt officials ferreted about US$50 billion out of the country since economic reforms began in 1978 through 2003." Id. The result is disharmony within the family that is then reflected in disharmony between the family and the state, to the great harm of all family members and all citizens of the state. "China's anti-graft chief He Guoqiang yesterday urged the country's discipline inspection and supervision authorities to improve their capabilities and to win public trust." Id. Corruption thus imperils not just the State but the leadership  (lingdao (??)) role of the party under the Constitution. "Highly aware of the grave reality of widespread corruption, the ruling CPC last September issued a decision on Party building, saying problems and corruption among Party members "have seriously affected the consolidation of the Party's governing status and the realization of its governing mission." . . .  "Corruption from within is the major threat to the ruling party during peacetime," wrote Shao Jingjun, research fellow with the CCDI research section, in the latest edition of "Qiushi" magazine."  China acts on corruption to address public concern, China.org.cn, Feb. 25, 2010.

Not only does this activity corrupt family, state and Party, but it suggests  a sort of treason as well.  It is not for nothing that the story-narrative emphasizes that such acts of corruption result in the corrupt Party members betraying Party and state by fleeing to another country.  "In 2008, Pang Jiayu, former mayor and Party chief of Baoji in Northwest China?s Shaanxi province from 1997 to 1999, was accused of allowing substandard pipes to be used and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for corruption.But Pang?s wife and son had emigrated to Canada in 2002, causing great concern in the public over corrupt officials relocating their ?dirty money? abroad." Xie Yu, Govt wants a better view of 'naked officials' to help prevent corruption, China Daily, Feb. 24, 2010.  And thus the need to manage officials whose families are put in a position where the temptations of corruption are most present.  Party governing elites have suggested an approach to managing the behavior of individuals abroad  who are connected to Party officials. "The meeting also deliberated on a tentative regulation on the management of officials whose family members have all gone abroad." Party wants info on spouses, income, Shanghai Daily, April 24, 2010.  The state has emphasized this connection with a new term, the naked official.  "The National Bureau of Corruption Prevention and the Ministry of Supervision jointly listed supervision over so-called ?naked officials? as a key task. The term ?naked official? was selected as one of China?s top 10 buzzwords of 2009 by Chinese linguists. It refers to officials whose family members have moved overseas, while they themselves work in the country alone, usually with the other country?s visa in hand."  Xie Yu, Govt wants a better view of 'naked officials' to help prevent corruption, China Daily, Feb. 24, 2010.

And the approach to solution has a cultural-narrative quality as well.  "He, head of the Party Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said constant efforts must be made in ideological education, professional training and institution building. The authorities must refrain from abusing their powers for illicit gains and handle legal cases in accordance with discipline and law, and must not leak the information of petitions or whistle-blowers, He said." Id.  Indeed, the State has gone to some effort to offer narratives of such corruption, and of the efforts by officials to control these individuals.  See, Sonny Shiu Hing LO, Ethical Governance and Anti-Corruption in Greater China: A Comparison of Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, Canadian Political Science Association Papers  (2006).

The past few months have witnessed an unprecedented crackdown on corrupt government officials. Huang Songyou, former vice president of the Supreme People's Court, received a life sentence in January for embezzlement and taking bribes amounting to 3.9 million yuan (574,000 U.S. dollars) in exchange for favorable court rulings. Huang was the first top judicial official convicted on corruption charges. Some ten days later, Yu Renlu, former vice chief of the Civil Aviation Administration was sacked and kicked out of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) for "serious violations of discipline and law." Yu was found to have used his position to benefit other people in return for "large sums" of bribes, a statement jointly issued by the CPC's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and the Ministry of Supervision said. His case has been referred to prosecutors. In February, a key figure in the high profile mob trials in southwest China's Chongqing municipality stood trial. Wen Qiang, former deputy police chief and director of the justice bureau in Chongqing, was accused of rape, taking more than 15 million yuan (2.2 million dollars) in bribes to protect criminal gangs, and possessing a huge amount of unexplainable assets. The massive 8-month anti-gang crackdown in Chongqing revealed judicial corruption, with 200 judicial and public security officials implicated, noted former Chongqing mayor Wang Hongju.

China acts on corruption to address public concern, China.org.cn, Feb. 25, 2010. And the connection between corruption and the foreign is strong.  Kunming Strives to Curb Overseas trips on public Expense of Party and Government Cadres, Source?National Bureau of Corruption Prevention of China Time?2008-11-05 16:20. Treated as an ethical issue with political effects, the Communist Party has "issued a code of ethics for CPC cadres to follow Tuesday to ensure clean practice in their work and prevent corruption. The guidelines specify 52 unacceptable practices with respect to CPC leaders and cadres of various levels, including accepting cash or financial instruments as gifts, and using their influence to benefit their spouses, children or "special concerned persons" with regards to their employment, stock trading or business."   Chinese Communist Party issues code of ethics to ensure clean governance, English.news.cn 2010-02-23 18:19:23 The traditional state-culture narrative, the deep relationship between kinship-Party-State, is thus reinforced through the construction of the contextual realities of corruption. 

2.  The American Narrative.  The American narrative is more straightforward and in  keeping with American cultural norm tropes, more salacious.  In a recently released summary report, the U.S. Office of the Inspector General concluded that a small number of employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission used the networks and machinery provided to them by their employer, the United States government, to access sexually explicit material.   SUMMARY OF PORNOGRAPHY-RELATED INVESTIGATIONS CONDUCTED BY THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL . This report, then picked up by  elite outlets of the American media, quickly became something of a different story--a morality tale in which  sexual  corruption was conflated with moral corruption in a way that contributed to the perversion of the political system contributing in turn to the global economic crisis that began sometime in 2007.  In one deliciously naughty version, produced by CNN, an important source of information management for middle income Americans, it was reported

As the country was sinking into its worst financial crisis in more than 70 years, Security and Exchange Commission employees and contractors cruised porn sites and viewed sexually explicit pictures using government computers, according to an agency report obtained by CNN. "During the past five years, the SEC OIG (Office of Inspector General) substantiated that 33 SEC employees and or contractors violated Commission rules and policies, as well as the government-wide Standards of Ethical Conduct, by viewing pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images using government computer resources and official time," said a summary of the investigation by the inspector general's office.

Report: SEC staffers watched porn as economy crashed, CNN Politics, April 23, 2010. The New York Daily News version is equally enlightening:

At the SEC, all they thought about was SEX. The country's top financial watchdogs turned out to be horndogs who spent hours gawking at porn Web sites as the economy teetered on the brink, according to a memo released Thursday night. The shocking findings include Securities and Exchange Commission senior staffers using government computers to browse for booty and an accountant who tried to access the raunchy sites 16,000 times in one month. Their titillating pastime was discovered during 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, said the memo obtained by The Associated Press.

Dozens of Securities and Exchange Commission staff members used government computers in the past five years to access and download pornographic images, according to a summary prepared by the agency's watchdog. Most of the reported incidents have occurred in the 2 1/2 years since the global financial meltdown began, according to the SEC's inspector general. According to a summary requested by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz investigated 33 employees and contractors for illegal computer usage. The agency has around 3,800 staffers. Three incidents were reported this year. Ten occurred in 2009, 16 in 2008, two in 2007 and one each in 2006 and 2005. 

Ed O'Keefe, Report says 33 SEC staff members viewed pornography at work, The Washington Post, April 23, 2010.  Still, others could not help but publish some of the prurient details:

The memo was written by SEC Inspector General David Kotz in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. It summarizes past inspector general probes and reports some shocking findings:
? A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.
 ? An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as "Sex" or "Pornography." Yet he still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC's internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense, and received a 14-day suspension.
 Id.

Daniel Wagner, GOP ramps up attacks on SEC over porn surfing, Yahoo News,  April 23, 2010.  This version then indirectly suggests a crude calculus: "The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008." Id.

But sexual "perversion" was not the only item throw into this stew pot of corruption.  Money provided a bit of spice.  "More than half of the workers made between $99,000 and $223,000. All the cases took place over the past five years."  Report: SEC staffers watched porn as economy crashed, CNN Politics, supra.  In another version, it was rendered this way: "Seventeen of the employees were "at a senior level," earning salaries of up to $222,418." Daniel Wagner, GOP ramps up attacks on SEC over porn surfing, supra.

Put together, this narrative assumed a more momentous form.  It was transformed from the story of individuals misusing their company computers and internet connections.  "The discovery of an employee surfing the Internet for porn is nothing new, whether in a federal agency or a private entity. But the SEC revelations sparked a broader question about how well federal agencies block such activity."  Ed O'Keefe, Report says 33 SEC staff members viewed pornography at work, supra.   But it appears that the quesiton raised was broader than that.

"It is nothing short of disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at pornography than taking action to help stave off the events that brought our nation's economy to the brink of collapse," said Rep. Darrell Issa. The Republican is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"This stunning report should make everyone question the wisdom of moving forward with plans to give regulators like the SEC even more widespread authority," he said. "Inexplicably, rather than exercise its existing regulatory enforcement authority, SEC officials were preoccupied with other distractions."

Report: SEC staffers watched porn as economy crashed, CNN Politics, supra.  Others chimed in: on the issue "Former SEC spokesman Michael Robinson said he shares the public's outrage about SEC staffers who enjoyed porn on the taxpayer dime when they were supposed to be keeping the markets safe. "That kind of behavior is just intolerable and atrocious," said Robinson, now with Levick Strategic Communications. He said he expects the head of the SEC, Mary Schapiro and her team, are "very focused on" the issue."  Daniel Wagner, GOP ramps up attacks on SEC over porn surfing, supra.

The character of the narrative, and its utility as a basis for policy discussion now becomes clear. Sexual corruption serves as a proxy for or perhaps as an intensifier of other misconduct.  This conflation, culturally driven in the West, and generally amalgamated with political concerns, expressed as policy or law, runs deep in American culture.  See, Larry Catá Backer,  Emasculated Men, Effeminate Law in the United States, Zimbabwe and Malaysia. Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2005.  Sexual corruption serves as both explanation and cause of violations of the public trust. Thus, the "question now becomes what happens to all of those SEC auditors, attorneys and other (often highly paid) officials who managed to violate the public trust by using their work time to watch porn; subvert investigations; and otherwise ignore the warning signs of financial fraud that they were paid to investigate?"  Kathy Kristof, SEC: Porn, Ponzi Schemes and Accountability, CBS MoneyWatch.com, April 23, 2010.  It also provides a moral connection between sexual lapses and lapses of duty--of fidelity to the state and the important duty to which they were entrusted--at great public expense.   ""It is nothing short of disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at pornography than taking action to help stave off the events that brought our nation's economy to the brink of collapse," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who sits on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform."  SEC staffers watched porn, not Wall Street, UPI.com, April 23, 2010.  The economic collapse of 2007 is thus reduced to the indulgence of an uncontrolled and deviant sexual lustiness that corroded the the public duty of the individuals even as it  contributed to their moral dissipation.

In both the American and Chinese narratives, then, moral corruption intensifies political corruption.  Dissipation of the sort that threatens the state--bribery in China and professional conduct in the United States--is evidence of personal dissipation.  Such dissipation is understood in culturally significant forms--family and loyalty in China and sexual misconduct in the United States.  In both societies, ""Corruption is more often than not the result of abuse of power," says Ma Huaide, vice president of the University of Political Science and Law. He believes that effective prevention and punishment of corruption depends on the improvement of laws that restrict and regulate power, as well as their implementation. "  China acts on corruption to address public concern, China.org.cn, Feb. 25, 2010. But the causes and responses arise and are met in culturally specific ways.

 
 

 

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