Cost of Bribery in China Soars With Inflation

The cost of bribing corrupt officials is soaring in inflation-stricken China, where even profiteers have started complaining that things are getting out of hand.

The size of bribes has risen sharply because of greed and an increased demand for “favors,” according to foreign businessmen and Chinese who wrestle with the frustrating bureaucracy.

The official China Daily newspaper this week quoted an anonymous Chinese profiteer who complained about the rising cost of greasing palms in the black-market television set business.

“Previously, a few hundred yuan would be enough for me to bribe officials and go through the channels but now it takes me about 10,000 yuan ($2,700),” said the profiteer.

China’s market-oriented reforms have given dishonest government and Communist Party officials more opportunity to boost their meager incomes. But many realized only recently how much they could demand, said a Beijing-based European businessman who sells trucks.

In the early 1980s a few cartons of foreign cigarettes could smooth along a contract worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said. “Now people ask for favors such as paying for their children to attend a Western university.”

Many officials draw the line at outright bribery but ask foreign companies for perks such as expenses-paid “training” trips abroad, another Western manager said.

The corrupt have become adept at tailoring demands to the ability to pay. To ease negotiations, West German companies are often asked to donate a Mercedes-Benz car.

One young Chinese intellectual hoping to go abroad said his passport application was held up by Beijing police because of a black mark in his work record.

“The police knew I had been offered a foreign scholarship worth 20,000 U.S. dollars, so they asked for 50,000 yuan--about half the money--in exchange for the passport,” the applicant said.

At the other end of the scale, Beijing taxi drivers say 50 yuan ($13) is enough to persuade police not to report minor traffic offenses. One motorcyclist caught riding while drunk said he avoided a 15-day prison term by handing over 400 high-class cigarettes and two bottles of rice liquor.

“Corruption is not such a bad thing. I’m glad I had the choice of paying a bribe,” the motorcyclist said.

The China Daily said corruption could block the country’s ambitious economic reforms. Student protesters in June claimed that it had plunged the country into its darkest period since 1949.

The 47-million-strong Communist Party expelled 109,000 of its members in 1987, many of them for bribery and corruption, according to official reports.

Perhaps millions more officials who would balk at the word “bribe” regularly accept gifts in return for a little political help.

“When you give presents, you have to do it in the right way. Give money, wine or cigarettes openly to an official and he will refuse, suspecting that you will report him,” one Beijing government worker said. “The correct way is to give the them, nicely wrapped, to his wife or child.”

Such petty graft or “connection-pulling” is so ingrained in Chinese life that the powerful can expect privileged treatment without asking, said one young Beijing resident whose uncle is a high-ranking government figure.

“When I travel around China I just let people know who I am and everyone scrambles to do me favors,” he said.

Outrageous greed is occasionally harshly punished--an official in the southern province of Guangxi was executed last week for classifying 177 imported cars as “gifts” to evade import duties. But China’s regular anti-corruption campaigns rarely seem to touch the highest officials.