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Using office to make money

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-04 07:40

We should ban officials from attending commercial activities for it is actually corruption, says an article in Beijing News. The following is an excerpt:

The latest issue of Outlook weekly, a news magazine, reported that for a long time, some government officials frequently have been showing up at commercial activities such as business opening ceremonies, product release conferences, and exhibitions, and gaining expensive fees for their appearance and even their secretaries and car drivers can also get the appearance fees.

As reported before in the media, Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, loved to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremonies and received the fees every time for his appearance, one even reaching 200,000 yuan ($29,410).

Another corrupt official from Sichuan province argued for his "obscure assets" in the court that "as an official, every time I attended a meeting, large or small, I would be given fees and this money was not calculated in my income sources". Obviously, in the eyes of this official, the fees for his appearance are completely a type of legal income.

Although these fees are given to government officials with the high-sounding reason of thanking them for their painstaking support, it still cannot hide out the fact of corruption of these "moonlighting" officials.

Officials are invited by enterprises for they represent the power of the government bodies, and their appearance may help businesses promote their products and services, and government power can be taken advantages of by the commercial entities. Therefore, the "moonlighting" of officials usually becomes an exchange between power and money. The "moonlighting" thus is a breeding ground for corruption.

As insiders said, some officials never take money when attending commercial activities, but even free "moonlighting" is not proper. Enterprises should have equal rights to compete in the market and government bodies should treat them as equal.

Officials, as regulators, will not be able to make people believe their fairness if they are too close to enterprises under their regulation.

We should lay down regulations to ban officials from attending commercial activities.

Although previously Henan province unveiled a regulation to ban this phenomenon, it is only limited to provincial-level officials. What we need now is a nationwide regulation to mark out the lines between official and commercial activities, to prevent government power from interfering in economic activities and to put an end to the "moonlighting" of government officials.

(China Daily 07/04/2008 page8)