Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Greasy Palms
I want to clarify one point, too, that I made in this post, where I welcomed the return of bribery once the Olympics are finished.
This is predicated on the lack of a functioning court system. It’s like the difference between a free market and a black market. In a free market you have a means of conflict resolution—the legal system. If Microsoft and Google have a dispute over something, one party takes the other to court, it doesn’t send a hit squad over to kill the board of directors of its rival. Even in a world political sense there are organizations like the World Trade Organization. If one country thinks another has imposed unfair trade restrictions it doesn’t have to invade, it files a grievance with the WTO.
In China there is a court system, and you can sue someone, but it’s not like anything we have in the western world. The entire system of western justice is predicated on the concept of a dispassionate judicial system, willing to mete out decisions fairly, with a proper system of appeals to redress grievances. There’s nothing really like that here.
It’s like in a black market. Think of the drug trade. If the bloods and the crips have a dispute over who is going to sell crack in a particular neighborhood they can’t take each other to court, because selling drugs is illegal, and thus the drug trade is a black market. Violence is the only option, so they shoot each other. The same goes with the mafia, or with kiddie porn, or with any other illegal activity. There are no legal means of conflict resolution.
In a black market you have two options, you either use violence or you bribe. Here in China there is no dispassionate system of conflict resolution via the courts. Thus if you have a problem you are left with the same two means of conflict resolution, violence or bribery. Because of the authoritarian nature of life in China, violence isn’t an option, unless you are willing to subject yourself to swift retribution by the state. Thus all you are left with is bribery.
So, if the choices are a thoroughly politicized court system, where rulings are based less on law than on party whims, I say, “Bring back the bribery!” At least people will be able to get visas again.
