Recently, while eating with civil servants in China, I discovered that more and more of them understand that President Xi Jinping is fighting corruption with all his strength. According to conventional wisdom, you’d think that civil servants naturally would be against anti-corruption, because it targets those within the Party and bureaucrats. But the reality is just the opposite. After all, out of the tens of millions of civil servants in China, only a handful have any real power – and not all of those are willing to trade their power for money or sex. The majority of civil servants are deeply resentful of those who use their power to monopolize resources, although they don’t dare say anything about it.
But some have realized that they don’t have any way to change the situation, so they decided, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” If you live in the mud, there’s no way you can avoid getting dirty, so to speak. So for many years, the public has had the impression that there are no clean officials. Every civil servant is a “suspect” in the eyes of the public – even without investigations or judgment, officials are seen as guilty.
Xi began his anti-corruption fight as soon as he took power. Many civil servants saw the coming storm and decided to keep their heads low. I have several friends who are waiting for this “anti-corruption storm” to blow over. But after waiting for two years, we’ve seen around 100 “tigers” taken down – it seems the “good old days” for these officials are really over. After realizing that, they took another look at Xi’s anti-corruption, and realized it wasn’t so terrifying. After all, these friends of mine have no real power. Although they gradually came to master China’s “unspoken rules,” they are also tormented themselves by these “rules.” If not, why have they asked me to send their children to those evil capitalist countries instead of having their kids follow in their parents’ footsteps as government workers?
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