Another Public Education Campaign, This Time Corruption

2010-01-05

It is well known that I despise public education campaigns. I don't think they work and are therefore a waste of scarce resources. Usually this comes up (for me) in the context of intellectual property, but of course there are many of these kinds of campaigns out there.

I saw this today from Xinhua:

Chinese central authorities have stressed the promotion of honesty and uprightness among the public, especially government officials, in enhancing clean governance and anti-corruption drive.

It is imperative to foster and carry forward the merit of honesty and uprightness, and officials should have the awareness of using power justly and pursue clean-fingered work style, according to suggestions on clean governance put forward by six central government departments.

The six departments also urged to strengthen education on the public about the value of honesty and cleanness combining social morality, professional ethics, family virtues and personal moral character.

It is stressed that anti-corruption should be a subject that is reflected in literature works, films and TV dramas, as well as newspapers and magazines, books, and electronic products.

Anybody buy into this? Do officials really need to be reminded that they should be honest? If the airwaves are saturated with anti-corruption propaganda, will this help?

Basically, I think that most folks already know that they should be honest. They just choose not to be.

As with IP infringement, my knee-jerk reaction here is to say that the public education campaign should be ditched, officials should be paid more, and that offenders should be punished severely.

The problem here is that successive anti-corruption drives have resulted in many, many folks being publicly humiliated, jailed, or executed. Seems like enough for a strong deterrent effect, yet there is little evidence of one.

So how does the government stop public corruption?

Seriously.

This isn't a rhetorical question.

I really don't know.

Tags: China Law, Anti-corruption