Corruption...

Article: "Corruption in China: Not the best way to clean up", The Economist, 21 April 2007

In China, corruption is rampant, but there are little efforts taking place to solve this issue. Hence, along with that fact, the thought of how corruption affects a country and how to solve it will come to mind.

With corruption, a country's economic development would be greatly hampered. There will be few foreign investors since there is little trust in dishonest officials. Investors will not dare to trust these officials as they fear the misuse of their funds. Furthermore, in order to set up businesses in corruption-rampant states, entrepreneurs have to set aside a large sum of money to bribe the officials in order to appease them and not receive too much trouble in the future from the authorities. These will cause foreign investments to fall below the potential of the market.

Corruption also feeds on itself. This means that with corruption more rampant, the problem will worsen. People who were initially honest may turn to this dishonest act due to the frustration that others are not playing by the rules. Therefore, with more corruption around, more people will corrupt too.

Finally, corruption may bring harm to citizens. For example, a dangerous criminal is on the loose. Luckily he is arrested within a short period of time. However, due to corruption, he is acquitted of his crime and released as an 'innocent' man back into society, thus bringing back the risk of him hurting people again.

To fight corruption, leaders of ruling parties need to take certain drastic measures. First, by being as transparent as possible, all information is disseminated to citizens and nothing is left in question. This will leave no room for dishonest officials to conduct corrupt acts.

In addition, governments should adopt the 'zero-tolerance' method. Officials caught being corrupted should be persecuted immediately and thrown heavy sentences to act as a deterrent for other would-be corrupted officials.

These would definitely solve the problem of corruption. Hence, where corruption is rampant, like in China, governments should adopt these approaches to tackling the problem to prevent further harm being brought to their nation.