How Pork Looks in Dingmei village

Via news.com.au:

In the United States, politicians bribe their districts to vote for them by funding unconstitutional and often useless products with tax dollars. This is often referred to as “pork barrel spending” and while it is complained about in some circles it works. In Dingmei village in Fujian province, China, the bribes are . . . more direct in nature. Recently, there have been calls to cut down on bribing voters. Not everyone is happy about this.

“You can earn lots of money if you're elected village boss, so what's so bad about dishing some of it out?” complained one old man, whose surname was given as Chen.

“But this election, they went to the temple and all we got was a bowl of rice and bottle of beer after all was said and done,” he said. “It's peanuts.”

I am certainly no fan of bribery but there is something to be said for the openness with which it occurs in this village. In the United States there is the pretense that politicians are “doing something for their districts” when in reality all they are doing is moving about confiscated tax dollars. In Dingmei village there is no veneer so the corruption, the bribery is far more obvious. This, perhaps, is at least slightly more healthy.

“The villagers aren't happy at an election without bribery,” an old woman was quoted as saying in the article, headlined “In combating election bribery, the law is no match for praying to the gods”.

Indeed, the law is quite ineffective because it is the politicians who write the law in the first place.