Update Data
In some of my previous articles I introduced the economic structure in China. I mentioned that over there most of the profitable businesses such as oil, public transportation, banks, military industry and natural resources all belong to the government and that means the public will be benefited indirectly.
After doing some research I have to update some data here.
In 2010 all the government-owned businesses made 150 billion dollars profit and the tax they paid was only 1.5 billion dollars. One of the oil companies made 2.4 billion dollars profit and they still get funding from the government. It is said all these years that oil companies were protected by the government and control the market. However, they have tax exemptions and received funding from the government as well.
In 2011 Chinese military budget is about 90 billion U. S dollars. That money is more than the sum of its medical budget and social security budget. In 2010 Chinese government tax revenue was increased over 20%. A family with 3000 U.S dollars monthly salary has to pay 50% of their income as a different kind of tax.
In 2010 a vice president of an oil company was considered corrupt. His assets were over 30 million U.S dollars. In 2011 the department head of a railroad in the central government was prosecuted as corrupt. His assistant who was in charge of high speed rail projects had over 400 million U.S dollars in assets when his salary was 2000 U. S dollars a month. The Chinese never knew how those people get into the government’s position. After attending college for three years and graduating a twenty-five years old girl became the vice president of an oil college in Liao Ling province. Her father is a mayor of the city around there.
What I want to say is that by law Chinese economic structure maybe is better than the United States which allows a private family to run the oil companies. However, since the political system in China is not backed up by laws most of the country own businesses making a profit for a few powerful people only. If China couldn’t get rid of those corrupt leaders in their country who own businesses could not benefit the public at all.
There are two ways to reform the system. One way is what happened in Egypt — people sucessfully overthrow the government through protesting from the bottom. In that way a country has to pass through an unstable situation and we don’t know if the new government can really handle things well. This kind of revolution can’t happen that easy in a country as big as China. The second way is let the government make reform from top to bottom. It looks like the current Chinese leaders are willing to consider more of people’s concerns and deal with corruption.
The experience of a government leader Wang Tien Qi in Jiang Su Wei Ning county was announced in China. He opened his phone number to fax machines and let people send fax messages to him. He arranges a group of young people including a Phd degree holder to take care of the messages. They forward the message to related departments and make sure people’s problems are resolved. He fired some people because things were not being handled well. Under his leadership that county’s government income increased 400% in four years. This kind of reform is efficient and better than simply overthrowing a government because you never know if the next government is smarter and better. Just like we don’t know Obama’s ability until he get into the position. When we know something is wrong it is too late.
