Anti-corruption game cause website crash in China (resumé en français)

 

China enjoys anti-corruption game

 

 

An online game in China that allows players to eradicate corrupt officials has proved so popular its website has crashed, state media reports.  Since its launch eight days ago, the game, "Incorruptible Fighter", is reported to have been downloaded more than 100,000 times. The game was devised by a regional government in east China to highlight the problems of corrupt officialdom.  

 

China has been hit recently by a number of high-profile cases of corruption.  The former head of the country's food and drug watchdog was executed last month after being convicted of taking bribes.  Last week, the Communist Party's former leader in Shanghai was expelled from the party, and may now face charges, after he was linked to a pensions fund scandal that has also implicated other senior officials. President Hu Jintao has vowed to take action against officials found guilty of corruption, which has become rampant since market reforms opened the economy in the 1980s.

 

'Sense of achievement'

 

 "Incorruptible Fighter" allows players to get ahead by killing and torturing corrupt officials, while assisting the upstanding ones. Along the way, they are led through a series of moral challenges before entering a corruption-free paradise. The characters in the game are based on well-known figures from Chinese history.  "We want game players to have fun but also learn about fighting corruption, folklore and history," Qiu Yi, an official in charge of the project, told the China Daily newspaper.  The paper also quoted one gamer called Sun as saying: "I feel a great sense of achievement when I punish lots of evil officials."

 

 

The game appeared to have become a victim of its own success. A note on the site on Thursday said it had crashed due to overwhelming demand.  "The game is currently under hardware and software updating as the online players have exceeded the limit of the server and the programme," the notice read.  But some are questioning the game's target audience. "Government officials should be the ones getting anti-corruption education, not local youngsters," Wang Xiongjun of Peking University told the China Daily.

 

Story from BBC NEWS:

 

 

Résumé en Français    

 

Un jeu virtuel anti-corruption lancé il y a 8 jours en Chine est devenu si populaire que son site web s’est scratché. Le jeu appelé Incorruptible fighter (guerrier incorruptible) a été téléchargé 100 000 fois depuis son lancement. Il a été inventé par le gouvernement régional de l’est de la Chine pour souligner la corruption grandissante. Récemment il y a eu plusieurs cas de corruption très médiatisés en Chine et certaines personnes, très haut placées, ont été exécutées. Le rôle des joueurs est de torturer, tuer les politiciens et fonctionnaires véreux et d’aider tout ceux qui sont honnêtes et bienfaisants. Les personnages du jeu sont tirés de l’Histoire chinoise. Les créateurs ont expliqué qu’ils voulaient que les joueurs s’amusent et sachent lutter contre la corruption tout en apprenant l’histoire de leur pays. Certaines personnes critiquent la cible et disent que ce n’est pas les jeunes qui devraient recevoir une éducation anti-corruption mais plutôt les politiciens et les fonctionnaires.

 

  
Le franc-parler de Hort

Voilà une idée géniale que les africains pourraient adopter pour éradiquer les leaders et les fonctionnaires corrompus chez eux tout en apprenant leur histoire. 

  

 

Corruption in China: The anger boils over

International Herald Tribune

Carl Minzner

May 29, 2007

For the past two months, local officials in the southwestern Chinese province of Guangxi have pursued a harsh campaign aimed at enforcing China's population planning laws. In order to meet targets for allowable births, they forced pregnant women to have abortions. They threatened to demolish homes to make residents cough up fines demanded for excess children. This month citizen anger boiled over. Thousands of angry rural residents took to the streets, smashing cars and sacking government offices. The vicious nature of the Guangxi enforcement campaign is all the more striking because it directly conflicts with the orders of China's top leaders.

 

In January, Communist Party and government officials in Beijing issued a joint directive ordering stronger enforcement of China's population planning laws - precisely the aim of the Guangxi authorities. But the national directive clearly emphasized the need to rely on positive financial incentives to reward compliance with birth control policies - not coercive measures. Indeed, national officials touted the directive as a move away from "administrative" controls on population growth. The director of China's national family planning council even suggested that the authorities would waive fines for poor citizens. So how can there be such disconnect between the bright ideas coming out of Beijing and the hard reality of the Guangxi streets?

 

One reason is that the central authorities are not in full control of their country. This may seem difficult to believe, particularly to outsiders accustomed to images of Chinese security forces dragging away protesters in Tiananmen Square. But Beijing actually has major difficulties supervising local officials. Sure, you can demand that the local authorities meet designated birth control, tax revenue or economic development targets. But how do you supervise this? How do you ensure that local officials don't simply falsify data? Or that they don't rely on their own private goon squads to brutalize local residents into meeting whatever targets have been set?

 

In other countries, a range of independent, bottom-up channels help monitor and check the behavior of local officials. A free press exposes government corruption. Independent judicial institutions evaluate whether the actions of the local authorities accord with national law. Open elections allow citizens to remove officials engaged in unethical behavior. These channels don't exist under China's one-party system. Local Chinese party secretaries exercise sweeping control over the local media, legislatures and courts. Naturally, this breeds corruption and abuse of power. It also means that local party officials can effectively choke off information to Beijing, blinding the central authorities as to exactly how their mandates are carried out. Some localities have degenerated into private fiefdoms run by local party officials. This has serious consequences for people whose rights have been violated by local officials. Citizens are far from passive. They resort to any and all channels to get redress - lawsuits, petitions, foreign media. But these often don't work.

 

In 2005, the blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng attempted to use these channels to protest violations of national law committed by local population-planning officials in the northern province of Shandong. The local authorities arrested him and, after detaining his entire team of defense lawyers on the eve of his trial, sentenced him to four years in prison. Faced with a lack of alternatives, what do people do? They riot. Rising social unrest reflects desperation. It is also one of the few ways that ordinary citizens have to alert central officials that local authorities are engaged in widespread violations of national policies. In short, official abuses and riots in Guangxi are natural outcomes of China's authoritarian controls. If Chinese leaders are serious about addressing these problems, they need to undertake institutional reform.

 

Channeling social discontent out of the streets requires building independent institutions that can fairly resolve citizen grievances. Otherwise, both China's local government abuses and its social instability will continue to worsen.For the past two months, local officials in the southwestern Chinese province of Guangxi have pursued a harsh campaign aimed at enforcing China's population planning laws. In order to meet targets for allowable births, they forced pregnant women to have abortions. They threatened to demolish homes to make residents cough up fines demanded for excess children. This month citizen anger boiled over. Thousands of angry rural residents took to the streets, smashing cars and sacking government offices.

 

The vicious nature of the Guangxi enforcement campaign is all the more striking because it directly conflicts with the orders of China's top leaders. In January, Communist Party and government officials in Beijing issued a joint directive ordering stronger enforcement of China's population planning laws - precisely the aim of the Guangxi authorities. But the national directive clearly emphasized the need to rely on positive financial incentives to reward compliance with birth control policies - not coercive measures. Indeed, national officials touted the directive as a move away from "administrative" controls on population growth. The director of China's national family planning council even suggested that the authorities would waive fines for poor citizens.

 .

Rising social unrest reflects desperation. It is also one of the few ways that ordinary citizens have to alert central officials that local authorities are engaged in widespread violations of national policies. In short, official abuses and riots in Guangxi are natural outcomes of China's authoritarian controls. If Chinese leaders are serious about addressing these problems, they need to undertake institutional reform. Channeling social discontent out of the streets requires building independent institutions that can fairly resolve citizen grievances. Otherwise, both China's local government abuses and its social instability will continue to worsen.

 

Carl Minzner is an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.