Friends can cause corruption

The provincial Party committee of Jiangsu in East China recently issued a document listing multiple concrete measures to ban the social and private activities of officials aimed at gaining promotion and economic benefits, such as meetings with classmates, colleagues, comrades-in-arms and those from their hometowns.

The management of officials beyond their eight-hour working day is not an intervention into their private lives, but a good-willed reminder that there are some things officials must not do.

Quite a few officials who have fallen in the country's anti-corruption campaign have disclosed that their corrupt ways were related to their circle of friends. In his statement during his trial, Ji Jianye, the former mayor of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, said his corruption was mainly due to his 20-year-old circle of friends.

The essence of corruption lies in officials losing their moral bottom lines and the distorting of values. Officials who cannot resist the temptations of power and money will be approached by their friends, subordinates and other acquaintances for power-money deals and the transfer of interests, and their own weakness means they will be unable to resist.

Corrupt officials should reflect on why they have given in to the approaches of others in corruption rather than trying to attribute their wrongdoings to them. It is not that interpersonal relations among officials are all negative energy and will inevitably lead to corruption. The key is whether officials can really resist the temptations and properly exercise power in their hands.

The above is an abridgement of a China Youth Daily article published on Tuesday.