Hidden interest groups can hurt social justice more than corruption

WANG ZUXUE, deputy director of the local environmental protection bureau in Boxing county, East China’s Shandong province, hit the director of local education bureau because his wife failed to get a teaching post at a public school in the county. Beijing Times comments:

It seems Wang has no sense of the rules. According to the local reform plan, as a public school teacher his wife must apply for the position and beat the other candidates in order to retain her post. If Wang regards the competition result as unfair, he can complain to the higher authorities.

However, there is also a possibility that the local education reformers have broken some hidden rules by not letting Wang’s wife pass the competition. Many local officials have formed closed interest groups, and for Wang, the incident may be far more than a job for his wife — it might represent a challenge to his role in or membership of an interest group and he was defending that.

Actually, in the reforms introduced by local governments, such interest groups are usually well protected and they and their families are often granted the best parts of the cake.

Worse, it is hard to end this by normal routine of fighting corruption, because they can easily make their deeds legal. For example, when they need someone to fill in a public post, they simply choose an official’s relative without getting any bribe from them. In return, they receive special consideration from the official whose relative got the job. This kind of exchange of benefits is something more deeply hidden than corruption and it hurts social justice more than corruption.

The latest reports say that the local disciplinary committee has already been investigating the incident. We hope they can break the interest groups formed by local officials.