{"id":3019,"date":"2019-01-06T08:52:20","date_gmt":"2019-01-06T01:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/\/uncategorized\/anti-corruption-furnace-vnexpress-dinh-hong-ky\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T17:10:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:10:31","slug":"anti-corruption-furnace-vnexpress-dinh-hong-ky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/articles\/newspapers\/anti-corruption-furnace-vnexpress-dinh-hong-ky\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Corruption Furnace (VnExpress) \u2013 Dinh Hong Ky"},"content":{"rendered":"

The article by Mr. \u0110inh H\u1ed3ng K\u1ef3 was published in the “Viewpoint” section of the online newspaper VnExpress.net on January 6, 2019.<\/strong>
\u201cOne time, my niece told the whole family, \u2018Mom said don\u2019t bring fruits or gifts, just give an envelope to keep it simple.\u2019\u201d I keep wondering: where does the root of corruption in our society come from? Does it start at the top, from corrupt senior leaders, or from a system and environment that easily breeds corruption? Or is part of it rooted in family education? Is focusing only on high-profile cases to \u201cburn the furnace\u201d enough to fight corruption?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Before birth, a child\u2019s parents already have to \u201cbribe\u201d to ensure the baby is born at a decent maternity hospital. When the child turns three and wants to enter a good preschool, there are prices to pay through various \u201cchannels\u201d of connections. Once enrolled, parents must regularly bring gifts on every \u201cmemorable\u201d occasion. Thus, the \u201cenvelope culture\u201d baggage follows children throughout their primary and secondary school years.<\/p>\n

Then if a student gets into university but studies poorly or wants better grades, \u201cbuying the teacher\u201d has become a custom. After graduation, if they apply to work in government agencies, the cost depends on how \u201cprofitable\u201d the job is. The subsequent investment process is very long and without clear standards. Bribing to pass civil service exams, competing for connections, joining the networks of this or that official, trying to become someone\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2026<\/p>\n

But if you \u201cinvest,\u201d you must \u201cget your money back.\u201d How can you recover your investment with the meager salaries in the state payroll? Once promoted to a certain position, the endless process of both continuing to \u201cinvest\u201d and \u201crecoup\u201d to survive the race becomes a relentless cycle. In such an environment filled with \u201cinvestors,\u201d systemic corruption is inevitable.<\/p>\n

At a late-2018 conference with some senior government leaders, one confided that the government\u2019s greatest current challenge is not lack of budget but the weakness of the ranks of officials and civil servants in execution. A huge workforce of civil servants mostly lacks capacity and has slowed the country\u2019s operation. It is not easy to reduce the number of civil servants when they have been \u201cinvested in\u201d through long-term processes as described above. Nor is it easy to improve quality because much of their knowledge and experience was obtained by \u201cbuying teachers\u201d in classrooms or \u201cusing connections\u201d during work.<\/p>\n

In 1990, I visited Poland during a five-year term. Corruption was rampant everywhere \u2014 bribery to officials, extortion by state administrative agencies, open bargaining between enterprises and customs or tax officers to split import tax money. Some shipments were entirely handed off by customs to the owners, so no taxes were collected. On the streets, traffic police \u201cnegotiated\u201d directly with violators, putting money in their pockets. Once, while driving with a friend, police stopped us and demanded 50 zloty from him. My friend only had a 200-zloty note, but the officer gladly accepted it and returned change.<\/p>\n

But only five years later, when I returned, I met the same man who had been fined by traffic police. He told me that the Polish government and police had taken strong measures against bribery. They slimmed down the system to a minimum and raised salaries to ensure a decent living for officers. Strict penalties were also imposed: anyone caught taking or giving bribes received three years in prison. The corrupt police officer was fired and barred from receiving pensions. The price of petty bribery became too high compared to 50\u2013100 zloty (about 300,000 to 600,000 VND), so hardly any officers or violators dared to risk it. Compared to Vietnam, a few years ago a police major publicly stated that accepting a few dozen or a few hundred thousand dong should not be considered corruption.<\/p>\n

One of Poland\u2019s successes in fighting corruption has been the effectiveness of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA). The CBA has vast authority, even powers banned in some EU countries, such as setting corruption traps. While controversial from a democratic perspective, this has proven very effective in combating corruption. The CBA has successfully trapped many officials and sent them to prison with heavy sentences.<\/p>\n

The authorities also made anti-corruption education a school subject. Students are taught that giving and receiving bribes is a serious and disgraceful crime. According to the 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, Poland ranked 36th, while Vietnam ranked 107th out of 180 countries.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think Vietnam lacks ways to prevent corruption. The issue is whether we can overcome \u201cgroup interests\u201d and \u201csector interests\u201d to boldly implement strong, widespread measures in socio-economic life.<\/p>\n

The year 2018 left a strong impression with the Party and Government\u2019s anti-corruption campaign that eliminated many \u201cworms\u201d in the government apparatus. The campaign could kill both \u201cbig worms\u201d and small ones but also forced some worms to retreat and hide, waiting for their chance to re-emerge and suck blood again. Therefore, to eradicate all corruption, an environment must be created where worms cannot survive. That environment is clear, transparent, and democratic mechanisms and policies.<\/p>\n

Another way to improve the problem starts within families. We shouldn\u2019t blame all current social evils on the government. If every family unanimously refuses to sow the \u201cenvelope culture\u201d or the mentality of \u201cmoney means everything\u201d into their children\u2019s souls, those children will grow up and build their lives based on their own abilities.<\/p>\n

Dinh Hong Ky<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The article by Mr. \u0110inh H\u1ed3ng K\u1ef3 was published in the “Viewpoint” section of the online newspaper VnExpress.net on January 6, 2019.\u201cOne time, my niece told the whole family, \u2018Mom said don\u2019t bring fruits or gifts, just give an envelope to keep it simple.\u2019\u201d I keep wondering: where does the root of corruption in our…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newspapers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3019"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5636,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019\/revisions\/5636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}