Some gifts were public: Williams’s company donated more than a hundred thousand dollars to McDonnell’s campaign and political-action committee. Other items were less open: cosmetic dental work for Maureen, jewelry, a fifteen-thousand-dollar shopping spree at Bergdorf Goodman, plane rides, a check for their daughter’s wedding, a sixty-five-hundred-dollar Rolex inscribed to the “71st governor of Virginia.”
It’s a nice haul, but, frankly, by China’s standards, the McDonnells are pikers. In the months that federal investigators in Virginia were preparing their case, the Chinese press routinely reported on far more ambitious exchanges of power for money. In August, the Party secretary at an obscure college in the city of Nanchang was convicted of taking close to a million dollars in bribes for construction contracts and other favors. The next month, the dean of an even more obscure school in the city of Mianyang, in Sichuan, was convicted of taking $1.6 million in bribes. In October, the mayor of Nanjing was swept up in a corruption investigation that the state press said involved more than three million dollars. And these are simply recent examples; other Chinese corruption cases regularly involve tens of millions of dollars in illegal gains.
In the case of the McDonnells, the Rolex carried a familiar ring. In China, luxury watches have become such a telltale signifier that bloggers have identified corrupt public servants by the fancy timepieces they wear. Among them, a provincial boss named Yang Dacai, known as Brother Wristwatch for his handsome collection, was found to have nearly nine hundred thousand dollars in unexplained assets; he is now serving fourteen years in prison for corruption. At a brief courtroom appearance, in September, Yang declared his regret in a way that’s become customary in cases like this, saying that he had fallen “into the abyss of criminality.” “I have the fervent desire to admit my guilt and plead that the court give me a new chance to behave with integrity,” he said. China’s new President, Xi Jinping, has acknowledged that rampant corruption threatens his government’s legitimacy—and he has thundered against extravagant gifts and banqueting by public servants. The sincerity of the campaign is debatable, but the short-term effect has been clear: a sharp drop-off in Chinese sales of luxury watches, purses, and baubles.
If you go back and forth between China and the U.S. these days, you’re often asked whether political corruption in the former is really that much worse than it is the latter. Neither country is a standard bearer for clean governance (for that, visit Denmark or New Zealand), but, strictly speaking, the countries are far apart. In its most recent annual index of perceptions of corruption in a hundred and seventy-seven countries, Transparency International ranked the United States at No. 19; China came in at No. 80. (Somalia, North Korea, and Afghanistan tied for last place.) And, yet, the McDonnells’ case provides an unusually acute opportunity for a comparison that might give Americans reasons to be both comforted and unnerved.
On the unnerving side, there is McDonnell’s assessment of his own conduct: “I did nothing illegal,” the onetime Presidential hopeful said, after his indictment. Though he has returned the gifts and apologized for making “choices” that he regretted, he also insists that his relationship with the donor was routine:
The federal government’s case rests entirely on a misguided legal theory, that facilitating an introduction or a meeting, appearing at a reception or expressing support for a Virginia business is a serious federal crime if it involves a political donor or someone who gave an official a gift.
If he is guilty, he said, “then nearly every elected official from President Obama on down would have to be charged for providing tangible benefits to donors.”
McDonnell seems to be offering a tortured reading of a campaign-finance law that distinguishes between private, personal gifts and donations used for a “political, legislative, or governmental purpose.” At this stage, McDonnell might just be saying what he can to defend himself, but with every statement it’s becoming more evident that he actually means it—that he thought he’d stayed on the legal side of what a business can expect for its cash infusions to politicians. McDonnell acknowledges that he endorsed the product peddled by his donor, and afforded the business unusual access, but he says that he stopped short of altering the law or doling out public contracts.
Americans can find comfort in certain differences: after the indictment, the McDonnell family held a press conference, a right that is not often afforded to defendants in China. Moreover, short of a change in the prosecution’s strategy, the McDonnells are likely to have a long, well-represented public airing of their case. In China, corruption trials often last less than a day, and ninety-eight per cent end in convictions. There is also the matter of the press: the McDonnells’ fortunes began to fall only last March, when the Washington Post reported on their relationship with Williams. China has its muckrakers, but they are censored and controlled in a way that would make this kind of takedown impossible.
Lastly, there is the difference of degree—and that difference is profound. Even at a moment when Americans generally acknowledge that our campaign-finance system is broken, when money and influence have corroded the spirit and mechanisms of government, corruption in China exists at a level of intensity that Americans find hard to picture. It’s a tempting parallel, but, on the numbers, there is little comparison.
The real concern should be about a deeper question. What’s worse: That one of America’s most prominent governors, in allegedly lending his power in exchange for tawdry gifts, may have ended up on the wrong side of the law? Or that he may have thought, all along, that he was on the right side of it?
Original Article
Source: newyorker.com/
Author: EVAN OSNOS
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