What is the relationship between a country’s culture and its corruption?
First, we have to define what is corruption. Corruption is using public power for the interest of individuals or a group of individuals. It may be legal or illegal.
By this definition, corruption has always existed in the last five thousand years in every civilization. I say civilization because the country is a modern concept.
Confucius had the idea that power belongs to the public. In Chinese, it is 天下为公 or 民为天。In Confucian culture, power is not for the interest of some but for the public. Chinese political culture always focuses on how to make power responsible for the well-being of the public. In practice, Chinese political culture emphasizes selecting officers who can solve problems and have the courage and conscience to serve the public.
The West never thinks it is possible for power to serve the public. They consider power is inevitable to serve only a group of individuals. They say that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So they legalized corruption and minimized corruption by check and balance of power and by democratic election.
In short, Confucian has a culture of no corruption while the West has a culture of corruption.
Despite the Confucian culture, corruption exists because the culture recognizes privilege. We can say that for the five thousand years of a private ownership society, corruption is a norm that the privileged group has the power and use the power to sustain its privilege. This society is stratified. It is a society that consists of classes.
Mao launched the Great Cultural Revolution, which aimed to change the culture of the last five thousand years, to create a society without corruption. A society without corruption needs a new culture that does not recognize unjustified privilege. It is a culture in which class does not exist in such a way that social mobility is prevailing. People can go up and down according to their virtue, yet no one can inherit privilege by their wealth or power.
By launching the Great Culture Revolution, Mao has done a great contribution to human progress.
