(This article is based on Mr. Sima Nan's ** program, and the content has been deleted).
One of the topics I would like to talk to you about in this article is:Why is the United States not corrupt, or why is the United States not as corrupt as we are
To give you an example, the last time I went to the United States was during Obama's second term, as a political observer, Tencent paid for me to travel around the United States to observe the situation in the United States. After I arrived in the United States, I traveled all over the country and gained a lot of knowledge.
One day, "*radio called me** and asked me to come over and do a show and debate a topic. They arranged for a couple of people to debate with me. This is a pre-set ambush, for example, we will each have two minutes to debate a topic, and the moderator of the debate will speak from their standpoint, and the topic of the debate is nothing more than all kinds of vicious rumors about China.
But some of the specific staff were still quite friendly, such as Gong Xiaoxia, the director of the Chinese department at that time. Gong Xiaoxia is a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and she used to share a pen name named Li Xizhe with Mr. Wang Xizhe, which was famous in the late period of China's "Cultural Revolution", so Miss Gong is also a little old, but she looks quite young. She wanted to give me **, take me to the U.S. Congress, and said, "Look at our Congress, there are no guards, just enter, don't have any documents" After entering, she said that this is the room of the congressman, you can push the door and enter.
At first, I was a little hesitant, but then when I had the courage to knock on the door and enter, the councillor's assistant stood up to receive us, and then introduced me to which state the councillor belonged to, what products this state produces, and let me taste it, which was very enthusiastic. I walked through the offices of several councillors in a row, and everyone was so modest and attentive.
After I came back, I wrote an article saying that we need to learn from the system of receiving visitors by American lawmakers, and that there is something to learn from American democracy. At this point, I suspect that some people must have taken it out of context and said that Sima Nan praised the American democratic system. Don't worry, you have to listen to what I'm trying to say, I'm just starting with something else.
Gong Xiaoxia invited me to dinner in the United States, where there is no decent meal in American restaurants, most of the Chinese restaurants there are just to fool Americans, and they use a special sauce to fry any dish, which can be said to be ten dishes and one flavor.
After eating, Gong Xiaoxia asked someone for an invoice, I asked her why she didn't have much money to ask for an invoice, she said, "I'll invite you to dinner, if I don't have this invoice, someone will report me, then that's it."
So, there are two things that stand out to me in the United States. First, the office of a member of the US Congress can be entered without documents. The second is that civil servants in the United States are so incorruptible. I'm thinking that the United States is so strict that it can prevent corruption at all.
Recently, I read an article by Li Xinye, a Chinese living in the United States, Li Xinye has lived in the United States for many years, and he also thinks that the United States is clean, ** really does not "eat and take cards", and is very clean. If ** "eat and take cards", it is a felony, so the United States is indeed the same in this direct corruption issue, just like Gong Xiaoxia invited me to dinner, and I must be invoiced.
Since Mr. Li Xinye has lived in the United States for a long time, he has also made a 180-degree turn in his evaluation of whether the United States is corrupt or not; when he first went there, he thought that there was no phenomenon of "eating and taking cards" in the United States, and that civil servants were indeed very clean, but later he discovered that there was a dirty and ubiquitous corruption system in the United States.
Why did he have this realization? According to Mr. Li Xinye, corruption in the United States is hopelessly invisible to the common people on a daily basis, and the losses caused by corruption in the United States are far higher than those in China.
Corruption in the United States is a kind of institutional corruption, if it is like the kind of ordinary people who appear in China to stuff money into civil servants in exchange for the direct corruption of civil servants to make things easier for you, the United States basically does not have it, even if this kind of thing happens sporadically, the civil servants will soon be imprisoned.
The punishment for direct corruption in the United States is very strict, so when I first arrived in the United States, I praised the United States very much, and all the units in the United States, such as **, hospitals, and schools, are very formal, and they will do whatever the laws and regulations say, and they will not deliberately find fault with you, let alone "eat and take cards" with you.
Therefore, Li Xinye said, "At that time, I thought that the United States was really a clean country, and I had never seen it in the past.
But it takes time to understand something, and over the decades, he slowly came into contact with all levels of society, only to realize that corruption in the United States is different from corruption in China, and corruption in the United States is systematic and pervasive.
It is no exaggeration to say that the United States is one of the most incorruptible countries in the world if direct corruption is regarded only as corruption. But if in essence, corruption is a power-for-money transaction, and by this standard, then the United States is extremely corrupt.
To put it simply, the power-for-money transaction consists of two parts, the first part is bribery, and the second part is the use of power for personal gain.
Li Xinye's article tells us how bribery is done in the United States. In the United States, if an ordinary person directly stuffs money into a civil servant, it is a very serious illegal and criminal act, but if you know the door, there are tens of thousands of ways to legally bribe.
What many people call campaign donations is actually just the most superficial way of bribery, and the campaign funds can't actually enter the personal account of ** openly.
There was a scandal in the United States where Trump reported that he used campaign funds to pay hush money to a actress he had called. As a result, Trump's personal lawyer, McCohen, was also imprisoned for the incident. This is the simplest bribe, and Trump didn't think he would do it, so he was not careful.
In fact, the easiest way to bribe in the United States is to invite you to give a speech, for example, Sima Nan is a **, you want to bribe Sima Nan, you can't directly stuff money, but you can invite him to come to the company to give a speech for half an hour or an hour, and then you can legally give this ** hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars of appearance fees, the United States law stipulates that the appearance fee is the legal income of the ** individual.
Li Xinye gave an example, for example, in 2013 and 2014, Hillary Clinton gave speeches at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, and the appearance fee for each speech was as high as 22$50,000, 3 hours of speech, 67$50,000 was in the account.
It's so easy to make money, and I want to give you benefits, so I'll invite you to give a speech. In the past two days, he has been competing with Trump for the Republican PartyNikki Haley, she also paid more than $200,000 for each speech after she left office.
There is another, more subtle and common way to pay bribes, which will be discussed in detail in the next article.
Reference article Li Xinye, a Chinese in the United States.
Editor-in-charge: Hu Yan Penfu.
Section** Network.