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romanworld · Joined: 27 May 2008 Posts: 388

I'm a regular reader of the China Post and Taipei Times and have been quite horrified at the number of stories that are appearing about corruption in Taiwanese education. The latest scandal involves elementary and high school principals receiving bribes and kickbacks from school lunch suppliers:

The bribery usually would take the form of a lump sum � a few hundred thousand Taiwan dollars � prior to the contractor review, and then monthly kickbacks of a few dollars for each student subscribing to the meals.

It means that for a meal for which a student pays somewhere between NT$30-50, about one tenth would end up in the pockets of corrupt principals in the form of monthly kickbacks.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2011/12/09/325318/p2/Corruption-has.htm

And in the Post today, there is further information about the kind of sums that were exchanging hands:

Since then 14 principals have surrendered more than NT$18.52 million in alleged bribe money.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2011/12/10/325500/Number-of.htm

This latest scandal is going to do nothing to improve Taiwan's dismal Corruption Perception Index(CPI), which seems to go from bad to worse:

http://www.intlhumanrights.com/CorruptionOfTaiwan.htm

Murat · Joined: 25 Nov 2011 Posts: 15

Corruption is a part of Taiwan in all its forms...the police were part of the mob boss hit in Taichung a few years ago! The former president is serving a life sentence! The one before that --Li Denghui -- is widely known to have taken even more money, but the investigations are repeatedly shot down -- as recently as this year -- because if Li Denghui goes down, pretty much everyone of power in the KMT goes down with him. The KMT, by the way, is the richest political party in the world, and they didn't get that money from donations...

romanworld · Joined: 27 May 2008 Posts: 388

JZer · Joined: 16 Jan 2005 Posts: 3898 Location: Pittsburgh

Shimokitazawa · Joined: 16 Aug 2009 Posts: 458 Location: Saigon, Vietnam

Romanworld,

I used to teach a private in starbucks to a Vice President of a bank's financial loans & mortgages department. He was top dog in that section of the company. I guess he' was in his early to mid 50s at the time (this is going back 4 or 5 years from now).

Anyways, after teaching him English weekly for several months I guess he started to trust me a little and so he started talking more openly about his job and things that happend at work.

It turns out, he bribed his way to the top. Now, while this may sound underhanded and evil, he said that everyone did it. In fact, his predecessor did it. And when it was his time to take over the predecessor's job as Vice President, he had to give his boss something like NT $400, 000 in order to show his "Thanks" and "Gratitude" for being "chosen" for the promotion.

I'm not so sure things have changed much over the last decade, but he was a nice man and in order for him to progress in his career, it required him to play by those rules. Bribery was an accepted but unofficial means of getting ahead in his bank. I assume also that this carries over to all corporate and government promotions.

On that note, Chinese Culture University has suffered a lot of criticism over the years because of such corruption. The rank of Associate Professor and Full Professor could be bought for the right price. Even Department Head and Chair positions were sold for a price. Again, I assume that this problem was / is systemic and not found only in one university.

I believe that all of the national universities have shaped up quite a bit in the last 10 years and are quite stringent in their hiring and promotional activities.

It's shocking, but that's how things have been, or still are, done here.