From People Net via Yulun Jiandu (link), translated by CDT:
Futures is a term used in the financial sector, referring to the option of the buyer to acquire the rights to purchase a certain quantity of goods or services at a certain price during a certain period of time in the future.
Now futures have become more and more popular in corruption in China. An official in charge of housing at a county in Zhejiang Province, according to a local newspaper, used his power to give away the right to develop a prime downtown area to a private businessman, whose property portfolio surged to about 100 million yuan ($12 million). When the official retired, he was hired by the businessman’s company as an executive, instantly earning a 300,000-yuan salary (at least a dozen times more than a public officer in China), the right to sign off gifts or banquets worth tens of thousands of yuan a year, plus a high-end apartment.
Among the 78 corruption cases involving half a million yuan or more in the first half of 2005 in Zhejiang Province, many occurred in state-owned enterprises during the transition or marketization period. Many culprits were officials of local marketization steering committees, and many made million-yuan salaries upon joining marketized SOEs after retirement.
One characteristic of the power futurization is secrecy. Many of these corrupt officials are highly intelligent, experienced “power elites” who well know that evidence is the key in the investigation. With the “hidden rule of the game” in Chinese political economics, officials can rest assured about their future benefits with power futurization, which doesn’t leave any trace of cash or spot transactions and seems like “doing business by the book.” Thus futurization of power brokerage has a very high degree of safety and makes it extremely difficult to discover, let alone investigate.
Failing evidence in most cases, officials can come up with many excuses to steer away from punishment. They can say, for example, “I did this to develop our local economy;” or “Why don’t you allow us to make mistakes with such a big reform?” or “This is the price the society has to pay for economic development.”
Another characteristic of power futurization is the long time span in transaction, usually years or over a dozen years. This also adds to the difficulty of investigating corrupt officials.
Some suggestions to fight against power futurization: reducing the role of individual power in project approval; introducing group decision making in major projects or anonymous or electronic voting in decision making; rotating offices of key importance.
Laws should also be updated more frequently to tackle the new form of corruption. A good law could be: officials who used to be in charge of certain companies are not allowed to be hired by these companies upon retirement.
