Former China Mobile official Sentenced in Bribery Case - Article Review

The article that I chose is called "Former China Mobile Official Sentenced in Bribery Case" and was written by David Barboza on July 22, 2011. The article is about how Zhang Chunjiang, who was recently the vice chairman of China Mobile, was sentenced to death in prison with a two year reprieve due to accepting bribes. The court is allowing a two year reprieve in order to determine if his sentence will change to life in prison instead of the death penalty. The reason why there is a two year reprieve for him is because he admitted that he collected bribes and considered his confession to be an act of good behavior. Mr. Zhang was charged with accepting more than $1.15 million in bribes and with various companies from 1994-2009. During that time, he was collecting bribes in several companies that included being a deputy director for Liaoning Provincial Postal Administration, a general manager for China Netcom Group, and a party chief and deputy general manager for China Mobile. There are also seven other executives from China Mobile that are being investigated for any acts of corruption. In addition, the investigators are looking into a few businessmen for any kind of fraud including Zeng Liqing who was one of the founders of Tencent. The article also explains that there have been many other acts of corruption that has occurred in China in the last couple of years. Some of these charges have even resulted in being sentenced to the death penalty. Some of these examples include how the head of China's Food and Drug Administration was executed for corruption and failing to protect consumers and how the two former vice mayors of China received execution for collecting millions of dollars worth of bribes. Since the amount of corruption acts have increased, Beijing is in the process of removing any major corruptions and eventually makes a leadership change which they hope to do by next year.

The article relates to a lot of concepts, theories, and terms that is mentioned in the textbook. The main term that has a relation with the article is the term bribery. As defined in the book, bribery is the practice of offering something (usually money) in order to gain an illicit advantage. The textbook mentions that even though there are many of reasons against bribery, there are in fact a few reasons that are for bribery. I for one am against all of the reasons on why there are arguments for bribery, especially relating it to the article. The first reason that states that "they are necessary for profits in order to do business" is totally outrageous in my opinion. It should never be necessary to use bribery in order to gain profit for the business because there are many other ways to earn profits for a business that are the correct way of doing it and making it more ethical. I was surprised to know that one reason on why bribery is favored is the fact that such an act is actually accepted in many countries, mostly