The More Things Change ...

A Chinese civil servant returned to work recently thus ending his eight years of receiving a salary but never showing up. Although there is much commentary in China about this let us not forget that the outrage is mainly fueled by envy. The Chinese civil service has been rife with corruption throughout all of recorded history. The great ambition to be a civil servant in China is and always has been founded on a desire to feed at the trough of entrenched corruption. The French are famous for the saying "The more things change, the more they stay the same" but the Chinese are famous for being one of the best examples of that.