As you may have noticed during the past, I don’t know, 18 months or so, China has not only been trying to crack down on government corruption, but it is also investigating new and interesting methods for doing so. Some of these innovations that I’ve been writing about include mandatory financial disclosure, investigations of family members, and tough new rules regarding entertainment and travel.

While all this is going on, enforcement of corruption has continued, with the government choosing several high visibility targets and applying tough sentences with an eye towards deterrence. As the number of cases piles up in parallel with these harsh enforcement measures, I’ve been wondering what else can be done (if anything) from a legislative standpoint to make some headway. (I recognize that many folks argue we will not make any progress at all until corruption ceases at the highest levels.)

So if you’re a government official with responsibility in the anti-corruption area, these are frustrating times. In order to show the public, and Beijing, that you’re giving it your best shot, innovation is required. In general, I applaud this sort of thinking, but I suspect that very shortly these anti-corruption measures are going to encroach upon legitimate privacy concerns, delving into areas wholly unrelated to corruption.

I think the folks in Jiangsu Province are getting close to that line, promulgating new measures that not only violate personal privacy, but also dictate appropriate moral behavior.?

Under new rules in Shuyang County, investigations of government officials will include the following:

Their records of marital fidelity, filial piety, parenting and good neighborliness will be included in their biannual performance assessments.

Personal morality would be assessed through interviews, home visits, investigations and public submissions, said Wang Xiaodong, head of Shuyang’s CPC organization department.

The justification for all this rests on the correlations between certain kinds of behavior and corrupt activities. We’ve seen this kind of thing before. For example, recent reforms have included investigations of officials whose families are living abroad. The thinking there is that officials whose families are no longer living in China may be looking to score some quick cash and flee the country to join them. In that sense, the fact that the families of these so-called “naked officials” are abroad correlates with corrupt behavior.

Marital fidelity is also frequently cited. One official with the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in 2009 that 95% of officials convicted for corruption were cheating on their spouse.

This is all rather scientific, right? Find out what corrupt officials do in their spare time, what kinds of things they buy, what their families do, etc. and then go looking for those things when conducting investigations.

But there are problems with this approach, among which are: 1) where do you draw the line between personal information that may be helpful in an investigation and private information that is not pertinent to rooting out corruption; and 2) asserting that certain kinds of behavior correlate with corrupt activities is often a very subjective claim and subject to abuse.

In the case of these rules adopted by Shuyang County, we’re definitely talking about a list of activities seen by some as immoral being put forward, probably with little supporting evidence, as indicia of corruption. Again, these include “marital fidelity, filial piety, parenting and good neighborliness.”

Although it’s a stretch, I can see why marital infidelity is on the list (in addition to those eyebrow raising stats noted above). If you screw around on your spouse, you are probably engaging in deception, and we don’t want government officials who are serial liars. Another example used was an official who was discovered to have been sending naughty text messages to a female co-worker. Well, in that case, you not only have inappropriate workplace activity, but probably sexual harassment as well.

But let’s get real. That list is straight outta the Confucius playbook (i.e. it’s cultural), and this has little to do with behaviors that correlate to corrupt activities. Are the wise people of Shuyang County really saying that if a government official is mean to his mother, that makes him more likely to take a bribe?

This is a very worrisome trend, for who’s to say what the standard is for moral behavior? It’s bad enough that the government, with no data to back them up, firmly believes that looking at naked breasts online will corrupt one’s soul or watching a matchmaking show will turn you into a gold digger. What happens if all the decision makers in Shuyang County become closet Christians next month; will the standards be altered?

Legislating morality is not a good idea. I agree with Professor He Bing of China University of Political Science and Law who, citing privacy concerns, suggests that better efforts to supervise the use of public funds, along with tougher financial disclosure rules, is sufficient in the fight against corruption.