Not what you were thinking from that post title, but an important topic nonetheless:

The Chinese government is strengthening its effort to monitor officials whose wife and children live aborad (sic), as such officials are prone to abuse power.

The term “naked official” has been selected as one of China’s top ten buzzwords of 2009 by Chinese linguists. It refers to the officials whose family members have moved overseas, while they themselves work in the country alone usually with the other country’s visa in hand.

The “naked official” phenomenon has attracted great attention in China, as there have been many cases where such officials have been found to be corrupt. (China Daily)

Lots of initiatives recently on public corruption, including limits on foreign travel and reporting of assets. All well and good, in my opinion. The government is not only aggressively punishing corruption, but it is trying to profile these guys and ferret them out.

Does it make sense to go after officials whose families are living abroad? Makes sense to me. There is a pattern here, and officials who have already made plans to live in another country may very well be trying to leave with as much cash as possible. We’ve certainly seen this happen over and over again over the past few decades.

So what’s next? A reporting system on these “naked” officials is already in place, so these guys will have to tell the government just what exactly their family is doing abroad. I’m not sure if that will uncover good information, though. Telling the government that your kid is going to public school in Queens and your wife/husband is working at Starbucks doesn’t really say anything about your intentions. I suppose if the answer was that your kid was attending Philips Academy with no scholarship and that your wife/husband was self-employed, alarm bells might go off.

Another possibility is that certain positions would be closed to naked officials. This seems unfair to me, but maybe that’s the tough solution. Maybe you want the best education possible for your child, so he/she is attending the best private school you can afford, and your wife/husband is temporarily living abroad to be near the kid — that could happen, I suppose.

Makes more sense to me that if an official fits the “naked” profile, he/she should be subject to increased scrutiny of personal assets and random audits, or something of that nature. Keep a closer eye on them and see if that either discourages corrupt activities or uncovers them as they are occurring.