Originally posted by sgdiehard:
If high salaries is the reason why the ministers are not corrupt,
then it implies that if the salaries are lower, they would be
taking side incomes!! What happen if they have no income for a few
months, start robbing?
For a time after the fall of the Qing dynasty, many provinces in
China were under the de facto rule of various warlords with their
own private armies, who swore a loose allegiance to the
Kuomintang.
When these armies felt that the warlords and the central government
weren't paying them enough, indeed they took to looting and robbing
from the local populace, thus giving the Kuomintang armies the
infamous "guan ji shi fei, fei ji shi guan (rulers are robbers,
robbers are rulers)" reputation. This reputation was also one of
the attributing factors that swayed much public sympathy towards
the then-underdogs -- the Chinese Communist Party.
