Public tendering goes clean - Paul French

China-hand Paul French sounds a bit amazed as his discovers that efforts to cut back China's tradition of corruption in public tenders actually seems to work out. In the Ethical Corporation:

More than one foreign company has found themselves (let’s be charitable here) unwittingly involved in a dodgy deal. But perhaps no more.

China’s ministry of supervision has introduced a new system of tendering for government procurement contracts that some are calling state of the art and far in advance of anything in Europe or the US, and it looks like they may be right.

French is genuinely amazed:

I sometimes have a bit of trouble with this column. I hear about something interesting in China that sounds like a good story. I go after it hoping that it will be a positive story and not negative, but, of course, what initially appears positive in China often goes sour. Take the recent stories we’ve covered on the rise of charitable donations in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake last year and then the government siphoning of the cash – a positive became a negative with a bit of digging.

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr

Not in this case, it seems.


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Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do give us a call.