Global Policy Forum

By Erik Eckholm

In the folklore of modern China, small-town officials are notorious for two vices: devoting inordinate time to besotted games of poker and using their official powers for personal gain.

Now, enterprising prosecutors in this county seat in central China have found a way to harness the first sin to combat the second. They have distributed, to thousands of local officials and police officers, decks of playing cards with forbidding messages. Each card carries the legal definition of a "crime of public office" and a cartoon depicting the illegality.

The ace of spades describes the meaning of embezzlement, showing a smug official with a stuffed cash box behind his back.

The king of spades depicts a practice that is much reported these days, the bribery of officials with sexual favors rather than cash. No statute specifically refers to sexual bribery, but the cartoon is explicit: a man covered only by a towel luxuriates on a beach, shielded from the sun by a woman with her dress billowed out, forming an umbrella.

The 10 of diamonds shows a police officer interrogating a woman who has been hauled into the air by her arms. The crime is "obtaining evidence through violence" and in a caption, the officer says into a telephone, "The witness's living conditions have been raised, and she's finally talking."

"We've been searching for good ways to prevent corruption before it occurs," said Li Jianjun, 39, the chief prosecutor of Qiuxian County in southern Hebei Province, as he proudly showed the deck. "In the past, our propaganda materials were very boring."

A few news reports on the educational cards have led to mounting requests from other provinces, and Mr. Li's office has applied for a patent on the design, not to profit from sales, he insists, but to spread the message.

Qiuxian County, where sidewalk sales of cheap motorbikes suggest a modest prosperity, already had another claim to fame that steered the officials to the idea of illustrated cards.

The cotton-farming county, 300 miles south of Beijing, is known for its "peasant cartoonists," an informal club of men and women whose hobby is making simple but clever drawings that convey a message like "protect the environment" or "adopt scientific methods of pig farming."

The cartooning was started here in the 1950's by Chen Yuli, who is lame and defiantly signs his drawings "Chen the Cripple." Mr. Chen, now 69 and head of the county culture office, said he took up cartooning because his ability to do farm work was limited and drawing required no costly materials.

His cartoons gained notice, and he gained a following of local farmers who enjoyed doodles with a message, usually describing some aspect of rural life or promoting a government campaign. Mr. Chen and others have had many cartoons published in national newspapers, too. (Drawings that mock government leaders or policies in the manner of Western editorial cartoons are not allowed.)

In Qiuxian, several of the artists have painted murals along an official "cartoon street." One portrays a family struggling to bear the costs of a lavish wedding; another shows the evils of gambling.

After Mr. Li moved to Quixian as chief prosecutor in 1999, he recalled, he and his colleagues considered ways to harness this local talent. First they asked the cartoon club to produce posters depicting abuses of power, then they tried putting drawings on a calendar.

Those methods proved too expensive and limited. Then a colleague had the flash of insight: Why not playing cards?

It was a happy coincidence, Mr. Li said, that the law books listed exactly 52 ways of abusing office.

"We all wanted to help with this," said Mr. Chen, the cartoon leader. Eventually, a local man named Hou Junshan was selected to make all the drawings, which he did free, though he now complains that his name should appear in the patent.

The office of the prosecutor gave the decks to local agencies and sold them publicly for 24 cents each. Some 30,000 have been distributed, Mr. Li said, and more requests are coming in.

Mr. Li said that the cards "serve as a warning to officials" and empowered the people "to help oversee public officials."

Some public officials do not even know what kinds of expenses can properly billed to the government, Mr. Li said, or are unsure exactly what constitutes a bribe. "These pictures make it very easy for them to understand," he said.

The party secretary of Mengjie, a nearby village, says the deck has helped him and his colleagues avoid inadvertent straying.

"We can play cards and at the same time learn the law," he told a Chinese newspaper. "Only now do I understand that one can be sent to jail for sending gifts to get something done."

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