Chinese sayings: 45 (以權謀私 / 以权谋私)

 

以權謀私 / 以权谋私

yǐ quán móu sī

"by-means-of power seek private"

This describes a situation of abuse of power, using power for personal gain.

    We usually think of power as being in the higher echelons, with politicians being one of the most oft-cited examples.

    I have, however, come across many instances of this malpractice in my own socially humble life.

    A teacher told the group of three students under his wing (whose lessons were being paid for by their organisation) that their speaking skills were poor and needed improving, i.e., more hours to be scheduled into their timetable (therefore, more money into his pocket).

    Another one had written a teach yourself book, and used her position as senior staff to impose it on both the evening students (which is bad enough, using a teach yourself book on a taught course, but at least evening students are learning for fun, not for a degree which is for their future), as well as the full time degree first year students (which is even worse as the book had no characters at all, just romanisation -- how can a full time degree student go through a whole year of learning Chinese just by the romanised script?).  (I'm not even talking about the mistakes in that book, so the students were being taught the wrong Chinese as well...  An eminent teacher in an eminent institution said to me, shaking his head in disgust, that she was 誤人子弟 / 误人子弟, leading students astray, hampering their studies.)

    She also got the part-time staff under her (paid by the hour, only for teaching) to collect the boxes of her book from her office, in their own time, a good 10 minutes before the start of the lesson, then take the books to class and sell them there (collect cash / cheques), which ate into teaching time, not to mention extra work for those part-time teachers.

    No one dared to challenge her, as it'd be unpleasant, and there'd be repercussions somewhere down the dark alley line.

    When the illogicality of it was pointed out to her (that full time degree students couldn't go through a whole year not being exposed to Chinese characters), she then got the exchange teacher from China to copy out, in his own time, the whole book in Chinese characters, as well as provide the stroke-by-stroke build-up of the characters.

    The teachers of each individual (evening and day) class then had to go and photo-copy those sheets, in their own time, before the lesson (and at the institution's expense: paper, ink, wear and tear on the photocopier), for distribution to the students in class.

    In hindsight, she should've been left in the dark about letting first year full time degree students go through a whole year of not being exposed to Chinese characters, which would surely show up in their exam results, but who knows, she might fiddle that side of things, too.

    How can such people look themselves in the mirror??

    以權謀私 / 以权谋私 / yǐ quán móu sī indeed.  Power and money corrupt, that's what I keep saying to people.