SCHMITZ: No, corruption's nothing new, [In China] but people talking about corruption all the time on the street with each other; journalists challenging officials, state-run press running with stories about this -- that is new. Two nights ago, I was chatting with a Chinese friend and he told me he just read the news that the chief engineer for China's high-speed rail embezzled 2.8 billion. I said, 'How? Well 2.8 billion renminbi -- that's about $400 million, boy that's a lot of money.' He corrected me, he tells me, 'No, it was $2.8 billion.' That's incredible. Later on, I saw it was reported this guy had just stashed the money into Swiss and U.S. bank accounts. And this Chinese official reportedly has run off with the amount of money equal to the GDP of Fiji. So this type of corruption is really unprecedented.
(Context)
Come on Chicago! Come on New Orleans! You're totally falling behind in the Corruption Gap!
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