Chinese media recently reported an alleged conversation between Wang Yinfeng, the Party Secretary of Jiangjin District in Chongqing, and a local property developer. Wang allegedly told the developer to stop the construction of a high-rise residential compound that would tower above the building of the Jiangjin Party Committee once completed. With the new building overshadowing the Party Committee building, Wang said, the latter’s feng shui would be damaged.

The Chinese Communist Party has long dismissed feng shui — the traditional Chinese belief in the connection between the orientation of buildings, interiors and gardens and the fortunes of people living in them — as “feudal superstition,” but in recent years many officials seem to have begun to embrace it. In a number of scandals, local officials have demolished or rebuilt perfectly functioning buildings perceived to have bad feng shui, or constructed useless bridges to create good feng shui.

A recent study by the Chinese Academy of Governance surveyed over 900 county-level officials and found that more than half believed in some form of superstition, such as fortune-telling or the interpretation of dreams. The study found officials believed certain superstitions more strongly than the general public.

But an unusual propensity for superstitious beliefs is only one of several troubling tendencies commonly ascribed to officials in China – tendencies that are becoming a growing concern for leaders in Beijing.

Last week, for example, Chinese media reported that a Beijing lawyer was attacked by plainclothes policemen in Wenchuan County, the epicenter of the major earthquake in 2008. The lawyer, Zhou Ze, and some friends were visiting the ruins of a school destroyed by the earthquake to pay respect to the dead. Shortly after they arrived, two senior Wenchuan officials and several officials from the Ministry of Finance and the Sichuan provincial finance bureau also came to inspect the site. Zhou and friends were asked to clear off to make way for the officials. They refused to leave. Subsequently Zhou was handcuffed, muffled with a towel and dragged away by several plainclothes policemen.

Although the Wenchuan Police Department has since apologized to Zhou and punished four policemen involved in the attack, commentaries in the Chinese media note that the practice of clearing public roads and spaces to make way for officials is not unique to Wenchuan but has become rather commonplace.

The officials at the Wenchuan site did not have enough rank to merit the level of police protection that had been arranged, but these days even the lowest officials like to travel with pomp and circumstance. One media report earlier this year, for example, described how students in a county in Sichuan had to stop their classes to line the street and recite lines from classical texts such as “How happy we are, to have friends from afar” to welcome officials from the local education bureau.

Immersing themselves in superstitions and acting like overlords are just two of seven symptoms of moral decay among Chinese officials outlined in an August article in “China Comment,” an important Party organ. Other symptoms include leading debauched lives and turning law enforcement departments into private damage control teams (e.g., by ordering the arrest of journalists who write critical reports).

While scathing in its attack on the corruption and immorality of Chinese officialdom, the “China Comment” article is by no means unusual. Similar criticisms of bureaucratic evils now appear daily in the Chinese press, including Party organs. There is also no lack of deep analysis of the causes of such evils or prescriptions for curbing them. The problem, however, is that neither calls for change by the Party leadership nor condemnations by the public seem to have had much effect in reversing the moral degeneration of officials.

In the case of superstition, I witnessed first hand how far it has spread while attending an academic conference in China last month. The conference organizers were given a dressing-down by the secretary of the keynote speaker for failing to choose an appropriate venue. The secretary said the venue was unacceptable because, his boss, a ministerial-level official from Beijing, would have to descend a few stairs after leaving the podium. “Leaders can only go upstairs. How can you make leaders go downstairs?” he scolded the organizers. Apparently, the simple everyday activity of going downstairs has been linked to officials’ demotion and hence become taboo.

An even more common expression of officials’ moral decline can be found on China’s roads. Recently, China Youth Daily told the story of a freelance journalist in Henan province who spends his spare time filming government vehicles that ignore traffic rules. Over three years, the journalist has witnessed many incidences of such vehicles treating public roads as their private driveways. Traffic policemen who dare ticket the drivers of these vehicles may receive a tongue-lashing or even a beating. The journalist finds that privileges are “contagious,” as government vehicles are used not only by officials but also by their relatives or friends, and the latter often show the same defiance of traffic regulations while driving government cars.

A recent People’s Daily article accuses some officials of “having power and money but no fear.” The article quotes Deng Xiaoping, who once said “it would be better if Communist Party members firstly fear the Party, secondly fear the people, and thirdly fear the democratic parties.” How to make Party members fear the Party and the people? That’s a fundamental challenge China’s political system has yet to face up to.