IN January 2012, Yang Cunhu, Party secretary of Jingle County, Shanxi Province, was "seriously warned" and dismissed for his role in putting his daughter, a student, on the payroll of a provincial disease control department.

The daughter had already received 85,837 yuan (US$13,625) in salary, plus around 20,000 yuan in tuition fees, before she started working at the center in late 2011.

Given the exposure, many expected that Yang would be handed over to the justice system and dealt with according to the letter of the law. To say the least, his daughter had been stealing state assets for years.

Just imagine that in March 2012 Yang was already functioning as acting chief of the Xinzhou Environment Protection Bureau.

Of course, those who choreographed this arrangement had the sense of not making a big fuss about such an appointment.

The appointment was so secretive that last May, two months after Yang's appointment, one media outlet was still commenting that "to put a college student on the payroll not only constitutes a serious challenge to social justice, but is a glaring case of corruption."

Reinstated quickly

The commentary concluded that "Now that the provincial disciplinarian department, organization department, and provincial human resources and social security bureau have initiated a joint probe, we hope the results will be out soon, and such absurdities will not be repeated in the future."

Online watchers learned of Yang's reinstatement only after examining the environmental bureau website, and they demanded an explanation.

The local government defended the reinstatement as "procedurally sound," citing relevant regulations, among them the stipulation that "Party members should not be promoted within the Party within a year after being warned or seriously warned."

Yang's current job is slightly lower than his former position, thus it does not count as a promotion.

It takes a highly developed sense of humor to appreciate that a provision aimed at discouraging errant officials should be ingeniously invoked to justify the reinstatement of an official who, in my understanding, should be put behind the bars.

Yang's case is not isolated.

According to various media investigation, nearly all ranking officials who have been disciplined after being held responsible for some public incident or crisis had been later reinstated, usually without public knowledge.

For instance, six of the officials implicated in the melamine-tainted Sanlu formula milk scandal in 2008 have already been reappointed to important posts.

In September 2010, forced relocations of residents in Yihuang in Jiangxi Province led to the death of one person by self-immolation.

Within a week, a high profile criminal investigation was started against the county Party chief and the county magistrate.

Unbeknownst to the public, one year later, one of them was appointed director of an economic development zone, and another chief of the highway administration bureau, all highly lucrative positions.

Party secretary Wang Qin of Weng'an County, Guizhou Province, was stripped of his post in August 2008 for mishandling a mass riot two months ago.

That riot was one of the worst in recent memory.

Seven months later, Wang was appointed deputy chief of a financial bureau.

In Study Times, Deng Yuwen wrote a couple of years ago that several circumstances make it virtually impossible to prevent errant officials from taking official appointment again.

For one thing, under the current condition, it is very difficult for officials to willingly "bind themselves hand and feet."

In other words, absent independent supervision, it is difficult for officials to penalize other officials, except as an expedient to appease public ire. As the saying goes, officials tend to shield each other.

Another cause for official reluctance to penalize, according to Deng, is that to bring up a cadre would cost an inordinate amount of resources, and it would be unrealistic to simply consign an experienced cadre to the cold bench for some mistake.

For instance, this week Zhao Haibin, a senior policeman in Guangdong, is being investigated for owning 192 houses and having two national identity cards.

A spokesman from the local disciplinarian authority said that so far they had not found Zhao had been involved in anything illegal.

"It is not easy to cultivate a division level (keji) cadre, and any probe must proceed with maximum caution," the spokesman said.

Some officials can be reinstated so soon because they agree to be made scapegoat for a scandal in return for the promise of future promotion.

Failure to keep up the promise would amount to a violation of the rules of the game in officialdom.

According to Zhu Lijia, an expert on public administration, in a modern democratic political system, an official who has been disciplined for a serious mistake generally has little hope of ever staging a comeback, for it is well nigh impossible to win back the public trust.

Nearly all Chinese officials who have been disciplined can find their way back into the saddle so quickly because such appointments can be carried out in secrecy within the bureaucracy, without having to consult the people.

And when scandals break out, the government prides itself on its coping tactics, and its skills to maintain social stability are often valued assets for promotion.

Control by weakness

Without effective outside supervision, a government cannot but develop into a monolith of vested interests that occasionally feels the inconvenience of having to appease public ire, generally in the wake of online expose of a particularly outrageous nature.

Recently we have heard quite a few scandals: dozen of senior officials in Chongqing caught in the act in bed with their mistresses, bank chiefs with multiple identities and dozens of properties, or a village chief with four wives and 10 children.

Outrageous as these incidents are, none of these has been exposed by the disciplinary departments whose routine job is to expose wrongdoers.

Ironically, sometimes an official became more valued because of his weakness.

Take the case of the officials in Chongqing caught cavorting with women.

When the scandal first came to the attention of the officials' superiors, the sex escapades were hushed up and the official culprits promoted, apparently in the belief that it is easier to control a subordinate by his weakness than merit.

These officials were punished only after videos detailing their sex escapades had been deliberately leaked online by disgruntled insiders.

Another reason why some people are so eager to appoint disgraced officials might be that such officials tend to be more grateful.

There might be many other explanations, but the spate of recent scandals points to the urgent need for functioning systemic supervision within our government.

Otherwise we would have a government steadily estranged from its stated goal of serving its people, and more skillful at coping with public discontent.