China's central inspection panel recently announced that the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), one of China's four major state-owned banks, has "serious nepotism" problems.

Among the 691 senior officials working directly with the ICBC's headquarters, 220 have either spouses or children who work in the same bank; the headcount of such nepotism-favored employees totaled 240 since some senior official brought in more than one family member to the bank, according to the central inspection team, who demanded that the ICBC complete a self-examination of nepotism before the end of May.

Nepotism has long been a prevalent phenomenon in China and does not only exist in ICBC. From time to time, employers will attempt to improve the problem, but their efforts often fail because the chain of interest is too solid to be broken.

Nepotism leads to unfairness in a broad sense, and identifying each individual case of nepotism will also be difficult, because the children of senior banking officials are likely to be under their parents' influence since childhood and later pursue a degree in finance in college.

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