Well, look here:
"Firms from China and India are most willing to pay bribes abroad to do business, a survey suggests."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5405438.stm
Just the fact that they are using the term "bribes" indicates that there must be a difference between bribes and just regular business practices. I'm thinking that a bribe is a payment to someone in an attempt to get something that you otherwise cannot get lawfully. The key word being "lawfully," implying that there must be government laws already in place that forbid a certain practice. OR it's a payment to someone who is forbidding you from doing something that you are lawfully entitled to do.
So in the example above, paying off a powerful businessman to have him move you to the top of his referral list is NOT a bribe because there are no laws against moving up a referral list. Neither is paying a good sum to a representative of a company in order to get that representative to put in a convincing word for you to his bosses, because there are no laws against this. However, as in the case of China, many many businesses have to pay government officials in order to get business opportunities. This is bribery, because those businesses should have those opportunities anyway, it's just that the government officials have taken it upon themselves to place unlawful restrictions on entry, and businesses have to pay these guys just to get things that should be lawfully entitled to them.
Does this sound ok?
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