China Beyond The Wall

The latest anti-corruption campaign, started last June, ended with 22,884 “small coffers” of embezzled public funds being discovered by authorities, totalling around 1.49bln US Dollars. Xinhua reports that 81 cadres have been prosecuted so far, while 270 party officials have received “administrative punishments”. Some high-level cadres are now in-line for further investigations in 2010, Xinhua suggests.

China is affected by “endemic corruption” at almost all levels of governance. The amount of public funds embezzled by Party and state cadres has been exponentially growing since the introduction of market reforms in 1978. Corruption, in fact, has become an engrained element of business practices, public administration, and even a part of daily life. The Chinese Communist Party fears that the gigantic economic impact of endemic corruption (the scholar Minxin Pei roughly estimates that the phenomenon regards around 3% of the annual Chinese GDP) could spark social unrest, particularly among the poorest social strata. Most of the ever-increasing number of protests in rural China is a result of growing popular outrage at corrupt officials who are abusing their power to profit from citizenry and thwart state budgets.

Corruption in China is mostly of the “petty” kind, and usually happens at the local level: the traditional Chinese proverb “the sky is high and the Emperor is far away” clearly summarizes the situation outside of Beijing. The People’s Republic, contrary to what its well-constructed international image suggests, struggles to control its gigantic bureaucratic population of cadres and officials – as a matter of fact, the further from Beijing, the higher the chances of local cadres acting like proper “feudal lords”.

It is not unusual for local officials to take bribes, impose “special” taxes, or surreptitiously graft public funds allocated by the central state for development projects. Other popular forms of corruption include rent-seeking from local businesses, and involvement of public managers in underground or illegal activities.

Engaging in corrupt practices is a low-risk, high-return activity, according to leading Chinese politics specialist Dr. Andrew Wademan: notwithstanding the enormous amount of regulations aimed at containing and eliminating corruption, the usual choice of the central government is to conduct massive “public campaigns”  thoroughly advertised and celebrated in the national media. A typical campaign showcases allegedly harsh legal consequences reserved for those indicted of corruption: humongous fines, lifetime imprisonment, and even death sentences. Such campaigns share much in common with the Beijing Opera, Wademan has suggested: spectacular and noisy, with some dramatic plot twists, but as soon as the show is over and the stage cleared, everything remains exactly as before and everybody goes back home.

Contrary to popular belief, only a very small percentage of cases are punished by the death penalty. Because investigations are carried out and executed by a special internal Anti-Corruption Commission of the CCP, charges against corrupt officials often get softened and negotiated as part of the process through a series of appeals and informal arrangements. The lack of transparency during the whole procedure creates the perfect situation for additional corrupt practices to spur. Some scholars suggest that, as a result of the above situation, cadres found guilty are seldom facing any “real” punishment, and are instead forced to pay relatively trivial fines or get a temporarily suspension from office.

So, how to get rid of corruption? Given that the overall political structure of the People’s Republic is going to remain as it is (i.e. democracy not being a viable option), the only way is to adopt and enforce best-practices throughout the whole bureaucratic network, promoting an all-around corruption-free social culture through a strong top-down effort and painting the whole picture with a fresh hand of  procedural and institutional transparency.

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