Official Corruption During China’s Economic Transition: Historical Patterns, Characteristics, and Government Reactions

Abstract

Using available information and data, this study examines the historical patterns and characteristics of official corruption in contemporary China. The study identifies four waves of official corruption associated with different stages of the nation's economic reform. Each wave of corruption has different forms and targets. In our analysis, the general trend is that as the nation's economic reforms move forward, official corruption in China is becoming more serious and pervasive with more money and higher ranked officials involved in corruption cases. This is raising a serious challenge to Chinese authorities who have shown a willingness and effort to control official corruption. We conclude that without fundamental political reform, official corruption is not likely to be controlled in China.

White Collar Criminals: The State of Knowledge

“…Around 80% of white collar criminals are men (Benson, 2002;Bussmann & Werle, 2006;Kardell & Bergqvist, 2009;Ring, 2003;Wheeler et al, 1988;Weisburd, 1991;Weisburd et al, 2001;Gottschalk & Glasø, 2013), and this mirrors the general gendered occupational division in society where women tend to have lower-level positions than men (Deng et al, 2010;Ring, 2003;Gottschalk & Glasø, 2013;Steffensmeier, et al, 2013). However, this pattern depends on what level of crime we look at.…”

“…However, this research has begun to expand beyond its historical concentration in Anglo-American countries (the US and the UK) by extending quantitative and qualitative data sampling to several other countries, including Germany (Blickle, et al, 2006;Cleff, 2013), Austria (Noll, 2014), the Netherlands (Onna et al, 2014), Italy (Merzagora, et al, 2014), Sweden (Alalehto & Larsson, 2008, 2012Ring, 2003;Kardell & Bergqvist, 2009), Norway (Gottschalk, 2013;Gottschalk & Glasø, 2013), Finland (Häkkänen-Nyholm & Nyholm, 2012Kankaanranta & Muttilainen, 2010), Israel (Shechory et al, 2011), Australia (Freiberg, 1992;Duffield & Grabosky, 2001), Canada (Gagnon, 2008;Ouimet, 2011;Paquette, 2010), and China (Deng, Zhang, & Leverentz, 2010). But, of course, much of the research has still been performed in the UK (e.g.…”

Underpaid and Corrupt Executives in China’s State Sector

“…The overall incidence of corruption seems to have remained relatively stable during the 1990s, at least in part thanks to a comprehensive anticorruption campaign launched in 1989 (Manion 2004;Wedeman 2005). However, as pointed out by several scholars, corruption intensified dramatically during the 1990 (e.g., Wedeman 2004Wedeman , 2005Deng et al 2010). While standard low-level corruption increased at a relatively stable pace, high-level corruption with much larger stakes increased much faster.…”

“…2 The relationship between fiscal decentralization and corrupt behavior is controversial. For more in-depth analyses and discussions on the link between decentralization and corruption, see e.g., Deng et al (2010) and Ko and Zhi (2013).…”

“…For examples of corruption cases tied to Chinese SOEs, seeDeng et al (2010).4 The discussion in this section is primarily based on Feng and Johansson's (2016) description of China's economic reforms and the labor managerial market in the state sector.…”