Are foreign monks better at chanting? The effect of ‘airborne’ SDICs on anti-corruption

Abstract

The independence of supervision agency is of great importance for anti-corruption. After the leadership transition of the provincial Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2006, Secretaries of Discipline Inspection Commission (SDICs) were suddenly dispatched from the centre or transferred from another province in China (‘airborne’ SDICs) to enhance their independence in inspecting corruption cases. To investigate the effect of this policy reform, we collect data of SDICs and anti-corruption in 31 provinces from 2003 to 2014, and evaluate this policy using the difference-in-differences econometrics method. We find that there is no significant effect of these ‘airborne’ SDICs whether from the centre or another province on anti-corruption. This result is robust to different measurements of anti-corruption and subsamples. We argue that the dispatch of external SDICs is not enough to ensure the independence of supervision agency, because local discipline inspection commissions (DICs) are still subject to local Chinese Communist Party committees in terms of personnel, funds and property. This paper has important policy implications for the current anti-corruption campaign in China.