Corruption and market in contemporary China

Abstract

Corruption and Market in Contemporary China, by Yan Sun. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. xviii + 248 pp. US$49.95/£28.95 (hardcover), US$21.00/£11.95 (paperback). It is often assumed that studying corruption is difficult due to the clandestine nature of corrupt activities. This is particularly true with regard to China, where corruption is growing in sophistication and complexity as a result of rapid social and economic changes. Yan Sun's book, Corruption and Reform in Contemporary China, is a solid effort to deal with the complex web of market and corruption. The book begins with a survey of the literature on China's corruption and its linkages with as well as effects on reform. This literature review allows the author to clarify some key questions raised in the literature but not adequately answered by it (p. 20). Chapters 1-3 unfold around the types, opportunities and incentives of corruption in the two distinct stages of China's economic transition: the period of a hybrid from 1978 to 1992, and the period of a marketdriven after 1992. The changing characteristics of corruption in these different reform contexts are well documented in the book. The author also presents evidence that both what she terms as transaction and non-transaction types of corruption have served to undermine China's ongoing reform efforts. The negative effects of corruption have evolved, as Sun correctly points out, from nibbling away at the state assets from within the state to snatching chunks of the state economy (p. 207). Sun analyzes the weakened disincentives and checks against corruption over the course of reform, as seen in the disarray of the cadre recruitment system, the tyrannical power of local chief executives, the dependent status of disciplinary and supervisory agencies, and the deficiency of the Party's ideological and moral values (Chapter 5). Sun also traces the variations of post-Mao corruption across China's localities (Chapter 4). She notes that different dynamics are at work in areas with different economic resources and reform experiences. This cross-regional analysis reinforces the book's argument for a strong linkage between reform and corruption. The book makes two major arguments. The first pertains to the causes of corruption. Sun avers that post-Mao corruption is largely an unintended consequence of economic reform, and she questions the conventional wisdom that continued liberalization of the is a remedy for it. …