Reform Corruption: A Discussion on China's Current Development

Abstract

CONCOMITANT WITH CHINA'S RAPID AND RADICAL REFORM there has been rampant corruption among its bureaucrats. Chinese authorities have exhorted cadres to get rich last in the wake of the coming Communist prosperity. Deng Xiaoping favours a pattern in which people will become prosperous first, and others later.' But many government officials, wanted to be first and last on the road towards common prosperity, have turned a deaf ear to the Party's advice and so the nation's leaders have resorted to various means of intimidationexecuting one as a warning to a hundred. Yet just as a Chinese saying proclaims that not even a prairie fire can destroy the grass, it grows again when the spring breeze blows, corruption remains chronic and contagious and does seem to be tapering off. Addressing this perennial problem, this paper argues that reform corruption in China has much to do with ideological confusion, lack of incentive, lack of deterrence and deficiencies in management,2 all of which have been either created or exacerbated in the course of reform. The paper suggests that ideological indoctrination alone does tackle the issue adequately and that structural changes may assist in reducing corruption. As early as December 1951 when the Three-Anti campaign was launched against corruption, waste and bureaucratism, bourgeois ideas were already selected as a favourite scapegoat, as a major cause of corruption. This approach is adopted by some foreign observers as well. John Gardner, for example, writes that corruption of veteran and new party cadres results from environment in which the bourgeoisie retained a dominant position.3 The authorities have repeatedly employed this kind of attack in political movements since 1950, but seeing the bourgeoisie as an easy target has blinded Chinese leaders to other causes of bureaucratic corruption.