During the first 30 years of the People’s Republic, the level of corruption was low because nearly everything was public. Market reforms brought about the emergence of private property and along with it the byproduct of corruption exacerbated by the growing disparity between public service and private wealth. The Party inherited the moral claims of the Confucian Mandarin class, consistent with the expectations of the people, and its officials are faced with the unenviable and mutually exclusive choice of being either saints or thieves. Given this deeply rooted cultural tradition, neither Singapore’s high-salaried bureaucracy nor America’s revolving door approach could gain legitimacy with the Chinese public. Here lies the dilemma and no “how-to” books on sale today offer a solution to this problem.
We are discovering that the causes of corruption vary across different countries and solutions should not be ready-made, imported, and applied without consideration for existing institutional characteristics and cultural backgrounds. For China, instead of scrapping existing institutions and replacing them with imported ones, the existing institution of the Party is the most viable vehicle to contain corruption and should be strengthened. If the country were to adopt the checks and balances provided by the division of political power into three branches, as advocated by some experts, the result could very well be the current quantity of corruption times three.
Back on the ground, all of China is riveted by the current spring-summer offensive. Since Bo Xilai’s arrest, many ministers and mayors have been detained and prosecuted. Many more officials live in fear of being caught on camera hosting a fancy banquet or wearing an expensive wristwatch. Some experts say the campaign style anti-corruption drive, like many before it, is unsustainable because it attacks the symptoms but does not cure the disease. True, it is not elegant institutionally and its effects might not last very long. But the current campaign is so harsh that it will most likely reduce corruption significantly in the next several years. Of course, corruption will inevitably come back and grow to a level when another campaign would be required. Not an ideal approach but sure better than theoretical solutions that flop in reality.
While the inherent shi da fu conflict can never be resolved and deepens corruption in a down cycle, the Confucian Mandarin ethos and the Party’s instinct for self-preservation could combine to effectively check corruption in an up cycle. And the country seems to be in such an up cycle now. The saints are on the march and the thieves are in retreat. Let it continue.
Eric X. Li is a venture capitalist and political scientist in Shanghai. This essay is adapted from a talk given in July 2013 at an anti-corruption conference organized by the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels.
