Causes and Consequences of Corruption in Contemporary China
by Alberto Di Felice
November 2007
Introduction
The great Lord Acton once wrote that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (cited in Schramm and Taube, 2003: 273). His famous dictum seems to apply perfectly to the People’s Republic of China, where the monopoly power of the Communist Party on politics to this day is accompanied by rampant corruption.
The study of corruption is crucial to comprehending the nature of the relationship between politics and business in contemporary China, and to envisioning the future direction of reforms. In her survey of the Chinese discourse on corruption, Sun (2001: 263) finds that “post-reform corruption is a complex mixture of universal, transitional socialist, and unique Chinese characteristics in its origins, consequences, as well as definitions.” The traditional dividing lines she highlights between structural and cultural explanations, and between apologists and critics, shed in themselves valuable light on some of the oppositions—between critical conservatives (mainly among central government officials) and apologetic liberals (mainly among local officials and firm managers)—that underlie the practice of corruption in China. Such oppositions, in turn, implicitly give credit to structuralist accounts in that they reproduce the very systemic tensions that, as will be discussed in this essay, explain the origins and consequences of corruption.
This essay will emphasize and explore the structural causes of corruption by explaining the persistent relevance and the transformation of guanxi networks in the transition process. It will argue that the conjunction of market liberalization and continued existence of privileged public monopolies, particularly at the local level, is the main reason for the explosion of corruption in the context of patron-client networks in the post-reform era. Subsequently, it will analyze the economic and political implications of the phenomenon distinguishing between short- and long-term effects. It will be argued that, although corruption has so far been functional for both the survival of the communist regime and economic development, its economic sustainability in the long term is marred by internal deficiencies that will impact greatly on the future of communist China.
Guanxi, economic reforms, and administrative decentralization
To understand the phenomenon of corruption as it applies to contemporary China, we must first investigate the historical role of patron-client and instrumental-personal ties in the Chinese economy.
Interpersonal connections in order to secure favors in personal relations (guanxi) are a social practice with a long history in Chinese society, and Asian societies more broadly (Luo, 2002). Chinese social behavior can be partly understood in terms of the hierarchical roles taught by Confucianism, which dictate the obligations an individual has in five cardinal relationships. Among them is the filial responsibility of son toward father, which is the template for other hierarchical relationships in the system of Confucian ethics, such as that of subject-to-emperor and student-to-teacher (Morris, Podolny and Sullivan, 2005). This hierarchical system of ethics has been transplanted into the workplace, where it became the basis of a pervasive “organized dependency” of society upon the communist state (Johnston and Hao, 1995). It evolved into an unofficial method that people in the workforce used to secure access to scarce goods and services (e.g., food, housing, or admission to schools) which were selectively distributed by shop officials. As benefits and resources were allocated directly by the planning bureaucracy in the factories, workers relied on an informal “natural economy” of personal connections (Walder, 1986) based on the exchange of gifts and favors in order to build privileged interactions with the gatekeepers who controlled them: factory officials. To a certain extent, the creation of networks through personal connections and cooperation acted as a substitute for the market and the legal-institutional environment that supports it (Johnston, 2001; Schramm and Taube, 2003). Connections served as a coordinating mechanism that allowed for a more efficient allocation of shortage goods than that provided by the fissures and fault lines of the communist economy. “This pattern is the result of structural features common to all communist factories: the workers’ economic dependence on the enterprise; political dependence on party and management; and, most important, the wide discretion of shop officials over promotion, pay, direct distributions, and sociopolitical services” (Walder, 1986: 162–3).
With the advent of the “open-door policy” inaugurated in 1978, however, guanxi underwent a gradual but substantial transformation from vertical relationships between officials and the rank and file to vertical relationships between officials and business. This change was brought about by the introduction of a market economy that was permitted to run in parallel with the old command economic mode. Economic reforms notwithstanding, the Chinese economy is still far from being dominated by the decentralized forces of the market, and relies on the interplay of market and random government intervention (Qinglian, 2004). Following the implementation of the dual-track system, old central-administrative mechanisms were abandoned, often without putting in place new market-oriented substitutes capable of governing the transition. In this new hybrid system, the coexistence of guanxi networks and an emerging product market has blurred the limits between regular economic transactions and corruption (Schramm and Taube, 2003).
The Chinese transformation process, still underway, is overseen by limited control by the central state, and is otherwise based on a trial-and-error principle. Most of the deficiencies associated with centralized planning are still there to be found, mainly due to the lack of clearly defined property rights, a high degree of asymmetric information, and a bureaucracy that remains in control of key resources (Wank, 1996). At the same time, Chinese politics has been decentralized not only by partially reestablishing private incentives through the market, but also by giving increasing—and largely unchecked—decision-making power to the localities and local officials.
There being no obvious blueprint for the premeditated institutionalization of laissez-faire economics, China’s leaders in 1978 faced a monumental (and in many ways, even curious) task. In particular, decentralized exchange depends heavily on those who gather information about trade opportunities and act as go-betweens in actual exchange. Whatever else they were designed to do, the reforms had to create a corps of entrepreneurial market-makers. Where was socialist China supposed to find these middlemen? By dint of government’s heavy hand in the economy in past decades, one group of individuals in China proved outstanding candidates for the role, namely, the officials (Sands, 1990: 88–9).
As a result of the party’s persistent desire—and need—to recruit, monitor and reward the political elite through the nomenklatura system (Andvig, 2005; Perry, 2007; Root, 1996), the people who stood in charge of the allocation of resources in the old system have retained this prerogative in the reform era. Official power was not reduced in scope: it was simply fragmented and redistributed down to lower levels of the hierarchy (Johnston and Hao, 1995). The two central pillars of the planned economy remained in place: the huge party-state machinery and monopolistic state organizations from the center down to local village government, and the high political and social status enjoyed by communist officials within these organizations (Qinglian, 2004). Yao (2002) identifies the monopolistic privilege of this near-caste as the fundamental cause of corruption.
Since the CCP came into power, in order to secure their hold, their top leaders have been paying great attention to the problem of selection of “successors.” A tiny percentage of their former subordinates and many children of the top CCP leaders—the princelings—have been chosen as candidates. The princelings, beginning from a young age, have enjoyed various kinds of privileges, from attending the top universities to choosing the best occupations. After a period of training and practice, many of the princelings have been promoted to heads of CCP organizations or to heads of important government departments. Today, the leading members in the CCP central committee, the top-level central government officials, the highest-ranked military officials, the heads of the provincial governments and the heads of the major state-owned enterprises, except for a very tiny percentage, are all members of this privileged class (Yao, 2002: 282–3).
He distinguishes two types of corruption: implicit and explicit. Implicit corruption is the natural result of the predatory position that officials occupy, receiving substantial benefits in exchange for loyalty to the party and little actual work. This form of corruption is implicit because it is produced by the privileged position itself, and does not involve any illegal activities as the benefits awarded to the officials are legally assigned. Until Mao’s death, it was the prevalent form of corruption, mainly because of Mao’s superior position and ability to contain its effects within the limits allowed by the party. The introduction of a private sector alongside the command economy withered the ability of the central government and the party to keep officials’ behavior under control. Using collusion among themselves, officials were now able to expand their privilege, leading to an explosion of explicit corruption. This new form of corruption, resulting from a labyrinth of administrative units and procedures, was part of Deng Xiaoping’s strategy to build support for economic reform among recalcitrant communist officials (Root, 1996).
One of the most pervasive forms of explicit corruption involves guandao or official diversion/profiteering (Li, 2002). Under the dual-track system, an enterprise was allowed to produce outside-plan output and sell it in the emerging product market at market prices. These were allowed to fluctuate freely after 1985, causing high inflation and rising price differentials between plan and market goods. Especially after government intervention to curb inflation in plan prices in the late 1980s, plan and market prices varied considerably. In such a situation, buying in-plan goods at low plan prices and selling them at market prices was an opportunity to capture rents that corrupt officials, who controlled those goods, would not miss (see also Johnston, 2001). Plan prices differing significantly from prices in the world market were another source of extensive smuggling and corruption (Andvig, 2005). The establishment of “briefcase companies,” networks of trading companies which engaged in repeated self-dealing, also provided an easy scheme for cadres to achieve considerable gains by reselling in-plan goods at higher prices on the market (Li, 2002).
The liberalization of prices brought about by the new market track, the continued existence of the plan track, and the rise of provincial privilege, are central to understanding the modal shift in the system from endemic gift-giving to epidemic corruption. Under the old command economy, money had little or no value. Shortage of goods, on the other hand, was chronic. People had to worry not so much about having enough money to buy goods (goods were usually under-priced), as about having the time and influence necessary to access them (Sands, 1990). In this context, as we have seen, guanxi in a form closely related to barter (under-the-table, in-kind exchanges) allowed workers to overcome such shortages through gifts-for-goods transactions (Lautt, 2000). When price liberalization eliminated the problem of shortage in the market track, money came to be a universal medium of exchange. Guanxi, in other words, went from the somewhat benign form of gift-giving to being “monetized” (Li, 2002). With the move from “soft” to “hard” prices (Andvig, 2005), Chinese officials now have monopoly power over resources that can be traded for money, and have learned how to exercise this power to maximize their utility by taking advantage of both China’s socialist political system and the capitalist market mechanism (Yao, 2002).
They became price searchers, demanding higher and higher bribes for doing business with ordinary people. … [T]hese privileged group members have learned the two-part tariff strategy of a monopolist. The commission fees they charge are very much the same as the entrance fee charged by the monopolist in order to exploit all the consumer surplus of his customers. … Yet there are fundamental differences between a monopolist and a Chinese privileged group member. A monopolist works for himself, uses his private-owned capital, and pays tax against his profit, whereas a Chinese privileged group member works for the state in name, uses state-owned resources, and pays no tax against the unrecorded “commission” income (Yao, 2002: 285).
The process of decentralization has had the perverse effect of multiplying public monopolies, creating new privileges and new opportunities for discretion, and making accountability more difficult. As Robert Klitgaard’s formula goes, “monopoly plus discretion minus accountability equals corruption” (cited in Johnston, 2001: 11). The central state has delegated monopolistic power to direct and dominate the economy not only to the localities (provinces, prefectures, municipalities, and districts), but also to a vast array of sectoral interests (e.g., import-export corporations), and to central institutions such as the army, the police, and the judiciary. Economic reform and decentralization have created a panoply of private interests in the form of public monopolies willing to make as much profit as possible by restricting competition in the economic activities within their purview (Fabre, 2001). The first market-distorting effect of corruption in China—and one that is rarely noted—is thus the elimination of competition among firms at the local level, so as to allow bureaucratic monopolies to exploit the lavish profits of business monopolies. “Often, monopolies have been divided along either geographic or business lines. Given the poor integration in many sectors of the domestic market, geographic restriction tends to create regional monopolies rather than foster genuine head-to-head competition” (Pearson, 2005: 315). As Hilton Root explains:
[I]n China different bureaus and agencies all want their own markets over which they have monopoly powers. An economy of sectors and regions emerged whose primary function was to award officials shares of the local economy and the right to collect rents from those who traded in that economy. The development of a labyrinth of local trade and licensing restrictions serves the same function (Root, 1996: 747).
All these regional and sectoral monopolies have “specialized” functions, and are not integrated. As a consequence, the Chinese economy is still characterized by structural shortages that business is forced to negotiate through corruption, not open markets. The Chinese futures market is a good example of this. In an environment where property rights are not efficiently protected and traded, prices for most traded commodities are set by the government, and information is largely asymmetric, “[t]he speculators have little to lose because firms use public funds, and people make promises to deliver property they do not own. … Because party bureaucrats keep the winnings, they use, in effect, both stock and futures markets to parlay public assets into private profits” (Root, 1996: 746–7).
Corruption does not occur only at the level of single bureaucrats. It can also take place at the organizational level. The expansion of the local bureaucracy has been accompanied by a reduction of state budget allocations. Government agencies now face growing needs and decreasing revenue from central sources at the same time. This has given local governments incentives to engage in revenue-seeking activities to find ways to supplement such budget shortages. Indeed, organizational corruption to provide off-budget financing is tolerated and at times even encouraged by the central government (Lu, 2000). The ability to collude has also produced a form of collective corruption, whereby large-scale networks comprising not only multiple party and state organizations, but initiated by private enterprises, nongovernmental organizations, and even organized crime groups, carry out criminal activities for the purpose of individual gain (Shieh, 2005). These forms of corruption contribute to a tendency toward the “criminalization” of the economy, where corruption is supported or substituted by the outright threat of violence by criminal networks (Fabre, 2001; Qinglian, 2004).
In sum, the Chinese mixture of trial-and-error economic transformation and continuing privilege in the form of “specialized,” decentralized public monopolies, has given birth to an “intermediary form of bureaucratic capitalism” (Root, 1996) based on systemic corruption, where the public and private interests of the bureaucracy intermingle. The corruption thus engendered has important—if obscure—consequences for the future of China’s economic and political system, to which we now turn in the next section.
Corruption: Economically and politically functional? And for how long?
Normal understanding about the negative impacts of corruption on economic efficiency—one of which, i.e., the creation of local and sectoral business monopolies, has been highlighted in the previous section—seems to be sharply contradicted by China’s unprecedented growth. On the face of it, the Chinese state seems to be playing an active and positive role in fostering this growth, rather than simply engaging in predatory behavior. China’s economic growth and reform on the one hand, and its inactivity on the political front on the other, also run against the inseparable link between marketization and democratization that is behind the description of state-society relations in China by “democratization” and “civil society” models (Pearson, 1997). We thus encounter the paradox of burgeoning economic development in the face of corruption and a political system that has not replaced the communist monoarchy with democratic polyarchy (Brus, 1993). Indeed, not only officials but also private entrepreneurs seem to be quite at peace with the current state of affairs. Corruption, they argue, helps officials and firms in devising innovative practices to unblock the command system, facilitates commercial exchanges, enhances bureaucratic efficiency, and coordinates policy making and implementation (Sun, 2001). To a large extent, they are right. As in the case of gifts-for-goods exchanges in the factory, money-for-power transactions in contemporary China serve as a method of allocation that substitutes for the market. In this case, the market needs to be substituted because of its trial-and-error nature under the transformation of the economic system. Corruption, put crudely, has the functional role of “mode of regulation” of the transition process (Fabre, 2001). This functionalist explanation is likely to hold in the short run, but in the long run may prove problematic on a number of accounts with regard to the future of the Chinese economy and the communist regime. As Michael Johnston explains:
First, we must be clear on the meaning of “functional.” The concept is well-defined in theory, but its applications at times seem to imply that “functional” really means “beneficial.” Such a proposition begs the same questions as assertions that corruption is inherently bad or good: again we must ask, “compared to what?” In any event, whole systems will rarely stand or fall because of corruption alone. We can apply functional concepts to more specific elements, such as a system’s regime, aspects of its economy, or a particular accommodation among ethnic factions. But answers to functionality questions will then depend upon the particular aspects we choose for analysis: in Morocco, for example, Waterbury suggests that corruption in land reform policy was functional for the survival of the regime, but dysfunctional for economic growth. This in turn raises the question of short- versus long-term effects. In the Moroccan case, will enhanced regime stability eventually aid economic growth? Or will the marginal reduction in growth attributable to corruption come to threaten the regime? And—perhaps most difficult—is there an answer beyond “wait and see”? (Johnston, 1986: 462–3).
These questions echo a famous joke in Beijing: “Should one fight corruption to save the country or not fight it to save the party?” (cited in Fabre, 2001: 459). The issues we face when assessing the consequences of corruption in China bear the same weight of significance as those set out by Johnston. Except that, unlike the case of Morocco, corruption in China appears to be functional for the survival of the regime and for economic growth. At least for the time being.
Goldstein (1995) traces the origin of China’s economic success during the transition, in contrast with the unsuccessful Soviet reforms, to Mao’s Cultural Revolution and its ability to stimulate the entrepreneurial capacity of local governments by turning enterprises over to the localities. It is here, he argues, that we are to find some of the most important stones in the river of Chinese gradualism. As we have seen from our account of the causes of corruption in China, devolution of power to local public monopolies that act as the gatekeepers of economic reform is also the prime source of corruption. Economic transformation and administrative devolution are thus constituents of a self-perpetuating virtuous circle conducive to growth, with the vicious undertone of corruption.
Devolution and the introduction of the dual-track system have not only kept in place the original structure of power, but also reinvigorated it with new incentives. Officials and local institutions are now able to use their positions to get the first bite of society’s cake. Their support for the reforms and for the stability of the extant regime has been ensured by the fact that they are allowed to reap a sizable portion of the harvest sown by the development these create (Qinglian, 2004).
[T]he pattern of state predation in the collective and private sectors tends to conform more closely to one of “dividend collecting.” … The fact that many local governments have acquired a vested interest in local industrialization and development, largely as a result of fiscal decentralization and their dependence on the local tax base for revenues, has given them an added interest in allowing local firms to pursue profits—if only for the crass purpose of increasing the size of the local economic pie from which they can extract a slice (Wedeman, 2002: 176–7).
This new set of incentives has established an informal, intimate, and profitable relationship among the “middle-aged men in dark suits with dyed hair … who run [and] own China.” [1] Jointly, the political and economic elites control 85% of all wealth in the country (Qinglian, 2004). These elites have been allowed great room to cooperate and expand with mutual gains. China’s capitalists have a vested interest in the system, too. “Bound to the Party-state through a web of policies and institutions, the Chinese ‘bourgeoisie’ expresses more interest in political stability than in political reform. Indeed, a substantial portion of private entrepreneurs, welcomed by Jiang Zemin’s inclusiveness, have recently joined the Communist Party itself” (Perry, 2007: 8). “The result is a symbiotic relationship that benefits both sides” (Dickson, 2000–2001: 527). For all the claims that business associations are beginning to “exhibit a dualistic mixture of state domination and limited independence” (Pearson, 1994: 44), such associations “all still operate within the ‘state corporatist’ mold, still dominated by the central state or by the local government that initiated them” (Unger and Chan, 1995: 52). As Andrew Wedeman explains:
If so, then the apparent contradiction between “worsening” corruption and China’s extraordinarily high rate of growth might be, in part, a function of … the forging of a collusive relationship between high-ranking cadres and the emerging business community, wherein those with political power have material incentives to facilitate profit-making by their “business partners” (Wedeman, 2004: 921).
If one looks only at the relationship between politics and business in China, it would appear as though Hu Jintao’s “harmonious society” has already been built, and the grease of corruption is what holds it together. Clearly, one gets a very different picture if one considers the steadily widening income gap between those who are part of this club and those who are left out, and a trend toward the “polarization” of wealth, whereby the rich get richer and the poor poorer (Qinglian, 2004). For Kong, “fighting corruption demands effective regulation, the necessary conditions of which are the existence of a genuine countervailing institutional and societal power” (cited in Williams and Beare, 1999: 124). As yet, this countervailing power does not exist in the People’s Republic. As the remainder of this essay will argue, however, this absence does not bide well for the future of China’s corruption-based “harmonious society.”
In the words of Steve Cheung: “Corruption in transition is one thing, corruption as a well-defined rights system is another. The grave danger of the Chinese reform process is that it may get stuck in the middle” (cited in Root, 1996: 750). The stability of the Chinese system does not rely on the public good of legal security, but on the club good of guanxi networks and the corruption they facilitate in the reformed economy. Schramm and Taube (2003) study the path dependency created by guanxi networks, and its impact on institutional change. Guanxi networks, they argue, provide the context for minimizing the transaction costs of corrupt behavior, in that they transform high-risk exchanges into self-implementing contracts. Guanxi networks are sticky institutions. They require significant investments to build, and consequently create an interest in long-term relationships. Because of the high fixed costs (sunk costs), a high volume of transactions can lower the average cost of each individual transaction. The low variable costs and the high fixed costs make guanxi networks extremely resistant to change once the initial investment has been made in the social capital on which they are based. In the light of this, efforts to establish a legal system in China would appear unlikely to displace guanxi networks and therefore weaken the phenomenon of corruption. China may indeed be bound to “get stuck in the middle,” and remain in the “first phase of socialism” ad infinitum, as the Chinese leadership hopes. Contrary to what the CCP expects, however, this may prove fatal.
Being “stuck in the middle” is advantageous for the communist leadership only as long as it provides for the economic efficiency from which the leadership increasingly draws its legitimacy. In line with our analysis so far, Johnston (1986) shows that corruption in the context of patron-client networks, especially in the presence of monopolies, can be fruitfully employed for the purpose of cooptation. Yet, he argues that the internal economy of these networks can generate contradictions and sources of instability that in the long term may impair their ability to create an integrative and stable environment. For example, this could happen because “durable” rewards cannot be redistributed easily.
As a result, key subleaders and factions may command a disproportionate share of the spoils long after their political performance has entered a decline. Networks of obligation and exchange can thus become rigid and overly complex, as multiple standards of reciprocity emerge between leaders and various factions; the organization may adapt poorly to changing circumstances or fall victim to factional disputes (Johnston, 1986: 468).
The “stickiness” and rigidity of such institutional organization, in other words, could be the very reason for its future demise. The process of reform is at a point of no return, and the system designed to dominate it may prove internally incoherent and insufficient to cope with new external pressures. As China advances down the path of economic transformation and administrative devolution—so far a virtuous circle with only a vicious undertone—the incompleteness of the transition may finally fulfill the prophecy of economic theory and become an impediment to further growth—nothing but an old-fashioned vicious circle. The objective of preserving the political status quo may come to collide with the imperatives of the economy, because the internal cost structure of patron-client corruption may reach a point where it far outweighs the costs of switching to full market and the protection of a full-fledged legal system (Schramm and Taube, 2003). As the additional and variable costs that corruption imposes on financial transactions and free movement grow, China’s “intermediary form of bureaucratic capitalism” may no longer stand the test of globalization (Williams and Beare, 1999). Arguably, the most challenging terrain will be the sustainability of what appears to be a “market preserving federalism” which, by devolving excessive power to the localities and turning a blind eye on corruption, inhibits the authority of the central government and its ability to steer the economy through essential macroeconomic policies—e.g., the consolidation of a national fiscal and monetary system, commercial regulations, redistribution, and market integration (Goldstein, 1995). Elizabeth Perry explains:
It is entirely possible that the engineers responsible for running the train of Chinese Communism will soon discover that they cannot proceed full steam ahead along an outmoded set of rails. Advanced economic development may indeed demand new political arrangements that afford far greater autonomy to legal institutions and civil society (Perry, 2007: 22).
As suggested at the outset of this section, so far the negative consequences of corruption on economic efficiency in China have not been clearly visible. This is because in the transition they have in fact been overshadowed by its benefits for development. But China cannot continue to defy economic wisdom forever. Steven Goldstein (1995: 1131) asks: “have China’s post-Mao reforms really resolved the central question of the relationship between political and economic reform in a Leninist system or have they simply postponed and recast it?” The uncertainties and ambiguities that surround the official fight on corruption may be a signal of this latter option. Increasing numbers of corrupt government officials flee the country each year with the money they have accumulated, and many others doggedly lay their plans to do so before they are put under the spotlight of anti-corruption campaigns. This flight of capital—in addition to the net financial losses and the consequent dangers these entail—shows a mounting sense of crisis among the privileged class of Chinese bureaucrats (Qinglian, 2004). If, as Hilton Root (1996: 752) suggests, “attacks on corruption reflect a power struggle within the party”—especially, we might add, between center and periphery—how China deals with corruption represents a powerful litmus test for how long the Communist Party can stay above the laws of the legal system, and the laws of economics.
Concluding remarks
As will be apparent from the foregoing discussion, the study of corruption in China is unlikely to produce clear-cut answers as to the consequences of the phenomenon. The task is particularly difficult for the reason that what orthodox economic theory predicts is apparently inconsistent with the on-going economic success of China, and for the political dimension of corruption in the preservation of the communist regime. One can, however, formulate reasonable hypotheses and draw sensible conclusions if one distinguishes between short- and long-term effects. This essay has explored the causes of corruption in contemporary China, and has suggested its current and future possible implications for the Chinese economic and political system. Emphasis has been given to a structural reconstruction of the phenomenon through an analysis of the persistent importance of patron-client ties under the reform period. It has been argued that the coexistence of economic liberalization and decentralization of political power to sectoral public monopolies is the major cause of corruption, and that corruption in the context of guanxi networks has thus far been useful both to keep the Communist Party in existence and to create economic development. Officials and entrepreneurs have been able to establish a mutually advantageous relationship cemented by corruption that has allowed business to overcome the shortcomings of an incomplete market economy. In line with traditional economic predictions, however, corruption may ultimately prove dysfunctional. As economic reforms continue, they may unveil the internal deficiencies of the informal system devised to oversee them. Corruption based on patron-client networks, as opposed to the operation of legal institutions, may be unable to meet the needs of change. The inevitable negative repercussions on the economy may in turn have a dramatic impact on the ability of the Communist regime to stay in power. There may come a time, in other words, when corruption will no longer be functional for the survival of the regime nor for economic growth.
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NOTES
- Michael Sheridan, “China’s Rich Spark Dissent from Below: New Leaders Emerge Amid Calls for Reform,” The Sunday Times, October 21, 2007. [↩]
