Xin Chen
Introduction
The past decade has seen the problem of corruption become a central concern of most nations in the world, irrespective of their economic systems or socio-political order. Corruption has been widely condemned for undermining the rule of law and weakening the institutional founda- tion on which sustainable economic growth builds. Analogies have been made with epidemics, likening corruption to ‘a cancer which affects all ele- ments of society’1and a pestilence that erodes moral and ethical values, contaminates human relations and crumbles social stability.2 The global outrage over corruption has urged many national governments, inter- national organisations, NGOs, and civic society to enter into conciliatory dialogues on joint combats over the problem.
From this worldwide campaign a rich academic and policy literature has emerged on both general and context-specific anti-corruption approaches and measures. Dominating the discussion are vigorous appeals for eco- nomic policy and public institution reforms facilitated by the free market of the Western orthodox model. Even the recent corporate scandals in the United States do not seem to have dampened the general confidence in the containing power of the ‘invisible hand’ over corruption. Transparency International’s ‘Corruption Perceptions Index 2002’ seems to shore up this belief as well, as its top 25 least corrupted countries among the 102 ranked3are mainly mature free market economies in the developed West.
Likewise, in its crusade against corruption since the early 1990s, China has also been stressing the important role of the market in establishing an accountable and well-functioning public management system, a motivated and transparent public service, and a healthy and independent legal and judiciary framework. It has also shown much less hesitation than before in uncovering and publicising wrongdoings on the part of Communist Party and government officials and has been pushing for strict disciplinary and criminal punishment of corrupt political elites and public servants.4
China’s assertive policy intervention and punitive measures, however, have not produced the intended outcome of curbing corruption. On the
contrary, China is arguably witnessing the worst corruption crisis since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.5Frustrated and concerned that the recent national programme for developing the still backward West China will witness a new round of massive abuse of public funds,6many in the leadership, the policy circle, and academia argue for more dynamic reform and a still more prominent role for the market. The deliberations, however, demonstrate a conspicuous absence of discussion on the impact of the reform discourse on how people understand the transition and how they behave in carrying it out. Like any other dominant discourse, the reform discourse embedded in official accounts constructs social con- ditions and possibilities for social practices prevalent in China today.
Therefore, transcending the methodological focus and examining how the reform is defined, how the meaning is conveyed to the public, and how it has influenced social behaviour may shed some light on the roots of corruption.
Overview of China’s anti-corruption effort
Corruption is commonly viewed in China as the worst ‘social pollutant’. It is asserted not only to have distressed economic growth but also posed a grave threat to social stability.7Corruption is a focal issue in official discus- sions and publications at all levels and in the everyday conversations among the populace. The tidal wave of anti-corruption campaigns con- tinues to surge with government investigators actively engaged in hot pursuit of corruption cases. The official statistics indicate that between January 1998 and November 2002 central and local procuratorial organs filed more than 200,000 cases for investigation and prosecuted over three million suspects of corrupt activities. The official in the highest position of those facing capital punishment was a vice-chairman of the National People’s Congress.8Each disclosure runs the risk of highlighting the extent of corruption permeating Chinese politics and thus tarnishing the image of the Communist Party. Yet deeply concerned that pervasive corruption will eventually diminish the legitimacy of the Communist rule, the Chinese government seems determined openly to tackle corruption scandals.9
Definition of corruption
Corruption is a complex problem in China. Yet a widespread consensus exists among most Chinese on its definition, that is, the abuse of public office for the benefit of oneself or one’s family, or friends, or affiliations.10 While in line with international mainstream descriptions, the Chinese notion includes activities beyond the immediate oft-quoted connotations of the word, namely, abuse of power, favouritism, misappropriation, influ- ence peddling, fraud, insider trading, and abuse of public purse.11 The broader ‘corruption complex’ in the Chinese context encompasses polit- 40 Xin Chen
ical, economic, social, judiciary, law-enforcement, and occupational cor- ruption.12
Political corruption is represented mainly by corrupt behaviour in the political process, especially in personnel appointments and promotions in public offices. Economic corruption refers to exchanges of power for money and other types of procurement. A Chinese tongue-twister from a con businessman in Guangdong Province best reifies the definition: ‘You have power in hand, and I have money in bag. I buy your power with my money and use the power bought to obtain more money.’13The definition of corruption in the judiciary and law-enforcement circles is often illus- trated by a popular verse which mocks corrupt police officers, judges, and procurators for extorting bribes from both the plaintiff and the defendant and then complaining about the imperfection of the institutions of law.14 Social corruption alludes to indulgence in gambling, drug taking, sexual bribes, and other decadent pleasures, particularly with public funds. Occu- pational corruption includes unethical conduct in professional institutions and businesses, especially the practice of obtaining ‘contributions’ under duress from those seeking services.15
Although these different types of corruption vary in expression, their essence is considered to be the same: accessing, retaining and using power for corruption. It is thus believed that anti-corruption strategies should focus on the relationship between power and corruption and on the improvement of the exercise of political, economic, administrative, judi- ciary, and professional authority through institutional reforms. This approach signifies that China’s anti-corruption campaign is primarily tar- geted at the ‘demand side’, or corrupt government officials and public employees, even as the voice for more emphasis on the ‘supply side’ of corruption, namely, those that give out bribes, seems to be growing louder in academic and policy discussions on the issue.16
Origins of corruption
In their studies of what breeds and sustains corruption, Chinese leaders and academics have shown a high level of familiarity with up-to-date Western concepts and empirical findings related to the topic. There are, for example, discussions of Confucian values, guanxi-based cultural infra- structure, greedy attributes in human nature, and corroded sense of moral and ethical values, as contributory factors.17Yet the on-going debates and growing literature have focused mainly on ‘rent-seeking’ opportunities made possible by institutional flaws arising in the process of the market’s replacing the state in economic decisions and management, and on the
‘rent-seeking’ behaviour of government officials and public employees facilitated by the continued state intervention in economy. ‘Rent’ refers to all unpaid transfers of income, goods or services to individuals as the result of ‘favourable’ decisions on government policies.18
China: reform discourse and corruption 41
Many in-depth studies have particularly examined the dual system policy, which allows the state’s control and the market element to co-exist in various segments of the economy. One case in point is dual-track pricing, which includes state-fixed and floating market prices of commodi- ties, interest rates of bank loans, import duties, and land lease fees.19Other examples include the dual system of state allocation and market-based dis- tribution of resources, and that reflected in the practice of granting ‘prefer- ential’ provisions in tax rates, import tariffs, government subsidies, and other economic privileges to only some regions, industries and enterprises.
Necessary or even unavoidable as it may be at the initial stage of China’s transition to a market economy, the dual system strategy is blamed for having created considerable space for government agencies and indi- viduals to seek private benefits with their allocation power over what the state controls, usually better and cheaper than what the market offers.20
Other identified areas rich in economic ‘rents’ include the administra- tive examination and approval system, and management of public invest- ment monies and government expenditures. The former refers to an array of excessive approval procedures administered by central ministries or their local branches in evaluating project proposals submitted by many sectors and industries, whether related to basic infrastructure construction, agricultural development, social and recreational service, commercial facilities, property development, or such like. That the procedures are cumbersome and often not transparent means that the system has become a hotbed for corruption. Similarly, allocations of public investment and government expenditures are often decided by administrative decision and are hence believed to have allowed ‘rent-seekers’ opportunities to cut kick-back deals with those competing for shares of the ‘pork barrel’, which are usually lucrative and risk-free.21
‘Rent-seeking’ behaviour in the judicial and law-enforcement circles is regarded as having more negative economic and social consequences than in other sectors because it often degenerates into crime and inflicts finan- cial loss upon the state. Typical examples include customs officers, police- men, and tax collectors who work with criminals in money laundering, drug trafficking, smuggling, prostitution, producing and selling forgeries, or cooking the books for tax or import duty evasions. The seriousness of the damage caused by this type of corruption to the public confidence in the regime and political and social stability is obvious.22
Therapeutic measures
Corruption defined as abusing public power for private gains is not a new phenomenon in China but rooted in its long history, bureaucratic tradi- tion, and socio-political development.23Yet it has flourished at an unprece- dented speed in recent years. Many in China believe that this is caused by weak institutions and flawed government policies resulting from a mixed 42 Xin Chen
economy, generating economic rents in an extraordinary abundance. This assessment has resulted in China’s anti-corruption war since 1993 targeting Party and government organisations, judicial departments, public security organs, and national and local economic administrative divisions. In the range of fire are also individuals in the hundreds of thousands of offices in these organisations, which manage or distribute public resources and ser- vices, and make, interpret and implement policies and regulations.24
Much emphasis has been put on installing measures that may rein in corruption at its source. As market-driven reform has gradually reduced the role of the dual system in the economy, the anti-corruption focus has shifted to improving institutional structures for transparency and account- ability. Among the first put into effect are regulations prohibiting govern- ment, military, judiciary, and law-enforcement agencies from taking part in business enterprises, and forbidding officials at or above the provin- cial/ministry level, their spouses, their offspring including their husbands or wives, to have private businesses or to work in foreign-investment ven- tures in the locale or trade under the officials’ jurisdiction. Government and Party officials will also be audited upon leaving office. To promote greater integrity and transparency in Party and government officials’ exer- cising their delegated authority, systems have been put in place to separate accounting channels for revenues and expenditures, for imposing and col- lecting fees or fines, and for managing social welfare funds. To block access to economic ‘rents’, a building market has also been set up to elimi- nate procurement of state contracts through bribery or political connec- tions. Similarly, procedures have been installed to ensure that all government purchasing is made in an open and competitive manner. The central and local governments have also begun removing or simplifying administrative examination and approval procedures that affect hundreds of sectors and thousands of types of projects.25 To clamp down on the manipulation of books, the accountant accreditation and chief-accounts’
responsibility system has been introduced. Various locally passed self- serving taxation policies have also been outlawed in order to uphold the authority and unity of tax laws. To strengthen public institutions and enforce the law, efforts have been made to link up the on-line databases and networks of the Customs, state departments of taxation, foreign exchanges and exit–entry inspection, the Trade Commission, and banks, to cross-check wrongdoings and criminal conduct.26
Attempts have also been made to encourage and empower citizens to expose fraud and corruption in government. The Beijing municipal government, for example, has set up a telephone ‘hotline’ for whistle- blowers and has publicised concurrent disciplinary measures for verified misconduct.27 Complementing such government structural changes, the media has begun to play the role of a watchdog. The most powerful and popular examples are the Jiaodian Fangtan (Focus) programme aired by the Central Television station and Nanfang Zhoumo (Weekend of the China: reform discourse and corruption 43
South), a newspaper published in Guangdong. Both are known for their daring and realistic discussions of corruption and other social issues. Many officials are said to feel uneasy about the show. Others are said to regard it as the ‘gate to hell’ and have even developed internal ‘safety’ policies to
‘watch out for fire, theft and the “Focus” ’.28
While not quite exhausting the list of anti-corruption measures taken by China, the above account should suffice to show its resolve to fight corrup- tion in government and to improve the standards of the public service. The mechanisms are also in accord with international mainstream strategies for good governance, which advocate deregulation, expansion of the market, enforcing laws, promoting disclosure, investigative journalism, and social participation. Yet the determination and the all-out campaign do not seem to have been on target in terms of rooting out the sources of corruption.
As acknowledged by many in China, the number of excessively serious corruption incidents, involving astronomical figures of money, has increased rather than declined in recent years. The numbers and rank of officials engaged in misconduct are also getting higher; and organised offences with the participation of employees in government, the judiciary, and other law-enforcement agencies continue to increase.29 This disap- pointing situation suggests that China’s anti-corruption effort should tran- scend the structural and methodological focus and look for explanations in the reform discourse, which covers how the reform is defined, how the meaning is conveyed to the public, and how it influences social behaviour.
In other words, an understanding of how the concept of the ‘socialist market economy’ characterising China’s reform is expressed and how it is comprehended and effectuated socially may help explain why corruption has worsened in tandem with the growth of the market forces in China.
Challenge to the reform discourse
The study of discourse in analysing a social phenomenon may be charac- terised as concerned with the interrelationships between language and society.30 Examining texts and verbal expressions in a specific socio- political context, discourse analysis, in other words, is interested in how the world is constructed and how the ‘common-sense’ understanding of it is mediated through language.31Language use in this sense of shaping and organising social relations and behaviour is viewed as ‘practices’ rather than simply linguistic structures or utterances.
Discourses result from attempts to create social order by limiting the spectre of possible meanings.32The ability to produce meanings, and hence rule out or dominate possible alternative understandings, signifies the intrinsic political nature of discourse.33 Its political nature is also deter- mined by the fact that the ‘defined and delimited set of statements that constitute a discourse’ is ‘expressive of and organised by a specific ideo- logy’.34While ‘language’ is not everything, discourse analysis as an analyti- 44 Xin Chen
cal approach will help explain how corruption has spread in China along- side its market-oriented reform.
Goal of reform
When China began its economic reform in 1978, the push came from the widespread sense, mainly among the central leaders, for a pressing need to re-establish the Communist Party’s legitimacy and authority by improving economic performance and raising living standards.35Economic efficiency was thus the primary concern of the Communist regime when embarking on the reform. To achieve this goal, the post-Mao leadership has in the past 20 years voluntarily reduced the Party’s authority and involvement in running the day-to-day administrative and economic affairs. It has also endorsed the gradual incorporation of market mechanisms fashioned on Western concepts and rules into China’s economic institutions. Yet the reform and the marketisation were not meant to lead, nor have they led, to Western-style political democratisation as many scholars hypothesised it would in the 1980s. The economic development effort was and still is intended to strengthen the Party’s rule and political legitimacy.36
Definition of reform
Since the commencement of the reform, Chinese leaders have never hesi- tated to assert that the country will remain socialist and that Marxism will remain its ideological guidance. Yet it has not been easy for them to explain how China’s socialism in the Marxist tradition should interact with the free market. The difficulty comes from the fact that socialism in this sense is supposed to be built on the negation of capitalism not only as a social order but also as an economic system. To integrate the two antago- nistic schools of thoughts and practices thus requires both operational pro- grammes and conceptual direction. The Chinese leadership has, however, shied away from this sensitive, if not impossible, mission. In its almost casual flirtation with the issue, it has come up with a series of slogans to specify the relationship between socialism and the free market. Whether or not these expressions are enough to provide a conceptual modal for the reform mandate and agenda, their content demonstrates a clear ideo- logical choice and signals to potential and possible challenges how the reform should be understood.
Among the most influential slogans were ‘Seeking truth from facts’ and
‘Liberation of mind’ put forward at the beginning of the reform to prepare public opinions for the anticipated switch of focus from political correct- ness to economic pragmatism.37 At the 12th National Congress of the Party in 1982, Deng Xiaoping announced ‘Building socialism with Chinese characteristics’ to justify the introduction of the market element into the planned economy. Then came the formulation of ‘primary stage socialism’
China: reform discourse and corruption 45