Corruption in China: The Worst kind of Treason
The Corruption in China men of Qi presented the government of Lu with a troupe of singing girls. Ji Huanzi accepted them and for three days failed to appear at court. Confucius left the state. Analects
Everywhere, since ancient times, Corruption in China people have feared government corruption for, unlike war or fraud, corrupt policies cripple nations for centuries. No society has suffered more grievously from–nor waged more protracted war against–official corruption than the Chinese. Today, however, though the story not over, it is nearing a goal that could make them the envy of the world and, like most Chinese stories, theirs is a long one.
Corruption–nepotistic, pecuniary, blatant, discreet, major and minor–has been subverting governments since governments were invented.
Roman politicians were scandalously corrupt, Christianity failed to improve them, and their legacy of official impunity, bribery, influence peddling, patronage, nepotism and cronyism, electoral fraud, embezzlement, kickbacks, unholy alliances, and involvement with organized crime afflicts us today and we have become numb to it.
China, by contrast, has often enjoyed honest governments and upright officials have been dear to Chinese hearts for millennia. On May 5, 278 BC, after the King of Chu ignored his warnings about official corruption, State Minister Qu Yuan[1] drowned himself in the Miluo River in protest. On that day ever since Dragon Boats renew their search for his body. Great Confucians like The Hongwu Emperor[2] fought corruption tirelessly:
Had I thoroughly eradicated corrupt officials in addition to those already imprisoned. I would have been dealing with two thousand men from just two prefectures. Men with no useful occupation who used my prestige to oppress people.
No-one outside government knew how wicked they were, so everyone said my punishments were harsh, for they saw only the severity of the law and didn’t know that these villains had used the government’s good name to engage in evil practices.
In the morning I punished a few and, by evening, others had committed the same crimes. I punished those in the evening and the next morning there were more violations. Although the corpses of the first had not been removed. Others were already lined up to follow in their path, day and night! The harsher the punishment, the more violations. I didn’t know what to do, but I couldn’t rest.
If I was lenient the law became ineffectual, order deteriorated, people thought me weak and engaged in still more evil practices. If I punished them, others regarded me as a tyrant. How could anyone lead a peaceful life in such circumstances? Really, my situation was dreadful.
Confucians fought corruption more effectively than the Romans, partly because of public participation.
The people retained the right to withdraw the Mandate of Heaven–and, according to the constitution. Still do–and many governments met grisly ends when they failed to honour the Four Principles–propriety. Justice, honesty, and honour–or their officials lacked the Eight Virtues–loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, love, integrity, righteousness, harmony and peace.

From the earliest days, officials transferred to provinces were forbidden to bring their parents lest their needs conflict with the Emperors. They were rotated every three years and, after each rotation, their successors were encouraged. To report discrepancies for fear that they are blamed for them. Palace officials were regularly moved between departments and the seriously corrupt were strangled and their families sold into slavery.
Every Chinese, from humble farmers to eminent politicians, knows this history and understands that promoting honest men to leadership is the way to prevent corruption.
Many still living saw how a century of chaos devastated public morality. As Mao observed during a 1950 anti-corruption drive. “Today, you can buy a branch secretary for a few packs of cigarettes, not to mention marrying a daughter to him.” Mao’s slogan, “The masses have sharp eyes,” encouraged people to report wrongdoing and corruption fell dramatically.
His insistence on merely shaming corrupt officials worked because, says Sydney Rittenberg[3]. “Nobody locked their doors. The banks–there was a local bank branch on many, many corners–the door was wide open. The currency stacked up on the table in plain sight of the door, there were no guards and they never had a bank robbery, ever.”
As its accomplishments demonstrate, postwar China was free of corruption at the policy-making level. But, especially during the forty-year Reform and Opening, lower-level corruption flourished.
Anticipating this in 1980, planners redesigned officials’ incentives so that bribers would effectively be rewarding them for expediting the plan, says Yukon Huang[4]. “The system countered the growth‐inhibiting aspects of corruption by setting investment and production targets that gave local officials incentives to promote expansion.
It fostered a unity of purpose so that, even when corruption flourished. The collaborators still made growth in the guiding principle of their actions. But, this reinforced by competition between localities to meet targets and support productivity‐enhancing economic reforms. The competitive element helped curb waste and ensured a modicum of efficiency despite the high degree of state intervention in commercial activities. So, Sometimes though, as throughout Chinese history, things got out of hand.
Acting on a tipoff about smuggling, Beijing secretly sent detectives to Xiamen Port in 1999. But the smugglers, tipped off, set fire to the investigators’ hotel and killed them as they slept.
On national television the next day, Premier Zhu Rongji declared war and ordered a hundred coffins, “Ninety-nine for the crooks and one for me.” Detectives from across the country converged on the city and what. They found staggered them: four million tons of imported diesel fuel had bypassed customs in just two years.
They tracked hundreds of suspects, locked escapees in a local hotel with armed guards. On each floor, and spent three years unravelling a case so complex that the customs files alone would be higher than a ten-story building.
The gang had bribed the vice-minister of Public Security. But, Li Jizhou, through his wife and daughter, and Li and thirteen others sentenced to death. His wife to thirty months in prison and three hundred officials tried for aiding or abetting the criminals.
The ringleader, farmer-turned-smuggler Lai Changxing, fled to Canada, extradited, and jailed for life in 2009.
After ten years of economic free rein, the economy was booming but critics complained of endemic corruption. So, Forgetting that the cycle of alternating liberal and conservative policies is as old and predictable as the moon. Rapid growth had solved many problems.
But a new cycle was presaged by a nepotism scandal, a form of corruption to which family-centric China is uniquely vulnerable. Emperor Wu of Han curbed nepotism by examination in the second century BC and sixteen centuries later. Of two-hundred seventy-nine senior officials whose family histories we know[5]. So, Fewer than half had forebears in government (by 2018, it was one-sixth).
In 1985 Bo Xilai, son of a Revolutionary Immortal and Xi Jinping’s schoolmate, had ignored his father’s pleas to stay out of politics. “You know nothing of the sufferings of ordinary people and just want to capitalize on my name.”
Xilai cultivated a charismatic image, was named one of Time’s Most Influential People. Therefor, Rose rapidly to the provincial governor and publicly campaigned for a cabinet position.
But, as a conservative scholar, Cheng Li said at the time, “Nobody really trusts him. A lot of people are scared of him, including several princelings who are supposed to be his power base.” Michael Wines wrote that, though he possessed prodigious charisma and deep intelligence. “He possessed a studied indifference to the wrecked lives that littered his path to power…Mr. Bo’s ruthlessness stood out.” With the help of Justice Minister Zhou Yongkang, Bo had even wiretapped President Hu.
Despite considerable internal resistance, Vice Premier Wu Yi. The nation’s highest woman official demanded an open investigation and a 2012 trial revealed that. Bo owned expensive properties around the world and that his wife had murdered a British agent.
They jailed for life and joined a long line of disgraced elites like. The grandson of China’s Head of State and founder of the Red Army, Zhu De.
Who was executed for rape, and Yan Jianhong, wife of Guizhou’s powerful Party Secretary, who executed for corruption?
With prosperity assured, and elite corruption confronted, Congress anointed Xi Jinping. The most honest, competent official of his generation, to succeed President Hu. In its first year, Xi’s anti-corruption campaign saw ten thousand officials passed over for promotion for concealing information and one-hundred thirty-thousand demoted or disciplined for making false declarations.
By 2016, prosecutors had charged sixty-three senior officials and ministers with corruption. Released confessions from fifty-seven thousand Party members. Who made restitution and accepted demotions and seen Yunnan’s corrupt Party Secretary. Bai Enpei, sentenced to death.
By 2018, anti-corruption squads had investigated 1.3 million bureaucrats, filed a million court cases. Issued one hundred thousand indictments, captured thousands of overseas fugitives and jailed or executed one-hundred twenty high-ranking officials–including five national leaders. Twelve generals, a dozen CEOs and Sun Zhengcai, former Chongqing Party chief. Who sentenced to life in prison for taking huge bribes?
After a 2019 industrial explosion in Tianjin killed one-hundred sixty-five people. The magistrate found that petty bribery had led to weak code enforcement, sentenced. The responsible official to death, and jailed forty-nine of his colleagues.
Graft investigators unannounced inspections now resemble elite athletes’ doping tests. An Anhui inspection team telephoned an official four times between 7:31-7:35 one evening about his poverty alleviation efforts.
He showering and when he failed to answer. They reported him for obstruction and moved to dismiss him. Happily, through social media, the public came to his defence and he was exonerated.
Knowing that that ten per cent of their statements will be audited, even deputy county officials now report their marital status, overseas travel, criminal record, wages, other earnings, family properties, stocks, funds, insurance and investments. If they refuse to answer questions, or collude with, or protect accomplices, they detained immediately.
Bureaucrats–especially those with leadership ambitions–endure increasing scrutiny as they advance, says Zhao Bing Bing[6], “
The selection criteria are: a person must have ‘both ability and moral integrity and the latter should be prioritized[7].’” Midlevel officials must report their own assets and those of their parents, wives, children, children’s spouses and cousins. Children from previous marriages, children born out of wedlock and foster children.
They must report their income, savings, real estate, stock portfolios, insurance policies, unit trusts, bonds, assets in overseas accounts and, “Income shall include salary and various bonuses, allowances, subsidies, and payment you receive from lectures, writing, consultation, reviewing, painting and calligraphy.” Says a scion of a prominent family:
I am a Party Member in China and all my family are Party members. What I think of Xi is that life is really changing after he came to power.
A relative of mine works for the government as a vital governor in my city Chengdu (which is a big city like Beijing or ShangHai). Then all my family people are like in the hierarchy of privilege. We pay nothing when go out for dinner, the Party pays. We pay nothing for filling in oil, the Party pays.
It seems like we don’t need to pay for anything with our salaries, cause either the Party pays. Or someone will pay for us (who wants to flatter us). I smoke the best, I drink the best, sometimes I even drive without a license when drunk, because I fear no one.
In past times, yes we privilege everywhere, I felt so arrogant to be superior to others that also true.
But the problem is, there is a tradeoff. We drank quite a lot of alcohol to show respect to others, we had to accept bribes even we know it’s risky, cause we have to consider about our clan (like the interest of my boss).
We had to do some many things we don’t want to do, that’s the rule of living in Party, care about the interest of Clan more than your own. That’s how we united. We have to fear a lot of threats from ordinary people, colleagues, and bosses. We cannot keep our own passports, Party keeps it in case of we flee.
But life changed after Xi came to power, he did real things on anti-corruption. No one dare to present gifts to governors and the abuse of public funds is strictly monitored. The Party took back the public cars from my family and even we have to pay for the parking fee now! But..my family and I are actually happy with this, we are thankful to President Xi. Cause he seems like dragging China to a healthier future.
My relatives don’t need to go out for dinner with other governors as social intercourse daily, they don’t need to drink so much on the table and they start to learn to pay for the bill by turns, cause the Party will no longer do this for them.
They start to learn how to take the bus or metro. That’s good, actually. People start to think about what kind of lifestyle is called ‘healthy. They more like a human now, no longer some conceited stupid with expanding power. That’s how our life changed after Xi came.
Senior ministers’ lives have become excruciatingly transparent. Their private activities scrutinized and their children must adopt assumed names to avoid influence-seekers. Their meetings must third-party observers as one-on-one appointments are taken as evidence of impropriety.
A record of excessive, or poor quality, government debts is treated as prima facie evidence of corruption and automatically investigated.
Senior officials audited annually after retirement, remain responsible for the consequences of all their decisions. Until the day they die and, even then, clawback provisions apply.
Xi invited amateur corruption fighters to join the campaign and Beijing publishes a monthly scoresheet. Citizens text tips and complaints to the Rules and Discipline Committee (founded in the Tang Dynasty) at #12388 and often post accusations and photographs of evidence on social media and request additional witnesses. Social media have made the masses’ eyes sharper.
Netizens scrutinizing a news photograph noticed the work safety boss of Shaanxi province grinning broadly as he assessed the twisted wreckage of a bus and a methanol tanker following an accident that left 36 people dead.
They spotted his expensive timepiece and their tipoff and subsequent investigation sent Yang Dacai, Brother Watch, to jail for fourteen years for taking a million dollars in bribes.
Today visitors burn incense at the shrines of great corruption fighters. The battle with official corruption still accounts for half of all Chinese dramas, and millions watch TV dramas about ‘Justice Bao’ Zheng. The incorruptible Prefect of the Capital in 1000 AD. A popular TV series, ‘In the Name of People,’ depicts current-day intra-Party power struggles in the fictional city of Jingzhou.
There a prosecutor and a handful of honest local officials help laid-off workers protest a corrupt land deal. Foil corrupt bureaucrats sabotaging an arrest warrant, and stop fake police bulldozing honest citizens’ homes. The show’s writers say they have no shortage of material.
The anti-corruption campaign has been immensely popular and, by any measure, successful. In 2018, eighty-three percent of Chinese said the government runs the country for everyone’s benefit and ninety-three percent said they trust it–figures rivalling Switzerland’s and Finland’s.
But it was just a prelude to what will probably be Xi’s most memorable contribution to Chinese history, the creation of the National Supervision Commission[8].
Until 2018, anti-corruption work shared by the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention. Which recommended anti-corruption policies and handled international anti-corruption coordination. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate investigated various kinds of malfeasance.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection enforced party loyalty, anti-graft, ethical and Party lifestyle requirements among civil servants and leading officials. But, who Party members but turned criminal evidence over to the state for prosecution. The Ministry of Supervision, MOS, supervised civil servants. Who non-Party members, investigated graft, misappropriation of public funds and other duty-related violations.
The Commission subsumes their functions into an independent. The fourth arm of government that ranks with the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice.
As the most powerful such agency on earth, it employs legislation, digital technology (including face recognition and AI), the sharp eyes of the people, and great investigative powers with the goal of making corruption impossible.
It centralizes all anti-corruption processes and exercises authority over all civil servants within and outside the Party. The government, the People’s Congresses, the local supervisory commissions. The people’s courts and procuracy, the People’s Congresses, the eight democratic parties. Federations of industry and commerce, and everyone. Who works in, or consults for, organizations managing public affairs.
With extensive powers to interrogate, search, wiretap, detain suspects and freeze their assets, its writ extends to managers of state-owned enterprises, state educational, scientific, research, cultural, health care, sports, and similar agencies, think tanks, village and urban residents committees, and ‘all other personnel.
Who perform public duties’ and oversees provincial, city, and county level anti-corruption agencies.
Congress appoints the Commission’s senior staff and Yang Xiaodu, its first director was, like Xi, a sent-down youth who performed manual labour in Anhui province during the Cultural Revolution. Staff need not be Party members but they can never work in another arm of government for the rest of their lives.
The Commission is a political, not administrative body, and is exempt from the extensive procedural and substantive constraints on administrative organs like the police. Though the law requires staff to pay compensation ‘in accordance with law’ for infringing people’s lawful rights and interests.
It does not provide a right of further recourse through the courts but does permit targets to appeal to higher-level organs for the re-examination of the Commission’s decisions and to challenge unlawful conduct like prolonged detention.
If the Commission comes even close to its goal of making corruption impossible, grateful citizens will credit Confucius and the First Emperor for limiting political power to a single lifetime and confining it to those who demonstrate both honesty and intelligence.
They will credit the present dynasty for testing officials in the wilderness and imposing extraordinary transparency, themselves for their unwillingness to tolerate corruption and Xi Jinping for creating the most powerful corruption-fighting agency in history. Looking back only ten years, it is difficult to believe that corruption in China is on track to rival Singapore’s by 2021.
*Corruption in Eighteenth-Century China. Nancy E. Park. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 56, no. 4, 1997.
[1] Qu Yuan, 340-278 BC, was a Chu kingdom official and government minister who wrote some of the greatest poetry in Chinese history.
[2] From Huáng-Míng Zǔxùn (Instructions of the Ancestor of the August Ming), admonitions left to his descendants by the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644).
[3] Therefore, An old friend of the party assesses China’s new leaders. Rob Schmitz. Marketplace. November 19, 2012
[4] Yukon Huang was the World Bank’s Director for China. The Diplomat
[5] China’s Meritocratic Examinations and the Ideal of Virtuous Talents. Xiao, H., & Li, C. (2013). In D. Bell & C. Li (Eds.), The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective: Cambridge University Press.
[6] But, Daniel Bell and Zhao Bing Bing, The China Model.
[7] So the same wording as the Chief Censor used in the Tang Dynasty.
[8] The National Supervision Commission formed at the first session of the 13th National People’s Congress. So, in 2018 and absorbed the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China.
