CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Official Moguls 159
of Suharto in 1998, but as we shall see it is hardly a sound democracy yet.
China and Kenya have moved toward the market – China, dramatically –
in terms of economic policy; Indonesia has been a market economy for
some time but has become somewhat less open, to judge by the data, of
late, perhaps because of disruptions following the fall of Suharto. All
remain relatively poor countries overall, and all but China fall below the
median on the UNDP Human Development Index. China has experienced
dramatic economic growth for the past generation; Indonesia’s
generation of rapid but unequal economic expansion was halted for
several years by the events of 1998. In all three countries official institutions
are weak and governance is ineffective. Property rights are not very
secure, and corruption-control ratings fall well below the 98-nation
median. These states are more interventionist than the three Oligarch
and Clan cases in the previous chapter, yet Government Effectiveness
and Regulatory Quality ratings range from middling to very weak. Finally,
the impunity that characterizes Official Mogul corruption is reflected in
these countries’ very low ratings for Voice and Accountability – scores that
in the case of Indonesia put rising Polity scores into a sobering context.
China: riding the tiger – for now 1
Corruption is nothing new in China: reports of bribery, sometimes involving
ambitious young men seeking to evade the rigorous examinations for
offic ial app ointm ents, date back m any centu ries (Liu , 1979 1978, ; Kiser
and Tong, 1992; Reed, 2000). Local bribery and extortion have been
longstanding themes too, their seriousness varying with the ability of
central government to exercise effective power. In the twentieth century
demands for official payments were common under Nationalist rule, a
factor intensifying opposition to that regime.
When the People’s Republic was proclaimed in October, 1949, eradicating
past corruption was an early priority. Still, in the years before the
death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the launch of market-oriented policies
in 1978, corruption was a continuing problem (Liu, 1983, 1990; Baum,
1991; Kung and Gillette, 1993; Lo, 1993; Goodman, 1994; Gong, 1994,
2002; Kwong, 1997; Bo, 2000; Fabre, 2001; Li, Smyth, and Yao, 2002;
Sun, 2004). Favoritism was common; production was often falsely
reported (Kwong, 1997: 111), but that served less to enrich anyone
than as a way to avoid punishments for failing to meet the plans.
Corruption for monetary gain was frequent but generally controlled in
1 Sections of this discussion draw upon Hao and Johnston, 2002. I gratefully acknowledge
Yufan Hao’s analytical contributions, translations, and wise advice.