CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Official Moguls 163
the Cultural Revolution. Many young people turned to the pursuit of
wealth, while an absence of strong overriding norms blurred boundaries
of behavior. By now it can be difficult to say where corruption ends and
reform begins: the question of what is an acceptable personal reciprocity or
market transaction, and what is a corrupt payment, lacks clear answers. In
some places those who pay or earn commissions are praised, while elsewhere
they have been jailed (Su and Jia, 1993: 180).
Similarly, public office-centered conceptions of corruption have been
supplemented by newer ones reflecting the rise of markets (this discussion
is based on field research by Yufan Hao as reported in Hao and Johnston,
2002: 584–585; see also Sun, 2001) In the late 1970s ‘‘corruption’’ had
three meanings: tanwu, shouhui,andtequan. Tanwu (malpractice) involved
state officials who misappropriated public property by embezzlement,
theft, or swindling. Shouhui meant using official positions to extort or to
accept bribes. Tequan (privileges) covered widespread privilege-seeking by
officials. Since the early 1990s, however, ‘‘corruption’’ has more often had
connotations of fubai – decay and putrefaction – and now embraces a broad
range of abuses of wealth as well as of power. Activities termed ‘‘corrupt’’ in
the Chinese press now include economic illegalities such as profiteering,
blackmail, and black-market currency dealings; establishing illegal businesses,
smuggling, and dealing in counterfeit or defective goods; tax
evasion, excessive housing and extravagant banqueting (dachi dahe), ticket
scalping, gambling, usury, and visiting prostitutes – to name just some
examples. As this list suggests, notions of limited public roles, and of
private interests and situations, that both help define corruption and
restrain elites in other societies are not easily applied in China.
Meet the moguls
Official Mogul corruption is pervasive and diverse, involving thousands
of decentralized monopolies small and large (Fabre, 2001: 461–462).
Weakening party discipline enabled cadres at many levels, already enjoying
considerable privilege (Gong, 1994: xviii), to amass and exploit fragments
of power, which in turn became the main path to wealth. The
ability to exploit such power without constraint may, ironically, function
as a kind of commitment mechanism – that is, that a corrupt functionary
free to cut his own deals will deliver the goods – and that might reduce
some investors’ apprehensions about the costs of corruption. 2 Still, the
absence of political alternatives means that those unwilling to play the
2 I thank Yufan Hao for his comments on that point.