But nabbing individual bad apples does little to address the systemic issues that enable graft in the first place.
China’s corruption problem is closely tied to the state’s role in the economy, which gives officials substantial influence over key resources such as land, loans and licenses. This can tempt officials to sell favours to businesspeople or collude with state-owned enterprises to stifle private sector competitors.
These problems are compounded by the cultural norm of guanxi (personal connections), which emphasises cultivating relationships with those in power in order to get ahead.
GLOBAL PHENOMENON, CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
China is not an outlier when it comes to corruption. The United Nations estimates that corruption across the world drains more than 5 per cent of the global gross domestic product. Of the approximately US$13 trillion in global public spending, up to 25 per cent is lost to corruption, it said.
While corruption is a global phenomenon, Mr Xi’s abrupt purges of top-level officials have raised questions about the stability of China’s governance.
As Associate Professor Alfred Wu, an expert on Chinese politics from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said in a media report: “Xi claimed that China’s governance model could become an alternative to the US-dominant world order, but when they keep removing top-level officials abruptly, which country would like to learn this from China?”
Moreover, China has signalled to the world that its anti-corruption campaign has gone truly global.
In 2023, two former executives of state-owned China Railway Tunnel Group were imprisoned and fined in a high-profile Chinese court case for bribing Singaporean official Henry Foo Yung Thye, a former Land Transport Authority deputy group director. It marked the first time China had convicted its citizens for bribing a foreign official.
To succeed in the long run, China’s anti-corruption efforts must upend the incentive structure that makes corruption tempting to local officials.
Economically, this means boosting public sector wages to reduce the need for predatory extraction. In 2015, the government announced a plan to increase the salaries of civil servants by an average of 60 per cent over the next few years. However, the implementation of this plan has been uneven across different regions and sectors.
