No 'how-to' book from the West can curb corruption in China
Eric Li says the roots of corruption are unique everywhere and, in China, it stems from a disconnect between political authority based on a selfless moral claim and economic realities
China's new leader, Xi Jinping , has identified corruption as an existential threat to the party-state. Many political commentators proclaim that corruption is inherent to China's one-party system and cannot be contained without fundamental change. Perhaps it is time to examine corruption in the larger historic and intellectual context.
Contemporary corruption has been a subject of global attention for 20 years. Before that, ideologies shielded rampant corruption. Marcos and Suharto were protected by the Western alliance. Since then, the research has been vast, but what have we learned?
A global consensus on corruption was formed early on, without empirical data: corruption results from incomplete economic liberalisation, the lack of political competition, an independent judiciary or press freedom, and weak civil society. Measurement systems were developed to produce single-dimension indexes in which corruption is qualitatively the same everywhere and varies only in quantity.
Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index is the most authoritative among them. Since the causes are the same and the degree measurable, it was only natural to issue standardised prescriptions, namely, privatisation, multi-party elections, an independent judiciary, press freedom, and a strong civil society.
Like "how-to-get-rich" books, many "how-to" books were published, such as USAid's Handbook for Fighting Corruption, the World Bank's Helping Countries Combat Corruption and the United Nations Development Programme's Corruption and Good Governance. But like their commercial cousins, there was only one problem: they didn't work.