China’s Communist Party officials used press coverage of corruption to undercut rivals, study of 2000-2014 data shows
- Tendency intensified in line with closeness to top officials in Beijing, study by US-based researchers finds
- But it cannot be an accurate analysis of today’s party politics, the authors say, as the data analysed ends two years into Xi Jinping’s leadership
The tendency intensified when officials had access to top leaders in Beijing, according to the study, which analysed more than 100 Chinese media outlets’ coverage of officials placed under corruption investigation during the 14-year period.
The work first became available online in 2022, but was most recently published in the second issue this year of the journal Political Science Research and Methods. A print version is due out next month.
Authors Ji Yeon Hong, associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan, and Leo Y. Yang, a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, built a complex model to carry out their comparative analysis.
The model showed that key provincial officials with ties to more influential central leaders – specifically members of the Politburo Standing Committee – were more likely to promote news coverage of corruption probes against peers from other provinces as part of factional rivalry.