How bad is corruption in China ?

Corruption Perceptions Index - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

75 out of 182, the lower the ranking the better.

The following democratic nations have worse corruption problem.

Iraq, Haiti, Venezuela, Kyrgyzstan, Kenya, Russia ,Pakistan, Philippines, Iran, Argentina, India, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Thailand, Peru, Greece, El Salvador, Colombia, Romania, Indonesia, Cambodia

But they get far less perception of corruption in the media for some unknown reason.

Out of the10 ASEAN nations 7 have worse problem of corruption than China. The rest 3 are Brunei, Malaysia and of course Singapore.

Corruption in China is of course bad, as all corruption is bad, but it does not prevent Chinese society from functioning and grow it is economy. And yes, the topic of corruption itself is widely covered in China by the government and the media itself, this is good because if people are talking about it, things are being done about it. This is far better than nations that have huge corruption problem and refuse to talk about it.

How bad is corruption in China?
Well give me a £100 and I'll tell you.

Keep the thread of politics and it may stand a chance, veer one inch and the nearest mod with close it down.

Corruption is a by product of the Chinese political regime that has indeed caused a lot of social outcry.

However, for the Western media to mostly criticize China for lack of democracy while ignoring a much corrupted India is nothing short of hypocritical.

In my opinion, democracy is indeed an effective deterrent to most of the smaller social corruption issues that may arise but it also serves as the perfect smokescreen for the top 1% to discretely rob the middle class of their wealth AKA Wall Street.

How did ex-Citi CEO Pundit receive over 60M in all forms of compensation in 6 years while the firm's shareholders became stuckholders?

Originally Posted by cn_habs

Corruption is a by product of the Chinese political regime that has indeed caused a lot of social outcry.

However, for the Western media to mostly criticize China for lack of democracy while ignoring a much corrupted India is nothing short of hypocritical.

In my opinion, democracy is indeed an effective deterrent to most of the smaller social corruption issues that may arise but it also serves as the perfect smokescreen for the top 1% to discretely rob the middle class of their wealth AKA Wall Street.

How did ex-Citi CEO Pundit receive over 60M in all forms of compensation in 6 years while the firm's shareholders became stuckholders?

That's the other thing, if you legalize corruption such as in the form of lobbying and election contribution, then it is all ok. It no longer counts as corruption.

With that being said, I believe US society in general in the lower level have low corruption, the polices, the city hall in general are not corrupted. But the same thing cannot be said for US's upper government, revolving door politics, lobbying, corporate interest etc... all have really bad effect on the long term viability of the government.

But this is where it have major differences in China where the local level sometimes are far more corrupt than the upper government. You often hear of poor farmer get evicted and does not get compensation, those stories are all true unfortunately and a lot people are suffering from it. But overall they are still the exception rather than the norm, vast majority receives government and private compensation for that.

But since the rule of law in China is weak, it is easy to get away with the abuse unfortunately. However I am optimistic, the topic of corruption is one of the most active discussion in Chinese media and the government allows it and even talks about it themselves very often. This will serves as a check and balance to the abuse from the officials, there is also the growing power of internet where many excessive abuse of government officials was exposed and received justice. Also in this process I believe they will work on strengthen the rule of law to protect the social order and justice.

The same problem localized corruption exists in vast majority of democratic nations on a far worse level than China, but for some reason we can only guess about, they don't really talk about that.

What I am more curious is how much the culture is effecting corruption in China. Because personal relationship plays much larger rule in the functioning of society, which unlike the Western society everything is much more dominated by the legal process and lawyers. I don't think one is inherently better than the other system, so I don't think it is feasible for one system to change to be completely into the other system. But in the long term how will China's relationship focused society adopt it is method in dealing with corruption is something interesting to see.

Originally Posted by jackliu

What I am more curious is how much the culture is effecting corruption in China. Because personal relationship plays much larger rule in the functioning of society, which unlike the Western society everything is much more dominated by the legal process and lawyers. I don't think one is inherently better than the other system, so I don't think it is feasible for one system to change to be completely into the other system. But in the long term how will China's relationship focused society adopt it is method in dealing with corruption is something interesting to see.

Actually let's put it this way. We measure pain by its intensity, but biologically the neurotransmitters do not reflect a stronger pain by greater amplitude; instead it's by more frequent pulsing of the neurotransmitter of the pain receptors. (With that said, if you eat something you feel very spicy, this means your NT is pulsing a lot quicker.)

Why did I bring this up? It's the same thing for corruption. How serious corruption is isn't simply measured by intensity; but by prevalence and frequency. A reason why China's corruption is so serious is because it's prevalent throughout the entire society; from top to bottom. We might be more inclined to believe Wen was a nice guy, but of course even if he really was and had no hands in corruption, his family and relatives do their shares of name-wrecking for him. Low-level corruptions occur with officials and businesses, and even between businesses and services you may often have to choke up extra fees. I personally experienced this in Chengdu, where the security guard requested me to pay "tips" for services rendered just for finding my phone which I accidentally dropped. It didn't quite catch me immediately that's how they made side earnings, as at the time all I felt was that he's literally "taking my phone hostage". Businesses often needed special licenses to have a smooth procedure to opening, and there are many various. So with all that said, that's my perception of how serious corruption in China.

As for the culture, it definitely plays a part. Japan's corruption (which my Japanese professor called "pork-barrel politics") came from donations from prefectures and small communities, and then in Japan when politicians accepted gifts and donations, they must do their part because it came from a more traditional Confucian ideology of "returning the deeds when someone offered you a favor." Much of the scandals in Japan's political world often related to this, which is why we also often see PMs in the recent years leaving so quick(not a good thing.) However why Japan emerges as much cleaner than China would have to do probably more with frequency and prevalence; it's not as widespread to grassroots level as it is in China. And of course there's an element of bias too.

Overall, the collectivist cultures and confucian cultures may have some influence due to the bigger concerns with relationship-building. Despite that, it does not mean it's necessary so, as HK and Singapore are proud holders of least-corruption rankings. Ask HK's ICAC and your answer is there. It therefore demonstrates that perhaps proper ethics, training, management, education, income, will all play a huge role in turning things around.
What else which made China ranked there and not lower would also be transparency. Perhaps it really is safe to say that China still have a lot of issues with transparency, which was one of the major factors. This again isn't to say other states are fine as they are; we just shouldn't compare ourselves with the lower.

Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's Economic History - Google Books

Just think it should be mentioned that a century ago when the USA was at roughly the same level of economic development as most developing nations are today, corruption in the US was no better than what we see in China or Russia, there are numerous books on the subject and here's one example.

With that said its not necessarily democracy that ensures that corruption is stemmed but rather it is the institutional culture of anti-corruption that needs to be developed among the people and government. People with a stake in the wealth generating areas of society will use their resources to ensure that they are above the law whether they are private or public sector.

The problem with China is the opportunities and pressures for corruption. For example, if you are in a official managing multi-billion worth of assets and socializes with international bankers and CEO what earn tens of millions per year, while only have official salary of just 10 or 20 thousand dollars per year. (even the Premier's official salary is just 120k RMB per year or 20k usd, others will earn less) It's hard not to seek a fortune with your power.

Since no one answered your questions, there
Must Chinese pay to become PLAN or PLAAF?
No, but it helps with the recruiters, especially with the ridiculous standards PLA screens their recruits for. (I would imagine PLAN and PLAAF would be even more strict)

Must student pay to enter higher school?
Yes, it's called tuition. Mandated education in China ends at 9th grade. To go past 9th grade student must either pass the high school entrance exam or go to private school that preps for the college entrance exam. Otherwise, they go to apprenticeships or internships (which just got Foxconn into child labor troubles) or trade schools (which also cost money). However, even at 9th grade, they already doing 2nd order algebra, vector geometry and classic mechanics as well as classic poetry and historical rhetoric proses like 过秦论 (A piece written by Jia Yi on why the Qin Empire fell) and 前后出师表 (two piece written by ZhuGe Liang on just war and governance).

or must Chinese pay for identity card?
By executive order [2003]2322,
ID card require 20 RMB registration for new ID card, and 40 RMB replacement fee for lost, stolen or damaged ID card.
办ç�†å±…民身份è¯�的收费æ*‡å‡†æ˜¯ä»€ä¹ˆï¼ Ÿ
BTW, the ID card has an RFID chip and FLASH memory that allows you pay for public transportation in some city and allows you order ticket onlines and use the ID to act as the ticket to circumvent the long lines. (Online ticketing cost 5 RMB convenience fee) In pilot program in hangzhou, it will allow you to access free wifi internet at public locations. Overall, it's excellent bang for the buck.

I just had this idea, we all know on surface corruption is all bad, especially when police wants to shake you down, or any other nameless bureaucrats use their power to enlarge their own wallet.

But what about other aspects of corruption that we think as corruption but might be somewhat beneficial. By that I mean personal relationship and informal arrangements that facilitate all business operations in China. For example, if you want to start a business, or if you want to get a license to sell something, the normal bureaucratic procedure would take months to get approval, but if you know someone personally, you can speed up the paperwork process, and this in the end would bring greater value added to the business.

I mean this doesn't necessary to be all bad, I know of course there are plenty of bad sides of this kind of corruption as company that gets projects with no bidding process so that they keep more profit for themselves, then give kickbacks. But on the other hand, this would have faster decision making and turn around time.

Another question is, if China is so corrupt, how is it able to grow it is economy so fast in the recent decades? Because conventional logic would states that if a nation is corrupted, it would became a bad environment to do business in, so that investors would not come to invest, and business would not want to set up shops, and people would not benefit. But clearly this is not the case, overall the economic growth have helped everyone from the poorest to the rich, many people argue that the rich became especially richer, even so, the poor have also benefited tremendously from the economic growth as well.

So if corruption is one force that eat away at economic growth, what is the other force that drove China's growth in the past 2 decades when compare to other nations?

Originally Posted by cn_habs

Corruption is a by product of the Chinese political regime that has indeed caused a lot of social outcry.

However, for the Western media to mostly criticize China for lack of democracy while ignoring a much corrupted India is nothing short of hypocritical.

In my opinion, democracy is indeed an effective deterrent to most of the smaller social corruption issues that may arise but it also serves as the perfect smokescreen for the top 1% to discretely rob the middle class of their wealth AKA Wall Street.

How did ex-Citi CEO Pundit receive over 60M in all forms of compensation in 6 years while the firm's shareholders became stuckholders?

Sorry, I can't agree with this opinion.
Democracy maybe effective if the people are rich
but, when people is poor like Indonesia and India, you will know how democracy will be the root of corruption. ( strange, isn't it ? )

Thank you luhai, finally I get answers.

Originally Posted by nugroho

Sorry, I can't agree with this opinion.
Democracy maybe effective if the people are rich
but, when people is poor like Indonesia and India, you will know how democracy will be the root of corruption. ( strange, isn't it ? )

Well any kind of government system can be corrupted when the masses are sick and tire of being poor and have no confidence on their nation's leaders. We saw it everywhere in life and through out human history in every culture.

Originally Posted by jackliu

I just had this idea, we all know on surface corruption is all bad, especially when police wants to shake you down, or any other nameless bureaucrats use their power to enlarge their own wallet.

But what about other aspects of corruption that we think as corruption but might be somewhat beneficial. By that I mean personal relationship and informal arrangements that facilitate all business operations in China. For example, if you want to start a business, or if you want to get a license to sell something, the normal bureaucratic procedure would take months to get approval, but if you know someone personally, you can speed up the paperwork process, and this in the end would bring greater value added to the business.

I mean this doesn't necessary to be all bad, I know of course there are plenty of bad sides of this kind of corruption as company that gets projects with no bidding process so that they keep more profit for themselves, then give kickbacks. But on the other hand, this would have faster decision making and turn around time.

Another question is, if China is so corrupt, how is it able to grow it is economy so fast in the recent decades? Because conventional logic would states that if a nation is corrupted, it would became a bad environment to do business in, so that investors would not come to invest, and business would not want to set up shops, and people would not benefit. But clearly this is not the case, overall the economic growth have helped everyone from the poorest to the rich, many people argue that the rich became especially richer, even so, the poor have also benefited tremendously from the economic growth as well.

So if corruption is one force that eat away at economic growth, what is the other force that drove China's growth in the past 2 decades when compare to other nations?

that depends on how you define corruption, especially since Chinese corruption is aimed more towards leaking sensitive information (say metro stations location, zoning area, procurement plans, limit lines on bids etc), promoting and allowing monopoly (Just look at how state firms are managed), smooth though business deal against regulation (give me money and I'll look away from environmental, procedural, safty concerns) etc. than the simple you need to play me money for me to do this sort of corruption. In some same, it can actually grow the economy, but it damages the environment, create unsafe systems (several HSR lines are delayed because of oversight revealed during last rail minister's investigation) and creating financial problems (public money setting idle been placed on the stock market. It's fine when stocks are up, and officials pocket the earning, but when the market go bad, that public money is gone!).