The Political Economy of Corruption in China by Julia Kwong

Author:Julia Kwong [Kwong, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, History & Theory, Social Science, Political Science, Regional Studies, General
ISBN: 9781317455448
Google: EmLxBwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 27290543
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1997-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Increased Values in Corrupt Exchanges

Some forms of corruption, such as embezzlement, are solo jobs; more often than not two parties are involved. When public property is being exchanged for private or public goods, one or both parties can be state officials. The state official uses, or to be more accurate misuses, the power entrusted in him/her to obtain public/private goods for personal benefits. The other party may do so willingly or unwillingly but they enter into the transaction because of what the power of the state official can procure.

Transactions in corruption have often been compared to exchanges in the marketplace; the goods traded, like those in the market, can be seen in the broadest economic sense as “bundles of satisfaction.” Traders in corruption, like manufacturers in the market, are not just selling material goods but status, enjoyment, or a sense of satisfaction. Not all the currencies in these corrupt exchanges are tangible ones. Sometimes, the parties may get cash, material goods, services, and opportunities that make them happy, or they may be rewarded with honor or a sense of satisfaction.

Honor or face, in Chinese parlance, is a common denominator in many such exchanges. Honor, as I have suggested earlier, is so important in Chinese society that it can justify the repudiation of even close family members who bring shame to the family. State employees dispensed favors; threw large, sumptuous banquets; and built expensive offices and residences, often only to show off their own or their organization’s power and influence. In return, they gained respect and honor, which they might or might not use as leverage to extract future favors. If they did, their clients would find it hard to turn down the requests of people in such influential and honorable positions. Honor is after all an indicator of power.

One cannot attach a price tag to honor. Honor, like confidence, is what others accord to the person, but it can be enhanced by material props. The people one knows, one’s influence on other units, and the kinds of decisions one can make are all symbols of one’s power. More tangible indicators are the number of one’s staff, the size of one’s budget, the banquets one gives, the vehicle one uses, the office building where one works, or one’s office—the most visible of such symbols.

Even in the austere years of the early fifties, when the spending of public money was handled with caution, cadres tore down perfectly good buildings to build new and spacious ones that went beyond practical requirements, sometimes with enough floor capacity to accommodate twice the existing staff.21 In 1953, the head of the market regulation society, who probably loved basketball, spent twenty million yuan to build an office building with an attached basketball court.22 Reports of this nature largely disappeared in the sixties, only to reappear in the seventies, and the amount spent on these symbols of power escalated. Between 1974 and 1978, Liu Decai a party secretary in Dalian, allocated thirty-four million yuan for sixty-four buildings. These

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