Tag Archives: Xi Jinping

Twelve Years Later, Did China’s Sweeping Anticorruption Campaign Deliver?

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When Xi Jinping rose to power as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he kicked off a sweeping campaign to eliminate corruption across government. Xi vowed to discipline both “tigers” and “flies” — high-ranking party leaders and low-level bureaucrats — and warned officials of the risk that corruption posed to the government’s legitimacy. Official efforts to address corruption were hardly new in China, but Xi’s anticorruption drive was notable for its aggressive enforcement and willingness to pursue even the most powerful. Xi empowered and expanded the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the highest supervisory organ of the party, while also reorganizing the government to create a new National Supervisory Commission (NSC) that would unify the state’s anticorruption enforcement. Xi’s enforcers employed harsh rhetoric, seeking to deter corruption by strict enforcement. Twelve years later, millions of officials have been disciplined or purged, including top party figures such as former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai and former security minister Zhou Yongkang. Under China’s draconian criminal justice system, such defendants stand little chance. And private individuals have not been spared, with prominent industry and business leaders caught up in bribery and corruption investigations. On top of this sweeping crackdown, Xi has taken steps to permanently institutionalize anticorruption across the party and government.

In many respects, Xi has done much of what anticorruption practitioners advocate for: He has prioritized anticorruption at the highest level of government, increased enforcement dramatically, and reformed both government and political institutions. There are signs that his anticorruption efforts have paid off. Public perception of government has improved, with officials wary of ostentatious consumption of luxury goods and other openly corrupt behavior. Xi himself declared overwhelming victory in the fight against corruption in early 2024.

Yet despite the impressive numbers, Xi’s campaign has failed to address the underlying dynamics driving corruption in China. Indeed, the fact that anticorruption authorities continue to catch record-breaking numbers of corrupt officials at all levels of government may be a warning sign, not a marker of success. While Xi’s campaign is viewed in some quarters as a model for top-down, government-led anticorruption campaigns, China’s experience over the last dozen years also highlights the inherent limitations of that approach.

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New Podcast Episode, Featuring Andrew Wedeman

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In latest episode, host Dan Hough interviews Andrew Wedeman, Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, about the politics of anticorruption campaigns in China, including the aggressive anticorruption campaign instigated by President Xi Jinping. Professor Wedeman discusses the effects this campaign has had on Chinese society at all levels, and assesses the evidence as to whether the campaign has made meaningful progress in getting corruptino under control. The conversation also touches on some of the challenges in researching these issues in China. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations: KickBack was originally founded as a collaborative effort between GAB and the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN). It is now hosted and managed by the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends!

The Many Uses of Xi Jinping’s Anticorruption Campaign

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Since Chinese President Xi Jinping launched his anticorruption campaign in 2012, much of the foreign commentary has debated the extent to which the campaign is a genuine effort to root out corruption or a means for purging or undermining President Xi’s political opponents. This simple framing, however, obscures the other uses and objectives of the anticorruption campaign. Better understanding these motivations is important to understanding the dynamics of the campaign and the role that anticorruption plays in modern Chinese politics. Three political and policy objectives are particularly notable:

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New Podcast Episode, Featuring David Barboza

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, I interview Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times correspondent David Barboza, best known (at least in anticorruption circles) for his investigative reporting on the vast wealth accumulated by the Chinese elite, especially his 2012 expose on the wealth held secretly by members of the family of then-Premier Wen Jiabao (see here and here). Our interview begins with a discussion of how Mr. Barboza and his colleagues were able to uncover the information they needed to substantiate this blockbuster story, and the various ways that the Chinese government attempted to block its publication. We then turn to a discussion of the broader implications of this and similar investigations, as Mr. Barboza explains why the wealth held by the families of the political elite is such a sensitive topic in China, how norms relating to the business activities of these families has changed since the end of the 1980s, and the role that Western companies played in facilitating the corrupt accumulation of hidden wealth by these elite Chinese families. At the conclusion of the interview, Mr. Barboza discusses the current anticorruption drive headed by President Xi Jinping, and whether this crackdown represents a serious effort to get at the sorts of problems that Mr. Barboza’s reporting helped to reveal, or whether the current crackdown is more of a politically motivated effort to weaken rival factions without fundamentally changing the system.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

It’s in China’s Interest to Fight Corruption on the Belt and Road

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The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), first proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, is a program through which China will spearhead the funding and construction of new infrastructure and trade networks across Eurasia and Africa. The centerpiece of the BRI is hard infrastructure: roads, railroads, ports, pipelines, and power plants. The scale of the proposed investment is immense: $1 trillion for projects spanning 75 countries.

The risk of corruption in such large-scale infrastructure is also immense, but at least initially, the BRI ignored corruption. When China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the powerful government organ in charge of economic planning, issued the first comprehensive statement of the principles and framework undergirding the BRI back in March 2015, anticorruption principles were nowhere mentioned, nor did the published framework include any anticorruption measures. A later, more detailed policy document, published in 2017, also failed to include any mention of anticorruption. This posture is generally consistent with China’s traditional “non-interference” foreign policy, which makes Chinese authorities reluctant to go after overseas corruption.

More recently, though, Beijing has begun to respond to the BRI’s corruption risks. President Xi himself urged greater international cooperation on anticorruption at the June 2017 Belt and Road Forum. In September 2017, China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection helped organize a symposium called “Strengthening International Cooperation for a Clean Belt and Road.” And last December, the NDRC and other regulatory bodies issued new rules governing overseas investment by private Chinese companies, including a prohibition on “brib[ing] local public officials, or personnel from international organizations or related enterprises.” That same month, China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission issued new guidance that requires state-owned enterprises to strengthen their anticorruption compliance procedures.

These are steps in the right direction. The question is whether the government’s newfound focus on corruption in the BRI is serious. Skeptics point out that Chinese authorities have never prosecuted a Chinese company or official for foreign bribery. Others suggest that the new regulations are more about controlling Chinese outbound investment than combating overseas corruption. I’m somewhat more optimistic, though, that Chinese authorities are serious about tackling corruption in the BRI. In my view, taking BRI corruption seriously is in the Chinese government’s interest for four reasons:

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Guest Post: The One Belt, One Road Initiative Needs a Centralized Anticorruption Body

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Today’s guest post is from Edmund Bao, a lawyer with King & Wood Mallesons who works principally in the areas of international arbitration and anticorruption:

The “One Belt, One Road” Initiative (OBOR), spearheaded by China, is an enormous and ambitious infrastructure development project (or series of integrated projects) involving an inland economic “belt” and a maritime silk “road” that together will include approximately 65 countries across Eurasia and parts of Africa, require a total capital expenditure of approximately US$4-8 trillion dollars, and affect around 4.4 billion people (63% of global population). Given the size of the initiative—as well as the fact that infrastructure projects are often considered especially high corruption risks, and the fact that so many of the countries involved are known to suffer from high levels of public corruption—ensuring integrity in this project must be a top priority if it is to succeed. Some projects have already been affected by corruption, including the cancelled US$2.5 billion Budhi Gandaki Hydro Electric Dam Project in Nepal (irregularities in the project bid phase) and the temporary funding halt for the flagship China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Road Project (due to graft).

The countries participating in OBOR have acknowledged this concern. At the opening of the Belt and Road Forum in June 2017, President Xi Jingping called for countries to “strengthen international counter-corruption coordination so that the Belt and Road will be a road with high ethical standards.” And in the joint communique released at the conclusion of the Forum, the leaders of OBOR countries in attendance agreed to “work together to fight against corruption and bribery in all their forms.” Yet it is not yet clear what measures can or will be put in place to achieve the sort of coordination that President Xi and the other OBOR country leaders recognized is necessary.

I suggest that one way—perhaps the best way—to achieve the requisite level of anticorruption coordination in the context of the OBOR initiative is to establish a supranational anticorruption body with oversight for OBOR projects. That is, I advocate the creation of a “Silk Road Anticorruption Body” that would have four primary functions: Continue reading →

It’s Time for China to Show Its Foreign Bribery Law is Not a Paper Tiger

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In May 2011, China criminalized the bribery of foreign public officials. More specifically, the 8th Amendment to China’s Criminal Law, among other things, added Article 164(2), which prohibits both natural persons and units (i.e. companies and other organizations) under Chinese criminal jurisdiction from giving “property to any foreign public official or official of an international public organization for the purpose of seeking illegitimate commercial benefit.” This legislative action, intended in part to fulfill China’s obligations as a State Party to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, was considered an accomplishment given the under-criminalization of foreign bribery in Asia Pacific at the time. Many commentators devoted substantial attention to questions about the law’s meaning, including the definition of almost every term in the provision (“property,” “foreign public official,” “international public organization,” “illegitimate commercial benefit,” etc.—for a sampling, see here, here, here, here, here, or just search for “China Criminal Law 164” using any search engine).

However, almost seven years have passed, and nothing substantial has happened, except for some minor movements related to the law as observed by the media and commentators in some official and unofficial statements (see, for example, here, here, and here). Not a single enforcement action has been brought (or at least publicized) under Article 164(2). Even after President Xi Jinping launched in 2013 the most extensive anti-graft campaign China has ever seen, there have been no foreign anti-bribery enforcement actions.

There are several possible explanations for China’s non-enforcement of 164(2). One possibility, discussed previously on this blog, is that China’s traditional “non-interference” foreign policy might make China reluctant to go after transnational bribery; more generally, China might not be interested in devoting resources to fighting forms of corruption that don’t have domestic effects. Some have also suggested that China has little incentive to enforce its foreign anti-bribery law because bribery of foreign officials gives Chinese firms a competitive advantage in certain jurisdictions. It’s also possible that simple inertia is part of the story: It’s worth keeping in mind that although the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was enacted in 1977, almost 80% of the FCPA enforcement actions (amounting to 95% of the total FCPA sanctions) occurred after 2007. Similarly, the UK Bribery Act came into force in 2011, but the first foreign bribery case under that act wasn’t resolved until 2014. South Korea enacted its foreign bribery law in 1999 but didn’t prosecute its first case until 2003, while Japan took even longer, enacting a foreign bribery law in 1998 but not bringing its first case until nine years later, in 2007. In fact, Transparency International observed in 2015 that about half of the then-42 countries taking part in the OECD Convention on Combating Foreign Bribery (to which China is not a party) have not yet prosecuted a single foreign bribery case since the Convention came into force in 1999. So China’s inertia is hardly unique.

Yet regardless of the reasons why China has not enforced its foreign bribery law, and regardless of whether this inaction renders China unusual or typical, it is now high time for China to start enforcing this law aggressively. Doing so is in China’s long-term strategic interests, for three reasons: Continue reading →

China’s Anticorruption System 2.0: A Harbinger of Rule of Law?

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In his three-and-a-half-hour speech at China’s 19th Party Congress last month, President Xi Jinping demonstrated his determination to maintain his vigorous anticorruption campaign. But he also proposed a number of significant changes, including (1) the creation of a new National Supervision Commission (NSC), along with supervision commissions (SCs) at the provincial, municipal, and county levels, to spearhead China’s anticorruption efforts, (2) the adoption of new national legislation, the Supervision Law, that includes improved procedural protections for the accused, and (3) the integration of China’s obligations under international anticorruption treaties into domestic law.

For the most part, Western commentators were unimpressed (for example, see Tom’s previous post). The establishment of the NSC was characterized as “essentially another power expansion of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI),” while the reforms related to protections for the accused were seen as little more than the “replace[ment of] one abusive detention system with another.” I beg to differ. This reform plan, while incomplete and inadequate in some respects, is a big step forward from where China stands now. While it would be a mistake to be overly optimistic before any positive change actually takes place, it would also be a mistake to dismiss these new reforms out of hand as insignificant or cosmetic. Any movement toward greater judicialization and respect for the rule of law in China is likely to be incremental and face pushback. Understood in that context, the three announced reforms noted above seem quite significant, and mark a notable break with China’s previous approach to anticorruption enforcement.

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Who’s at the Wheel of China’s Anticorruption Drive?

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Since China’s anticorruption drive kicked off five years ago, it has had a tremendous impact on the country’s politics. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), until recently led by President Xi Jinping’s close ally Wang Qishan, has targeted officials both high and low—so-called tigers and flies. According to the CCDI’s own data, more than 70,000 officials at or above the level of county head have been investigated, and close to two million officials have been punished in some way. The drive has also ensnared a few senior figures who, during their days of freedom, where among the most powerful men in China, including Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai. The CCDI’s power does not stop even at China’s borders: According to official statistics, by the end of August 2017, over three thousand fugitives had been repatriated from more than 90 countries.

But the drive is now shifting gears. Last October, in his speech opening the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 19th Party Congress, President Xi laid out plans to “deepen reform of the national supervisory system” and establish a new body, the National Supervisory Commission (NSC), to spearhead anticorruption efforts. The NSC is expected to consolidate and institutionalize the hitherto campaign-style anticorruption efforts of the CCDI. (While the exact structure of the NSC is still unknown, it will be based on lessons learned from pilot projects – the so-called Provincial Supervisory Commissions (PSCs) established in the city of Beijing, as well as Shanxi and Zhejiang provinces.) The new anticorruption system outlined by President Xi for the national level is likely to have four major effects: Continue reading →

When and Why Do Corrupt Politicians Champion Corruption Reform? A Character Study

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Can corrupt leaders enact effective anticorruption reform? The brief answer seems to be yes: Leaders who are (perceived as) corrupt can initiate and support effective anticorruption reform efforts. For example, as this blog has previously discussed, President Peña-Nieto (who has repeatedly been accused of corruption and graft) supported constitutional anticorruption reforms in Mexico. Egypt’s current President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has similarly launched various anticorruption campaigns, even while fending off numerous corruption allegations.

But why do corrupt leaders institute anticorruption reforms? While there’s no universal explanation, there appear to be at least three archetypes that might help anticorruption activists identify and push unlikely reformers: The Power Player, The Top-Down Director, and The Born-Again Reformer. Continue reading →