This is the first original book-length study of corruption in the People's Republic of China. The work relates the corruption issue to ongoing political processes and policies of the Chinese Communist Party by examining the broader context of social transformation, consolidation, and modernization in post-1949 China. The study has a twofold goal: (1) to present fresh source material on corruption in China, much of it previously unavailable in the West; and (2) to provide an analysis of China's corruption using a novel approach--the policy outcomes perspective. More specifically, it examines three levels of policies adopted by the Chinese Communist Party (general policies, organizational policies, and anti-corruption policies) to see how certain policy patterns have affected the identification of corruption, corruption forms, and anti-corruption measures.

Is corruption an inevitable part of the transition to a free-market economy? Yan Sun here examines the ways in which market reforms in the People's Republic of China have shaped corruption since 1978 and how corruption has in turn shaped those reforms. She suggests that recent corruption is largely a byproduct of post-Mao reforms, spurred by the economic incentives and structural opportunities in the emerging marketplace. Sun finds that the steady retreat of the state has both increased mechanisms for cadre misconduct and reduced disincentives against it. Chinese disciplinary offices, law enforcement agencies, and legal professionals compile and publish annual casebooks of economic crimes. The cases, processed in the Chinese penal system, represent offenders from party-state agencies at central and local levels as well as state firms of varying sizes and types of ownership. Sun uses these casebooks to illuminate the extent and forms of corruption in the People's Republic of China. Unintended and informal mechanisms arising from corruption may, she finds, take on a life of their own and undermine the central state's ability to implement its developmental policies, discipline its staff, enforce its regulatory infrastructure, and fundamentally transform the economy.

This text examines all facets of corruption: meaning, incidence, monetary value, the kinds of goods exchanged, the perpetrators and their strategies, in China since 1949. It explores the irony of how ideology and organizational structures under socialism can both restrain and encourage corruption.

Why has China grown so fast for so long despite vast corruption? In China's Gilded Age, Yuen Yuen Ang maintains that all corruption is harmful, but not all types of corruption hurt growth. Ang unbundles corruption into four varieties: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, and access money. While the first three types impede growth, access money - elite exchanges of power and profit - cuts both ways: it stimulates investment and growth but produces serious risks for the economy and political system. Since market opening, corruption in China has evolved toward access money. Using a range of data sources, the author explains the evolution of Chinese corruption, how it differs from the West and other developing countries, and how Xi's anti-corruption campaign could affect growth and governance. In this formidable yet accessible book, Ang challenges one-dimensional measures of corruption. By unbundling the problem and adopting a comparative-historical lens, she reveals that the rise of capitalism was not accompanied by the eradication of corruption, but rather by its evolution from thuggery and theft to access money. In doing so, she changes the way we think about corruption and capitalism, not only in China but around the world.

This collection examines corruption and abuses of power in China from the end of the imperial period to the present. The interdisciplinary group of contributors examines how the Chinese Communist Party has adapted to economic and social changes while continuing to control the law, state, and mass media.