Punishing Corrupt Officials in China
Punishing Corrupt Officials in China
Punishing Corrupt Officials in China
Abstract
China presents a mixed picture in terms of its anti-corruption efforts. On the
one hand, rampant corruption remains a huge challenge for the party-state
because it not only results in the loss of state assets but also damages the
legitimacy of the regime. On the other hand, China’s record of curbing cor-
ruption is not particularly worse than other comparable countries. This
paper explains the reasons behind this mixed picture by focusing on the
anti-corruption strategy employed by the central Party authorities.
Effective anti-corruption measures are determined by the high probability
of detecting corrupt agents and the meting out of effective and warranted
punishment. In China, the central government is unable or unwilling to
investigate a large number of officials, especially high-ranking officials.
However, at the same time, it must impose severe punishment on convicted
high-ranking officials. Although this mode of selective discipline compro-
mises the credibility of the state in terms of anti-corruption efficacy, it
also creates uncertainty for corrupt agents because corrupt officials are
not guaranteed exemption.
Keywords: China; disciplining; corruption; officials; punishment
Both the party-state and general public widely acknowledge that there is rampant
corruption in China. Corruption has permeated all public sectors of the country,
breeding strong resentment among the general populace and undermining
the legitimacy of the Party.1 However, China does not seem to have fared
particularly worse than comparable countries in terms of the degree of corrup-
tion. For instance, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index released by
Transparency International, China has consistently scored higher than other
comparable countries in recent years: in 2012, China scored 39, higher than
India (36), Indonesia (32), Vietnam (31), and Russia (28).2 Over the years, the
Chinese party-state has punished a large number of corrupt officials, including
* Research for this article was supported with funding provided by the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities, the National Social Science Fund of China (funding grant 13&ZD011), and the “985
Project” at Sun Yat-sen University. The author gratefully acknowledges the guidance and helpful suggestions
of Yongshun Cai and the anonymous reviewers. The author is responsible for any remaining errors.
†
Lin Zhu is assistant professor at the School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou.
Email: [email protected].
1 Gong 1997; Lü 2000; Manion 2004; Sun 2004; Wedeman 2012.
2 Data is from the Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International, available at: http://www.
transparency.org/cpi2012/results.
© The China Quarterly, 2015 doi:10.1017/S0305741015000764 First published online 6 July 2015
high-ranking leaders. From 2000 to 2005, for instance, more than 200,000 corrupt
public employees were disciplined, and some were executed.3 The various mea-
sures taken by corrupt agents to avoid punishment indicate that the punishment
meted out by the state to corrupt officials retains a certain degree of credibility.
The mixed picture of anti-corruption measures in China is related to the
approach employed by the Party authority. Effective anti-corruption is highly
conditional. As Susan Rose-Ackerman writes, the “deterrence of criminal behav-
ior depends on the probability of detection and punishment and on the penalties
imposed – both those imposed by the legal system and more subtle costs such as
loss of reputation or shame.”4 In other words, the timely investigation of corrupt
agents and the meting out of appropriate punishment are crucial for effectively
curbing corruption and enhancing the government’s anti-corruption reputation.
In authoritarian regimes, the anti-corruption efforts of the government can be
compromised because of its political calculations, which compound efforts to
detect and discipline corrupt agents. Authoritarian governments rely on their
agents for political support and policy implementation, and punishing corrupt
officials is costly owing to a variety of considerations, including faction politics,
patron–client relations, and the reliance of the state on agents for governance.
However, exempting corrupt officials only encourages more corruption.
Therefore, the state authority needs to strike a balance between tolerating and
punishing corrupt agents.
This paper explores how the Chinese party-state seeks to balance the cost of
punishment with the need to curb corruption. It focuses on how the Party has
attempted to enhance its credibility in terms of routing out corruption by exam-
ining the punitive measures it takes against those officials convicted of crimes.
Punishing convicted officials has important implications for anti-corruption
efforts because it demonstrates to others the consequences of being caught.
This study reports that when the Chinese party-state is unable or unwilling to
uncover more high-ranking corrupt officials, it tends to punish those who have
been caught and convicted more harshly. The party-state hopes to demonstrate
its political will to clamp down on corruption by showcasing severe punishment
for high-ranking officials.
3 The figures are calculated based on Supreme Procuratorate reports for various years. All these reports
are to be found in the Procuratorial Yearbook of China, various years.
4 Ackerman 1999, 52.
5 Cai and Zhu 2013.
officials weakens the trust of citizens in their regime6 and provides the pretexts for
opposition forces to incite anti-government sentiments.7 In 1989, for instance, the
students in China used the issue of corruption to appeal to and mobilize their fel-
low citizens, legitimize a demonstration, and support the call for political reform
and democracy.8 On the other hand, punishing corrupt officials can be costly. In
an organizational setting, the use of discipline may demoralize disciplined agents
and cause agents to cease their support for the agency. Disciplined agents may
exhibit anxiety and aggressive acts or feelings towards the punishing agent.9
Depressed agents may reduce their productivity and contribution to the
organization.
The government incurs similar costs when it punishes corrupt officials. When
sanctions upset the agents, it is better to emphasize the role of education when
tackling corruption.10 Groenendijk argues that when the authority confronts cor-
rupt agents, it has to minimize not only the harm but also the cost of addressing
corruption.11 The authority needs to determine the extent to which corruption
will be reduced, the costliness of the policy, and the worth of the reduction,
compared to the direct and indirect costs of anti-corruption policies. An
anti-corruption campaign should not be pushed so far that its costs outweigh
the benefits, because it is not the sole outcome sought by the authority.
In authoritarian regimes, the government does not rely on electoral support to
stay in power and to rule. Instead, it relies on its agents for governance and pol-
itical support. Considering that corruption is a crime, an official can no longer
maintain a position of authority if he or she is convicted. In other words, the
investment of the state in the official will be wasted. In China, the state authority
acknowledges that the adoption of anti-corruption measures is to maintain
the well-being of the Party’s organs, and meting out punishment is not the ultim-
ate purpose. The state authority must rely mainly on education to deal with
the majority of cadres who have common problems: “It is not easy for a person
to become a cadre or for the Party to train a cadre. The Party cannot turn a per-
son into an official overnight. Instead, it takes much time, money, and energy to
do so.”12
Naturally, the costs are higher when the government punishes high-ranking
officials; however, tolerating corrupt high-ranking officials is more damaging
to the anti-corruption efforts of the Party. As a result, the Party’s approach to
dealing with corrupt high-ranking officials can better reveal its strategy for curb-
ing corruption.13
6 Mishler and Rose 2001; Anderson and Tverdova 2003; Seligson 2006.
7 Sun 2001.
8 Østergaard and Persen 1991; Calhoun 1994; Hsu 2001.
9 Arvey and Ivancevich 1980.
10 Østergaard 1986.
11 Groenendijk 1997.
12 Li 2000, 5–7.
13 I appreciate the reminder from one reviewer that the CCP may not intentionally discipline corrupt
footnote continued
officials and that the pattern of disciplining corrupt officials may merely be a policy outcome. As I am
unable to access the leader of the CCP or DIC for interviews on this, I examined DIC reports from
1997 to 2012. Out of the 21 reports reviewed, 18 emphasized dealing with key cases or high-level
officials; 10 emphasized the deterrent effect of key cases or of showing the centre’s determination
to combat corruption; and 6 discussed severely punishing high-level malfeasant officials. To a certain
extent, these official documents indicate the CCP’s intention to discipline corrupt officials, especially
those of high rank.
14 To calculate these figures, I collected the CVs of provincial leaders (both governors and Party secretar-
ies) from 1978 to 2010, and prefectural leaders (both governors and Party secretaries) from 1990 to 2011.
These figures are calculated based on the time taken by these leaders to reach the position of provincial
or prefectural leader from when they assumed their first position.
15 Hollander 1958.
16 Cai and Zhu 2013.
17 Guo 2008; Wedeman 2008.
Source:
Procuratorial Daily 1993–2010.
the latency period and the investigation period, which is the time span from
when the investigation begins to when a suspect is initially tried in court.
Figure 1 shows that both the latency and investigation periods increase
along with the rank of the official.
Other types of statistics likewise suggest that high-ranking officials are less likely
to be investigated and punished by the Party disciplining institution or to receive
legal punishment. For example, nationwide in 1996, only 2.5 per cent of the cases
concerning high-ranking officials (i.e. at the administrative level of county magis-
trate or higher) who were accused of corruption and reported ( jubao 举报) to the
DIC were investigated by the DIC, compared with 10.7 per cent of cases concern-
ing lower-ranking officials. Therefore, although reports of corruption involving
high-ranking officials accounted for 16.6 per cent of the total cases reported,
cases involving high-ranking officials only accounted for 4.4 per cent of the
total cases investigated.18 In Liaoning province from 1994 to 2000, the DIC dis-
ciplined approximately 7 per cent of the Party members (including officials and
non-officials) whose wrongdoings were reported. However, a variation was pre-
sented across officials of different ranks. Roughly 16 per cent of the Party mem-
bers who did not hold administrative positions were punished. Meanwhile, of
those who were disciplined and received punishment, 9 per cent were ordinary
cadres, approximately 5 per cent were officials at the level of township head, 3
per cent were officials at the administrative level of county head, and less than
1 per cent were officials at the administrative rank of city mayor or higher.19
Moreover, high-ranking officials may be less likely to face legal punishment
after their cases are filed (li’an 立案) by the Procuratorate. According to the
Procuratorate’s annual report, of the cases filed by procuratorates against offi-
cials between 1993 and 2006, approximately 55 per cent of ordinary officials
were criminally penalized, as opposed to 23.5 per cent of senior officials at the
administrative rank of county magistrate or higher.20
When asked about the cause of the rampant corruption in China during an
interview, an official of a city discipline inspection committee responded that
“high-ranking officials are corrupt.” The challenge faced by the party-state is
that its credibility when dealing with corruption is determined by the resolve it
demonstrates in detecting and punishing corrupt officials, especially high-ranking
officials. Therefore, an important issue the Chinese party-state has to address in
terms of tackling corruption is how to deal with corrupt high-ranking officials.
This paper shows that when the party-state is unable or unwilling to uncover
more corrupt high-ranking officials, it must severely punish those high-ranking
officials who are convicted if it still hopes to contain corruption. In China, cor-
rupt high-ranking officials are directly investigated by the central or provincial
authority. The central government demonstrates its determination to curb cor-
ruption to lower-level government officials and the public by severely punishing
convicted officials. Tolerating high-ranking officials results in the “leakage of
authority” at the lower levels of the hierarchy. In Inside Bureaucracy, Anthony
Downs explains how the leakage of authority occurs as orders pass through
the levels of a political hierarchy: official A issues an order to B, but B’s own
goals indicate that his commands to his subordinate C should encompass only
90 per cent of what he believes official A actually has in mind. If C thinks in
the same manner, by the time A’s order reaches officials at level D, these officials
will receive commands that encompass only 81 per cent (90 per cent of 90 per
cent) of what A really intends.21 Such leakages cumulate when several levels
are involved, which can drastically impact the effectiveness of orders issued by
top-level officials.22 In agent management, the leakage of authority results in
the unprincipled tolerance of erring agents at lower levels.
To maximize the effect of punishing high-ranking officials, the government
likewise chooses to publicize such cases and make them high profile. Research
on crime deterrence suggests that highly publicized executions can significantly
reduce homicide cases.23 As Pogarsky suggests, “The formation of the threat per-
ception is central to deterrence and to the society’s ability in deterrence-oriented
Data
Researchers of corruption inevitably encounter the issue of whether the data used
are accurate or representative. Survey data on corruption generally measure the
perceptions of people instead of actual occurrences of corruption. Data released
by the government on corruption cases contain biases that arise from the cen-
sored disclosure of sensitive information; however, the public can only access
information on corrupt agents through government-sanctioned sources. This
study attempts to reduce the biases inherent in the government data used in
this research by collecting the data in a more systematic manner.
The Central Discipline Inspection Commission (Zhongyang jilü jiancha
weiyuanhui 中央纪律检查委员会) (CDIC) and the Supreme Procuratorate
both publish newspapers: News of China’s Discipline Inspection and Supervision
(Zhongguo jijian jiancha bao 中国纪检监察报) and Procuratorial Daily. However,
the CDIC’s newspaper, News of China’s Discipline Inspection and Supervision,
does not publicize corruption cases regularly and is not a good source for system-
atic data on corruption. In contrast, the Procuratorial Daily regularly reports on
corruption cases and serves as an accessible source of systematic data on corruption.
This study is based on the cases reported in this newspaper from 1993 to 2010.
According to Chinese criminal law, an act is defined as corrupt if it involves (1)
accepting or giving bribes; (2) embezzlement; (3) misappropriation; (4) failure to
explain the sources of a large amount of income; (5) concealment of deposits
abroad; (6) dividing state-owned assets; and (7) dividing confiscated property.
For the purposes of the research for this paper, the criterion for including a
case is whether a suspect is convicted of any of these crimes. Moreover, consider-
ing that this study focuses on the punishment of corrupt officials, the data includes
only civil servants and excludes staff members working in non-administrative
public institutions and state-owned enterprises. Finally, since this study is con-
cerned with legal punishment results, it only includes cases that receive criminal
sanctions; cases which were still “under investigation” at the end of 2010 have
been dropped.
24 Pogarsky 2009.
25 Carlsmith and Darley 2002; Carlsmith 2006.
Based on the above criteria, 2,946 cases were recorded, more than 80 per cent
of which occurred after 2000. The data apparently suggest that there were more
corruption cases in some central provinces, such as Anhui, Henan and Hubei,
and a few others in the east, such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, than in north-western
provinces such as Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Qinghai. The data are only suggest-
ive of the potential difference in frequency across provinces.
This dataset covers the corruption cases that resulted in criminal penalties.
Thus, this paper only studies a portion of corruption cases, and does not inves-
tigate those cases resulting in Party or organizational discipline. Also, all the
cases in the dataset come from the Procuratorial Daily. Corruption cases not
reported on by this newspaper do not form part of this study. Needless to say,
the limited availability of data means that the findings in this study are explora-
tive rather than conclusive.
Empirical Analysis
As elsewhere, the punishment for a corrupt official in China is generally deter-
mined by the severity of his or her corruption, which is often measured by the
amount of money involved. In China, legal punishment for a convicted official
ranges from a fixed term of imprisonment to the death penalty. My purpose is
to examine the factors that affect the severity of the punishment imposed on con-
victed officials. Therefore, the dependent variable in the analysis is the type of
punishment. The modes or types of punishment are divided into the following
categories from less to more severe: (1) a fixed term of imprisonment; (2) life
imprisonment; (3) the death penalty with reprieve; and (4) the death penalty.
For analytical purposes, the latter three are treated as severe punishments. In
our data, 2,429 cases have information on the legal punishment meted out to con-
victed officials. Table 1 shows that most convicted officials (83 per cent) were
given a fixed term of imprisonment.
Independent variable
This study aims to examine the attitude of the government towards high-ranking
corrupt officials. Thus, it focuses on the relationship between the severity of the
Control variables
In the empirical analysis, four sets of control variables are included. First, the
type and the magnitude of corruption are controlled for because the degree of
punishment for a corrupt agent is tied to the amount of money involved. In add-
ition, according to Chinese criminal law, bribery and embezzlement are more ser-
ious crimes than others, such as misappropriation, giving bribes and failing to
explain the sources of a large amount of income. Thus, the empirical analysis
includes both the type of corruption and its magnitude in terms of the amount
of money involved in each type of corruption.
Some officials may have also committed other crimes that can be divided into
three types. Type 1 crimes include dereliction of duty, abuse of power, and vio-
lating laws for personal gain. Type 2 crimes include introducing bribery and div-
iding public property. Type 3 crimes include sheltering criminals and illegally
keeping guns.
A second set of control variables includes the attitudes or attributes of corrupt
officials. They include (1) whether the corrupt official offers concessions, and (2)
whether the official is the major local leader (i.e. the Party secretary or the head
Source:
Author’s data collected from the Procuratorate Daily 1993–2010.
given one of the three types of severe punishment. Officials with the highest rank
(i.e. vice-governor or higher) were more likely to be given severe punishments.
The relationship between the severity of punishment and the rank of a corrupt
official presented in Figure 2 is constructed without controlling for other
variables, and the proposed relationship may be superficial or inaccurate.
According to criminal law, corrupt activities are punished mainly according to
the type and magnitude of corruption. High-ranking officials are more likely
to be involved in serious corruption. Therefore, a statistical analysis is conducted
by controlling for the variables discussed above, especially the type and magni-
tude of corrupt activities. Considering that the dependent variable is an ordinal
categorical variable, an ordered logit model is employed to estimate the effect
of administrative rank on the severity of penalty imposed on officials.
The statistical results are reported in Table 4. In Model 1, the rank of the cor-
rupt official is treated as a continuous variable while controlling for the magni-
tude of corruption. Although a positive relationship exists between rank and
the severity of penalty, the relationship is not statistically significant. When the
rank of the corrupt official is treated as a categorical variable (the model is not
shown), the effect of rank on degree of punishment is not linear. Therefore, a
quadratic term of rank is included to estimate the non-linear relationship between
the rank of the corrupt official and the severity of penalty in Model 2. The stat-
istical outcomes indicate that both rank and its quadratic item significantly affect
the severity of the penalty but in a non-linear manner. Specifically, the first order
of rank is negatively associated with the severity of the penalty. Thus, the prob-
ability of receiving a more severe punishment decreases first as the rank of the
corrupt official increases. The probability of receiving a more severe penalty is
lowest when the administrative rank is county magistrate (i.e. chu ji 处级,
coded as 5). Among the officials whose administrative rank is at the level of
county magistrate or higher, the probability of receiving a harsher punishment
increases as the rank of the corrupt official becomes higher. The increase in prob-
ability accelerates as the rank becomes higher.
In Models 3 and 4, more control variables are included, and the effect of rank
on the severity of penalty does not change significantly. The control variables,
except for the seriousness of the crime, have no significant effect on the severity
of the penalty. The magnitude of corruption increases the probability ratio of
being more severely punished. For instance, as shown in Model 4, the expected
probability of receiving a harsher punishment increases by 1.83 (e1.043−1 = 1.83)
when the amount of money accepted as a bribe increases by 1 per cent. Corrupt
officials who commit other crimes are much more likely (five times more) to be
severely punished than those who do not. The effect of the time trend is signifi-
cantly negative, suggesting that the probability of receiving a severe penalty
decreases by 0.234 (1−e−0.266 = 0.234) each year.
To understand the non-linear relationship between the rank of the corrupt offi-
cial and the severity of the imposed penalty better, Figure 3 presents the predicted
probability of the punishment for officials of different ranks. In this analysis, sev-
eral specifications apply to the values of control variables. An official is convicted
of corruption in 2004. They are assumed to have received a bribe amounting to 1
million yuan but to have committed no other crimes, and they are likewise
assumed not to be local leaders or to have confessed. In addition, the provincial
secretary is neither in the first year of office nor locally promoted.
The probability of receiving a “fixed term of imprisonment,” which is the light-
est penalty, is roughly 0.42 for staff or clerks. It increases to approximately 0.75
when the rank of the official is upgraded to deputy county magistrate, and then
decreases to 0.46 when the rank reaches vice-governor or higher. In terms of the
severity of the punishment, compared to officials at the rank of deputy county
head, officials at the lowest and highest ranks are both more likely to receive a
severe punishment. For instance, the probability of staff or clerks receiving the
Notes:
In this analysis, officials are assumed to have received a bribe amounting to 1 million yuan. Additionally, (1) the criminal has com-
mitted no more crimes; (2) the criminal has not confessed; (3) the criminal is not a local leader; (4) the provincial secretary is not in the
first year of office and has not been locally promoted; (5) the criminal is from the Hu regime; and (6) the year is 2004.
death penalty is 0.049 higher than it is for officials at the level of county magis-
trate, and the probability of officials at vice-governor rank or above receiving the
death penalty is also 0.039 higher than it is for officials at the level of county
magistrate.
This pattern shows that the state authority tends to issue stronger punishments
to corrupt officials who are of a higher ranking (i.e. on the right side of the
U-shape curve) to strengthen the deterrent effect. In addition, lowest-ranking
officials are likely to be severely punished (i.e. on the left end of the U-shape
curve), perhaps because to do so is less costly. Officials at the rank of county
magistrate are less likely to be given a severe penalty compared with these two
groups. What can be the rationale behind this U-shape distribution? The follow-
ing section analyses this pattern by examining the political considerations on the
part of the party-state.
26 “Zhongguo gongchangdang jilü jiancha jiguan anjian jiancha gongzuo tiaoli,” available at: http://cpc.
people.com.cn/GB/33838/2539632.html. Accessed 1 June 2015.
27 Cai 2008.
29 Xinhuanet.com. 2012. “Bai yu ming shengbu ji gaoguan de tanfu zhilu” (The corruption of more than
100 ministry-level officials), 3 March, http://news.xinhuanet.com/legal/2012-03/29/c_122906150.htm.
Accessed 5 May 2012.
Robustness of results
The previous results find a U-shape relationship between the rank of corrupt offi-
cials and the severity of criminal penalty they receive. Because these findings are
explorative, I conduct additional robustness tests to increase confidence in the
results.33
The first robustness check is to re-categorize the dependent variable, the type of
criminal penalty. Previously, I categorized criminal penalties into four types:
fixed term of imprisonment, life imprisonment, the death penalty with reprieve,
and the death penalty. Now I will re-categorize “fixed term of imprisonment”
into types: less than ten years’ imprisonment, and ten years’ or more imprison-
ment. According to Chinese criminal law, serious corrupt activities receive a
30 Lu, Rong. 2003. “Weile zhengyi, ta yu Cheng Weigao jiaoliang ba nian” (He battled with Cheng
Weigao for eight years for justice), Nanfang zhoumo, 14 August.
31 Trevino 1992.
32 See, e.g., Kahn, Joseph. 2006. “Shanghai Party boss held for corruption in crackdown by president
against opponents,” The New York Times, 25 September.
33 The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for advice on robustness checks.
prison sentence of ten years or more.34 The average fixed-term prison sentence in
the data is 9.14 years. Therefore, the new dependent variable has five types. I con-
duct an ordinary logistic model to examine whether the effect of rank on punish-
ment depends on how many categories the dependent variable has. As Model 1 in
Table 7 indicates, the U-shape relationship between official rank and severity of
punishment remains when categorizing the dependent variable into five types.
The pattern of punishing corrupt officials is also vulnerable to the systematic
selection bias of the dataset. In particular, it is possible that cases where low-
ranking officials receive the death penalty are not systematically covered by the
newspaper, since the Chinese government most likely prefers to lower the profile
of death penalty cases. If this is the case, the argument that the high-ranking offi-
cials receive harsher sentencing could be spurious. I conducted a model excluding
death penalty cases to examine the possible impact from the selection bias of the
dataset. As indicated in Model 2 in Table 7, I confirm that the effect of rank on
penalty does not change when death penalty cases are excluded, except for a
slight increase of coefficients.
I perform two additional tests of the findings to examine other possible expla-
nations for the harsh punitive measures for high-ranking officials. In the first, I
test the other possible explanation that high-ranking officials are severely pun-
ished as a consequence of political power struggles. To examine the effect of a
power struggle, I investigate the disciplining of corruption in the year before or
after the change of the central regime. In the dataset, the central regime changed
only in 2003. Therefore, cases judged in 2002 or 2003, especially those involving
high-ranking officials, are expected to be severely punished. Model 3 in Table 7
reports the results. There is no statistically significant difference in punishment
levels for cases in normal years and those in the years before or after the central
leadership changes. Furthermore, the effect of rank on severity of punishment is
also not significantly enhanced in 2002 or 2003. These findings indicate that a
power struggle could matter, but it does not systematically affect the severity
of punishment.
Finally, I consider the effect of social pressure on the punishment meted out to
officials. Given the same type and amount of corruption, high-ranking officials
are more likely to have a higher profile and generate worse social impacts than
low-ranking officials. In China, the widespread use of the internet, especially
Weibo (a twitter-like microblog which was launched in 2007), provides a
forum for the public to follow and discuss these cases. Thus, high-ranking offi-
cials may receive harsher sentences because the public condemns them more
severely. To examine the effect of social pressure from the internet on the senten-
cing of corrupt officials, I use the year 2007, when Weibo was launched, to proxy
the increased social pressure to punish corrupt officials harshly. Moreover, I use
an interaction term of social pressure and rank, and the quadratic of rank.
Conclusion
The ability and willingness of the government to expose corrupt agents in a time-
ly manner and impose appropriate punishments are fundamental to successfully
curbing corruption. In other words, the government can increase the cost of com-
mitting crimes by reducing the uncertainty of being caught and increasing the
severity of the punishment.36 Authoritarian governments face little electoral pres-
sure and so are less accountable to the public in terms of their anti-corruption
efforts; however, punishing their own corrupt agents can be costly. When the gov-
ernment is unable or unwilling to increase the probability of detecting and inves-
tigating corrupt agents, then it has to punish those who have been caught and
convicted severely to achieve a certain degree of credibility in terms of its
anti-corruption efforts.
This paper elaborates the logic of selectively punishing corrupt agents as seen
in corruption cases in China. Widespread corruption persists despite the claims of
the central authority that combating corruption is a primary policy goal. An
important factor behind the rampant corruption is the unlikelihood that corrupt
agents will be exposed and investigated. As this paper has shown, the state
authority has not investigated many government officials, especially those of a
high rank, although reports of their malfeasance abound. The fact that corrupt
agents face little prospect of being exposed can be attributed to the inaccuracy
of information or to the lack of determination or political will of the party-state.
Whatever the reasons, the low probability of being detected and convicted of cor-
ruption undermines the credibility of the Party’s anti-corruption efforts.
Nevertheless, the Party likewise realizes the consequences of tolerating corrupt
agents and is therefore under pressure to protect its reputation for tackling cor-
ruption. In the 1990s, Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 warned that, “if the Party does
not take corruption seriously, [and] stop it resolutely, both the Party and country
will … change face.”37 Consequently, the central authority has to showcase its
commitment to clamping down on corruption. As this paper demonstrates, top
officials are more likely to receive harsher punishment, including life imprison-
ment, the death penalty with reprieve, and the death penalty, if they are con-
victed. Although this approach of meting out severe punitive sentences to
high-ranking officials may, to some extent, protect the reputation of the central
35 Chen n.d.
36 Becker 1968; Pogarsky 2009.
37 Deng 1994, 402–03.
authority, the deterrent effect remains limited because of the lower probability of
being detected and investigated. For this reason, the new administration under Xi
Jinping 习近平 has increased its efforts to investigate and punish both high-
ranking and low-ranking officials.
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