Why has China’s anti-corruption rating barely budged despite thousands of arrests?

Dan Hough says that China’s corruption problem won’t be solved just through the numerous jailings of high-profile officials, but will require a systemic solution that will make progress slow

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A man walks past a poster of Chinese President Xi Jinping with the slogan “Chinese Dream, People’s Dream” in Beijing on October 16, 2017. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:49am, 23 Feb 2018Updated: 7:21pm, 23 Feb 2018

Six years down the line and little appears to have changed. Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive has snared more than 100,000 officials, but the country’s position in the Corruption Perceptions Index, the annual survey of the world’s most and least corrupt countries carried out by Transparency International, has barely budged.

This year’s data was released on February 21. The table is a poll of polls, using data from a range of surveys to come up with a score for every country involved from 1-100. The nearer 100, the less corrupt the public sector in that country is perceived to be. New Zealand (89 points) topped the table this time, whereas Somalia (nine points) finished last.

While Hong Kong came in 13th (with a score of 77), China remained very much mid-table; 77th place and 41 points. That’s better than its 2016 (40 points), 2015 (37 points) and 2014 (36 points) showings, but doesn’t feel like a radical change. The claim that Xi continues to wage war on corruption sounds dramatic and the high-profile arrests have certainly garnered plenty of media coverage, but should the index make us pause and ask whether any real substance underpins all of this?

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The answer to that is complicated. Firstly, intriguing though it is to compare the scope of the corruption challenge around the world, one needs to be careful before reading too much into the data. The Corruption Perceptions Index – as its name suggests – measures perception of how much corruption there is. It makes no claim to measure reality. And, of course, perception and reality are not always aligned.

Furthermore, the index is beset with other methodological challenges. Mainland China’s score of 41 places it squarely alongside the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago; but can we really be sure that the type, nature and amount of corruption that these two countries have is the same? Clearly it can’t be, yet they both end up with the same score.

Furthermore, if ever a country were to score 100 (no country ever has), that would infer that it was corruption-free, yet there is no consensus at all on what a corruption-free state would actually look like. This data needs using carefully.

These methodological challenges appear to offer hope to Beijing that things might well be different in reality.

Zhang Yang, former head of the Chinese Central Military Commission’s political department, hanged himself in his Beijing home in November last year after becoming ensnared in President Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign. Photo: Reuters