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Can China curb endemic corruption before its economy slows and people lose faith?
Dan Hough says China’s impressive economic results have defied those who say corruption and growth don’t go together, but this, and the Chinese people’s unfailing hope for the future, won’t last forever
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The Chinese are the world’s most optimistic people. In 2016, for example, analysis conducted by YouGov found 41 per cent of Chinese citizens thought the world was becoming a better place. This result put them 18 percentage points ahead of Indonesians in second place. The French came in last; only 3 per cent of “La Grande Nation” felt optimistic about the world’s future; 81 per cent believed things were getting worse.
The main driver of Chinese optimism is the country’s consistently impressive economic development. The equation is simple; China gets richer, its people remain optimistic. As anyone with even cursory experience in mainland China knows, this economic development has nonetheless gone hand in hand with a range of challenges, none greater than dealing with endemic corruption.
The corruption we see on the mainland poses a number of challenges for both the Chinese state and for independent analysts. One of the most intriguing is the poke in the eye China’s development gives to the notion that corruption stunts growth. Following a long period of head-scratching, analysts now think they have a handle on what is going on.
China is a classic case of developmental corruption. It engenders a stability that has helped the economy to grow impressively. The Chinese Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping set out to reform China’s planned economy by opening it up to market pressures. This process offered incentives for productive economic activity, just as it created myriad opportunities for self-enrichment, of both the corrupt and non-corrupt kind.
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