Organizer and Chair: Lynne T. White III, Princeton University
Discussant: Stanley Rosen, University of Southern California
"Corruption" has correlated with economic development and political reorganization in many countries, including China during reforms. The results of corrupt behavior are mixed: Some of these effects seem to promote enterprise, the search for new capital and markets; others are commonly agreed to be grossly unfair in public and debilitating to national strength.
Defining corruption is perhaps as complex a task as tracing its multifarious results. They are connected with a culture of vertical networking and horizontal negotiations, but the best framework to conceive corruption and to find its consequences needs yet to be developed. In this panel, Kate Xiao Zhou and Michael Agelasto will face this issue respectively in the economic and educational fields.
Law courts are supposed not only to have clear concepts that distinguish corrupt from legal acts; they sometimes go further and sentence people to harsh or lenient punishments for violations. Julia Kwong, who has recently interviewed Chinese public security officials dealing with such cases, will assess the factors that influence police and judicial decisions. Carol A. G. Jones will put Chinese laws about corruption, as well as rationalist views of them, in the context of current politics and old traditions.
Education, Corruption, Cellularism and Guanxiwang: A View From Within a Chinese
Educational Danwei
Michael Agelasto, University of Hong Kong
This paper, based on ethnographic field work, examines the interplay between three phenomena that exist within a university in the People's Republic of China: corruption, cellularism and guanxiwang.
After a brief examination of the general literature on corruption in China, one university-"Southern Tertiary"-is studied, and various types of corruption (both perceived and real) are explored.
Over the past two decades, Sinologists have debated the extent to which China is fiscally centralized or fragmented. Analysts now tend to agree that a cellular or honeycomb pattern characterizes center/periphery relations. Another feature, given China's underdeveloped legal and regulatory systems, is the prevalence of negotiation. Today "autonomy-through-negotiation" is not confined to national economic policy, nor to only national policies. This paper finds that the same pattern occurs within the danwei (work-unit).
What allows for (and in fact encourages) cellularity in the work-unit is the emphasis placed on relationships and networking (guanxiwang). Cellularity is permitted-indeed, mandated-by the absence of certain systems, those involving flow of information, open discourse and faculty governance. The literature studying guanxi identifies the positive function that relationships serve in business. But the concept is more often associated with unhealthy practices. This paper argues that guanxi in and of itself is not a negative aspect of culture but is rather a cultural element that can be put into service across a whole range of morality. Certain conditions may encourage its use in ways which are perceived as "corrupt."
Corruption and Flexibility in Legal Interpretation in China
Julia Kwong, University of Manitoba
This paper uses the example of corruption to explore the flexibility in the Chinese interpretation of its 1979 criminal law. From a series of interviews with personnel in the criminal justice system carried out in July 1995, the author finds that their definitions of guilt or innocence, and the punishment deserved are very much influenced by the circumstances surrounding the action, the ability and character of the actor, and the consequences of his/her action, as well as by the political climate of the time. Furthermore, unlike the West, in China procedural justice plays a minimal role in prosecution and court decisions. These attitudes and the resultant behavior of the criminal justice personnel very much reflect the holistic and personalistic approach in the larger Chinese culture, and may have mitigated to some extent the effectiveness of the criminal law in deterring crime.
Calling Out the Law? The Moral and Political Economy of Corruption in China
Carol A. G. Jones, University of Wales
Where developed countries are often portrayed as having a modern, rational, and efficient economy as well as honest government, Chinese society is usually seen as still based on nepotism, familism, and corruption. In this rather "Orientalist" discourse, developed societies are "clean," whereas China is "dirty." Clean-up campaigns often involve calls for more rule of law and stricter regulation of corruption to ensure foreign investment and domestic legitimacy. Law is promoted as delivering clarity, objectivity, rationality and universality. It is seen as ahistortcal, asocial, and apolitical. But the definition of corruption is itself political, social and historical. The fixed or static nature of legal definitions denies this dynamic and may thus lend itself to masking the politicized nature of corruption (and indeed polity, economy and society more generally) behind a rhetoric of strict legality.
One hegemonic goal (international and domestic legitimacy) may, however, conflict with another (the delivery of economic success). Nepotism, relational ties, guanxi and like practices are seen as important to the economic success of the "Four Little Dragons." If China wishes to imitate this, therefore, it needs to permit in the economic sphere practices which politics determines as corrupt. The revival of Confucianism has also revived ideas about "traditional" Chinese preference for a moral economy based on propriety and relational obligations rather than law and legality.