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Abstract
Hong Kong, with its government ranked among the "cleanest" in the
world, presents an excellent example of successful anti-corruption
reform. Its experience offers four general lessons for ongoing anti
corruption effofts in mainland China. First, by creating a powerful
independent anti-corruption agency, the government clearly signalled its
commitment to anti-conuption enforcement. Second, the anti-comIption
agency achieved major enforcement successes quickly and publicized
them widely to consolidate irs reputation. Third, it accompanied
enforcement with broad public education, reaching out to the community
in innovative ways. Fourth, it studied government work procedures and
proposed measures to reduce incentives for corruption in institutional
design. Flaws in anti-corruption reform in mainland China are
illuminated by the contrast with the Hong Kong experience. First, leaders
in Beijing have responded to conuption with ambivalent signals, creating
two anti-corruption agencies with overlapping jurisdictions and an
unclear division of labour. Second, with routine enforcement
handicapped by agency design, leaders have launched intensive ami-
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corruption campaigns that denigrate the law at the same time as they
empha<;ize "punishment according to law." Third. until recently, mainland
Chinese efforts have neglected institutional design and corruption
prevention. Essentially, they have yet (0 "tie their hands" [Q signal to
Since the early 1980s, the abuse of public office for private gain in
mainland China has grown in both scope and severity. More than two
decades of anti-conuption reform measures have not brought the problem
under control or significantly changed public perceptions of conuption as
widespread. Leaders in Beijing have acknowledged that conuption is more
serious than at any time since the communists won power in 1949. The
civil liberties on the mainland are notably absent. Can mainland China
learn anti-corruption reform lessons from Hong Kong? This article
concludes that the Hong Kong experience offers four useful lessons for
mainland China, despite fundamental differences in context, but that
mainland anti-corruption reformers are unlikely to embrace all of these
lessons.
integral
to
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Enforcement
The top ICAC priority in the mid-1970s was enforcement. This reflected a
realistic assessment of the scope of corruption and the state of public
opinion. [CAe Commissioner Cater argued that the momentum of initial
community support for the ICAC, shown by the increase in reported
corruption, could best be maintained by prosecuting "a satisfactory
volume" of corrupt offenders. [~ Early success in enforcement was seen as
key to maintaining anti-corruption momentum because it was required to
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The legal bases for ICAC action are represented in three laws: the
Corrupt and l1legal Practices Ordinance (10 June 1955)," the Prevention of
Bribery Ordinance (14 May 1971),16 and the Independent Commission
Against Corruption Ordinance (15 February 1974)17 Most enforcement
powers of the ICAC derive from the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance.
Corruption includes offering an advantage to a public servant, soliciting or
accepting (by a public servant) an advantage, and possession (by a public
servant) of unexplained income or propeny. The law is quite clear about
what constitutes an advantage. J8 The Prevention of Bribery Ordinance
gives the ICAC extraordinary powers. ICAC investigators can make arrests
without warrant for all offences described in the three laws. If, in the course
of investigating any offences under the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance,
investigators discover any other criminal offence reasonably suspected of
being connected with the bribery offence, they have full powers of arrest
without warrant for this related offence too. ICAC investigators have
powers of search, seizure, and detention of anything believed to be
evidence of offences for which they have powers of arrest. They have
special powers of investigation - to examine bank accounts, to question
people under oath, and to restrict the disposal of property during an
investigation. They may carry firearms in situations considered dangerous.
The ICAC has its own detention facilities.
In the mid-1970s, the Operations Depanment scrambled to respond to
public repons of corruption and did not take the offensive. An exception
was the high priority attached to "big tigers." Godher, the corrupt
expatriate police officer whose escape had catalysed the creation of the
ICAC. was extradited and successfully prosecuted in a dramatic and highly
puhlicized trial."
At the end of 1975, with over 400 officers, many with significant
investigative experience, the Operations Department took the initiative
against syndicated police corruption. The syndicates were an obvious
target because they provoked public outrage, but also because large corrupt
syndicates are easier to investigate than the "satisfied customer" corruption
that involves only two panies, neither with any incentive to repon to the
authorities. The ICAC found the weak links in the chain and offered
reduced punishment in return for trial evidence against other members. By
mid-1977, the ICAC Commissioner reported that "no major syndicates
were known to exist. ,,20
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Education
Initially, the first responsibility was the most urgent, not only because
the ICAC was a completely new agency but also because of the public
perception of corruption in its predecessor agency. To maintain the
goodwill of the community, evidenced in the increase in reported
corruption in 1974, the ICAC had to prove it could meet the high
expectations of ordinary Chinese. The Operations Department worked to
achieve some impressive results swiftly. A top priority of the Community
Relations Department was to draw public attention to these enforcement
successes, with press releases, press briefings, and monitoring of media
coverage. Through early publicity that gave examples of the reliability of
the ICAC in anti-corruption enforcement, community relations officers
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corruption agency, outside the police force and answerable solely to him,
to resolve the fundamental structural obstacle to reliable anti-corruption
enforcement. The mass public cooperated with the ICAC by reporting
corruption. responding to it even before it had earned its reputation for
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abolished during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, that became the
main specialized anti-corruption agencies of the party and government. At
the top of the hierarchy of communist party discipline inspection
committees is the Central Discipline Inspection Commission (COle) in
Beijing, under the Central Committee. Below the CDIC are discipline
inspection committees under the dual leadership of party committees at the
provincial, municipal, and county levels respectively and discipline
inspection committees one level up. Grassroots discipline inspection
committees operate in rural villages, urban neighbourhoods, and basic
level workplaces. Ad hoc discipline inspection groups can be dispatched
by the COIC to party or government departments at the centre, as needed.
Discipline inspection committees were reinstated to combat problems of
inappropriate workstyle, in the broadest sense. In 1982, leaders in Beijing
put the struggle against economic crime at the top of priorities for the party,
and discipline inspection committees soon assumed a role that grew
throughout the next two decades: as the party anti-corruption agency."
Procuratorates extend from Beijing down three levels of government
but do not exist at the grassroots. At the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy,
the Supreme People's Procuratorate is accountable to the National
People's Congress. At lower levels, procuratorates are accountable to local
people's congresses at the same level and the procuratorate one level up.
The 1979 Criminal Procedure Law and regulations issued in the two
decades after 1979 give procurators exclusive authority to investigate and
prosecute more than two dozen specific crimes involving officials,
including major economic crimes such as bribery, embezzlement of public
assets, misuse of public funds, possession of unexplained assets, and tax
evasion. 25 Although investigation and prosecution of criminal corruption is
not the only function of procuratorates, it has been the main focus of their
work since the early 1980s.
In principle, there is a division of labour between party discipline
inspection committees and government procuratorates. The party agencies
investigate violations of party discipline, most of which are not so serious
as to constitute crimes. The government agencies investigate crimes
involving officials, most of whom are party members. In practice,
however, the division of labour is not clear because investigatory
jurisdictions overlap. To begin with. the criminal nature of economic
transgressions is not always readily apparent at the beginning of party
agency investigations. Also, economic crimes are at the same time
violations of party discipline. This means that party agencies have a
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Conclusion
The review above of Hong Kong's experience is not meant to imply that
only one strategy offers generalizable lessons for success in anti-corruption
reform. At the same time, it is evident that anti-corruption efforts in
mainland China are seriously flawed and that these flaws are illuminated
by the contrast with the Hong Kong experience. In particular. two lessons
of institutional design have yet to be fully absorbed in mainland China.
First, nowhere has corruption prevention through institutional design
been articulated and practised as thoroughly as in Hong Kong. By contrast,
this is the element of anti-corruption reform most neglected in mainland
China. The many prohibitions issued in Beijing are not the same as changes
in the underlying incentives that foster corruption. Only in recent years
have mainland Chinese leaders begun to introduce institutional design
measures that may help prevent corruption. Examples include the
reduction in the number of required penuits and licences, the substitution
of an agricultural tax for fees levied by lower authorities, a judicial recusal
system, competitive bidding in government procurement, and the rotation
of posts in the civil service.
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has much
to
Notes
J. The rankings and related material, including background papers and
rramework documents that discuss data sources, aggregation methodology,
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and the Urban Economy, edited by Stephan Feuchtwang, Athae Hussain, and
Thierry Pairauh (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988). pp. 138-55; Stephen K.
Mat "Reform Corruption: A Discussion on China's Current Development,"
Pacific Affairs, Vol. 62, No.1 (1989). pp. 40-52; Andrew J. Nathan, China's
Crisis: Dilemmas of Reform and Prospects for Democracy (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1990); Jean-Louis Rocca, "Corruption and Its
Shadow: An Anthropological View of Corruption in China," The China
Quarterly, No. 130 (1992), pp. 402-16: Ting Gong, The Politics aj'Corruption
in Contemporary China: An Analysis of Policy Outcomes (Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 1994); He (Note 3); Gordon White, "Corruption and the Transilion
from Socialism in China," Journal afLaw and Society. Vol. 23, No. I (1996),
pp. 149--69.
9. See Leo Goodstadt, "Squeeze Me Please," Far Eastern Economic Review, 25
June 1970, pp. 7-8; and "The Fix.ers," Far Eastern Economic Review, 30 July
1970, pp. 21-23; H. J. Lethbridge, 'The Emergence of Bureaucratic
Corruption as a Social Problem in Hong Kong." Journal of Oriental Studies,
Vol. 12, Nos. 1-2 (1974), pp_ 17-29; and Hard Grqft in Hong Kong: ScandaL.
Corruption, the ICAC (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985); David
Faure, "Paying for Convenience: An Aspect of Corruption That Arises from
Revenue Spending:' in Corruption and Its Control in Hong Kong, edited by
Rance P. L. Lee (HonE Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1981), pp. 133
65; Alastair Blair-Kerr, Second Report of the Commission of Inquiry under Sir
Alastair Blair~Kerr (Hong Kong: Government Printer. September 1973).
]0. Tak-sing Cheung and Chong-chor Lau. "A Profile of Syndicate Corruption in
the Police Force," in Corruption and Its Control in Hong Kong, pp. 199-221;
Peter N. S. Lee, "The Causes and Effects of Police Corruption: A Case in
Political Modernization." in Corruption and Its Control in Hong Kong, pp.
167-98.
II. Alastair Blair-Kerr. First Report of the Commission of Inquiry under Sir
Alastair Blair-Kerr (Hong Kong: Government Printer, JUly 1973).
12. Royal Hong Kong Police Force, Annual Departmental Report, 1972-73 (Hong
Kong: Government Printer, 1973); Independent Commission Against Corrup
tion ([CAC), Annual Report by the Commissioner of the Independent Com
mission Against Corruption, 1975 (Hong Kong: Governmenr Printer, 1975).
13. Anti-corruption reform in Hong Kong and its outcomes are described and
analysed in great detail in Manion, Corruption by Design (Note 2).
14. [CAC (Note 12), p. 22.
15. Corrupt and lIlegai Practices Ordinance (Chapter 288).10 June 1955. Hong
Kong.
16. Prevention of Bribery Ordinance (Chapter 201). ]4 May 1971. Hong Kong.
17. Independem Commission Against Corruption Ordinance (Chapter 204). 15
February 1974. Hong Kong.
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18. In Hong Kong. the legal definition of cOffilption also includes transactions in
the private sector, but these are not included in the discussion here.
19. See Lethbridge (Note 9).
20. ICAC, AnnuaL Report by the Commissioner of the Independent Commission
Against Corruption, /978 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1978), p. 1.
21. ICAC, Annual Reporf b.v the Commissioner of the Independent Commission
Against Corruption, /980 (Hong Kong: Government Primer, t 980), p. 40.
22. This is seen in the surveys conducted regularly by the ICAC from 1977 through
thc present (see Manion, Corruption by Design [Note 2]).
23. See especially Susan Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government: Causes,
Conseql4ences, and Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
24. Graham Young, "Control and Style: Discipline Inspection Commissions Since
the 11th Congress," The China Quarrerly, No. 97 (19841. pp. 24--52.
25. He Jiahong (with Jon R. Waltz), Criminal Prosecution in the People's
Republic of China and the United States of America: A Comparative Study
(Beijing: China Procuratorial Press, 1995).
26. Sce especially Manion. Corruption by Design (Note 2).
27. See Manion, Corruption by Design (Note 2).
28. Sec ibid.
29. See ibid.
30. See ihid.: and "Issues in Corruption" (Note 2).
31. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conjlict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Universi\y Press, 1960); Hilton Root, "Tying the King's Hands; Credible
Commirmems and Royal Fiscal Policy During the Old Regime," Rationality
and Soc;,'ry, Vol. 1, No.2 (1989), pp. 240-58; Douglass C. Nortb and Barry R.
Weingast, "Constitutions and Commitment: Thc Evolution of Institutions
Governing Puhlic Choice in Seventeenth-Century England," Journal of
Economic History, Vol. 49, No.4 (1989), pp. 803-32.