ABSTRACT
Implicit in the theme of this volume is the assumption that China’s political institutions, which draw strength from economic globalization but refuse to go beyond that, form the fundamental political constraints for settling the social problems facing China. Corruption is among the most acute of those social-political problems and at the core of China’s governance deficit. How China is doing on corruption, not surprisingly, has become a focal point of contention among some leading scholars in the field. Has China already significantly reformed its institutional framework for economic governance, including the control of corruption?1 Or is China’s lack of political liberalization the very cause of runaway corruption and the regime’s failure to contain it?2 Or, to echo the theme of this book, are the contradictions of China’s “capitalist communist” system indeed the cause of rampant corruption and, as well, the chief obstacle to its effective remedy?
