ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Chinese love for sport and gambling and uses these to illustrate the pervasiveness of corruption throughout Chinese culture. Dysfunctional corruption affects China by undermining the regimes legitimacy in the public eye and reinforcing inherent structural limits upon any campaign. Functional corruption in general greases the wheels of non-market and limited-market economies. The chapter considers the corruption within the Chinese Football Association (CFA) as the central example of corruption. Corruption in football in China illustrates what remains a defect in Chinese national character. In January 2004, the CFA addressed the problem not by attacking the sources of corruption but through the superficial measure of creating a new Super League, with only 12 instead of 15 teams, plus tighter rules. Leadership of Chinese mass organizations has been dominated by members of the Communist Party. In the Muqadimmah, Ibn Khaldun treated corruption as a phenomenon of the natural cyclical decline of dynasties.
