ABSTRACT
Stunning though the spread of corruption following the adoption of economic reforms may be, rising corruption is only half of the story. The worsening of corruption after the advent of the reform period thus confronts students of contemporary China's political economy. In the early 1990s, following a second round of reforms, corruption intensified. Whereas petty corruption involving low-level officials and official profiteering were most common during the first decade of reform, by the mid-1990s more and more senior-level officials had become involved. The effectiveness of China's anti-corruption effort has been questioned and many observers condemn it as more show than substance. In the case of China, some have argued that corruption there differed from that found elsewhere because it often involved 'profit sharing'. Anti-corruption work in China thus faced considerable challenges from the beginning and it is hardly surprising that investigators had a hard time coping with the explosion in corruption.
