This first book by Christopher Carothers is based on his 2019 Harvard University doctoral dissertation. It is well written, carefully documented and relies on extensive primary sources collected in China, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and Singapore. The comprehensive literature review makes it a valuable resource for graduate courses on corruption in East Asian countries. The book consists of eight chapters. After the introductory chapter, the second chapter deals with theory and methodology. Chapters three and four analyse the five case studies in Taiwan and South Korea respectively. Chapter five focuses on the three anti-corruption campaigns conducted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1921 to 1990. Chapter six evaluates Xi Jinping's current anti-corruption campaign, which was initiated in November 2012. Before concluding the book in chapter eight, Carothers analyses anti-corruption efforts in five authoritarian countries in chapter seven.
Carothers's analysis in chapters three to six is based on nine case studies. The four case studies in China are: the successful Three Antis and Five Antis campaigns and Xi Jinping's on-going anti-corruption campaign; the unsuccessful Four Clean-ups Movement and Socialist Education Movement of 1962–1965 and the CCP's anti-corruption persecutions after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The three South Korean case studies include: the failed anti-corruption campaigns of Park Chung-hee in 1962–1965 and Chun Doo-hwan in 1980–1981, and Park's successful General Administrative Reform of 1973–1977. The two successful case studies in Taiwan deal with Chiang Kai-shek's reconstruction of the Kuomintang in 1950–1952 and Chiang Ching-kuo's Governmental Rejuvenation of 1969–1973. In chapter two, Carothers justifies his selection of the nine case studies and describes his scoring system for assessing anti-corruption efforts. He contends that the five case studies were successful because the authoritarian leaders were motivated and had the discretion and capacity to initiate the anti-corruption reforms.
Carothers's analysis is, however, incomplete and misleading for two reasons. First, he has neglected an important factor responsible for explaining the success of anti-corruption reforms, i.e. whether the reforms implemented have addressed the causes of corruption, especially the low probability of detecting and punishing corruption offenders in the three countries. This omission explains why the five selected case studies are not really successful – structural corruption remains a serious problem in the three countries, judging from their performance on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which Carothers dismisses because it is perceptions-based (p. 36). Notwithstanding its limitations, the CPI is a robust index that combines several measures of political corruption for 180 countries. Taiwan has consistently performed better than South Korea and China because its average CPI score from 2012 to 2021 is 63, compared to 57 for South Korea and 40 for China, on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
Contrary to Carothers's argument, anti-corruption reforms in the three countries examined are ineffective, as corruption is a low-risk, high-reward activity due to the low probability of detection and punishment. The CCP enforces its anti-corruption laws selectively and protects Party cadres under investigation by exempting them from criminal punishment. Carothers contends that Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign has been successful because the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) had disciplined more than 437,000 officials by December 2019 (p. 185). However, among the 3,726,112 CCP members disciplined for wrongdoing from 1992 to 2016, only 169,948 (4.6 per cent) of them were criminally prosecuted. Furthermore, the inconsistencies in investigating and punishing corrupt officials at central and local levels in China have undermined the credibility of the disciplinary agencies and encouraged them to believe that they would unlikely be punished for their offences. In South Korea, corruption offenders are punished leniently as more than half of them are not prosecuted for their misconduct. In addition, they can also be pardoned by the president. For example, President Lee Myung-bak pardoned 55 persons guilty of bribery in 2013.
Similarly, the probability of being convicted for corruption offences in Taiwan is low because only 209 (24.9 per cent) of the 841 corruption cases investigated during 1991–2002 were found guilty. Carothers praises President Chen Shui-bian for enacting six anti-corruption laws after winning the 2000 presidential election (p. 23), but fails to indicate that Chen broke his campaign promise to fight corruption and succumbed to corruption during his eight years in office. Even though he was imprisoned for his offences, Chen has not apologized or shown remorse for his corrupt behaviour.
The second limitation of Carothers's analysis is that his three concepts of “motivation,” “discretionary power” and “state capacity” do not adequately account for the success or failure of anti-corruption reforms in the three countries. Rather, I argue that political will or a leader's sustained commitment to implement anti-corruption reforms is the critical ingredient for effective corruption control. It exists when, first, comprehensive anti-corruption laws are enforced impartially; second, sufficient resources and operational autonomy are allocated to the anti-corruption agencies (ACAs), which are not paper tigers or used as attack dogs against political opponents; and third, anti-corruption reforms are sustained and their impact monitored.
Carothers contends that a state has the capacity to implement anti-corruption measures if it “monopolizes territorial control” and can conduct a national census regularly (p. 44). However, in my view, a more useful indicator of a state's capacity to implement anti-corruption reforms is its reliance on ACAs in the three countries. Using this criterion, I contend that the three countries’ weak state capacity in combating corruption is reflected in their mistakes of establishing ACAs as paper tigers or using them as attack dogs. In South Korea, the Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption (KICAC) was formed in 2002 as a “toothless” ACA without the power to investigate corruption complaints because of opposition to the creation of a more powerful ACA. The KICAC's anti-corruption role was further diluted after its merger with the Ombudsman and Administrative Appeals Commission in 2008 to form the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC). Like the KICAC, the ACRC is also a paper tiger because it has limited resources and cannot investigate corruption cases. Similarly, Taiwan's weak capacity in curbing corruption is manifested in the irrational allocation of more anti-corruption resources to the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB), which is more concerned with national security, than to the Agency Against Corruption (AAC), which is a dedicated ACA. Consequently, the AAC becomes a paper tiger because of its limited resources. Unlike the AAC and ACRC, China's CCDI is not a paper tiger but an attack dog used by the CCP against political opponents like Chen Xitong, Chen Liangyu, Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang.
In sum, the analysis of the nine case studies does not present an accurate or complete picture of anti-corruption efforts in China, South Korea and Taiwan. Weak political will is the most important reason why these countries have failed to curb corruption effectively, contrary to Carothers's analysis. The five “successful” case studies selected by Carothers have failed to resolve the problem of structural corruption in the three countries. Indeed, corruption will persist in China, South Korea and Taiwan if: 1) the rewards of corruption exceed the probability of being caught and punished; 2) anti-corruption reforms fail to address the causes of corruption; and 3) ACAs are paper tigers or used as attack dogs against political opponents of the government.
