In recent years, the intensification of corruption in China has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. To many, it remains a puzzle why corruption has surged to unprecedented levels since the onset of market-driven reform. Even more perplexing is why the country has been able to achieve a high level of economic growth continuously while predatory corruption proliferates. Andrew Wedeman's book is a welcome attempt to address these puzzles, which he refers to as the “double paradox”: the concurrence of worsening corruption and continued rapid growth as the primary paradox and the coincidental high levels of predatory corruption and rapid growth as the second. Wedeman argues, quite differently from some of the recent literature, that whereas corruption tends to drain the economy, China's case is unique in the sense that corruption is feeding off the margin instead of consuming the lion's share of gains from economic growth. By feeding off the margin, he means that “corrupt officials are ultimately cashing in new value created by reform rather than feeding off the existing stock of value” (p. 8).
To support this core thesis, Wedeman begins with a useful conceptual framework based on the distinction of two major types of corruption: developmental corruption and degenerative corruption. A comparative analysis of the two concepts and the countries or regions associated with each allows him to depict the complex web of interactions between corruption and growth. It also enables him to make persuasive arguments in ensuing chapters. As Wedeman correctly points out, corruption in China has often taken a predatory form rather than that of developmental corruption. While the former encroaches on the economy, the latter helps forge political machines and often provides incentives for economic growth, as has been found in some “developmental states.” This said, he further contends that it is difficult to consider China's corruption as economic plunder despite its predatory nature, because the economy has in fact surged at almost ten per cent annually for decades while corruption intensifies.
Following the conceptual work, Wedeman offers an in-depth analysis of the double paradox by providing three explanations. The first explanation relates to the sequence of corruption and growth. He points out that in China the spread of corruption lagged slightly behind economic growth and, consequently, corruption had no time to become rampant enough to prevent the Chinese economy from taking off. The escalation of corruption, especially high-level corruption that could have the most detrimental impact on economic growth, took place after reform had obtained enough momentum to boost the economy in China. Second, corruption has become increasingly commercialized in the country during the course of economic marketization, in the sense that it consisted less of economic plunder than actual benefit exchanges between corrupt officials and illicit business interests. Wedeman suggests that in this way corruption becomes “more parasitic than predatory” as it feeds off the growing economy rather than on the economy's vitals (p. 141). As his third explanation, Wedeman argues that the Chinese state's anti-corruption efforts have shown partial effectiveness in preventing corruption from spiralling out of control and from causing devastating damage to the economy.
The book not only presents robust arguments but also provides rich empirical information. Wedeman draws empirical data from an impressive variety of sources in his discussion of the development of China's corruption and its characteristics and patterns. Measuring corruption has been a daunting task in corruption studies, but Wedeman does it in a rather compelling way. He distinguishes several measures of corruption: the revealed rate of corruption (RRC), the actual rate of corruption (ARC), the emerging rate of corruption (ERC), and the cumulative level of corruption (CLC). By discussing the possibility of assessing each of them, Wedeman correctly points out that because measuring the ARC and ERC is difficult or impossible and the RRC hardly reflects the reality, only the CLC can approximate the actual level of corruption. Thus, he skilfully triangulates various measures as references to demonstrate that high-level corruption did not begin to rise until more than a decade after the advent of reform in China.
Wedeman's book is an important contribution to the literature of both contemporary Chinese politics and corruption studies. While students of Chinese politics and society may be interested in his analysis of the paradoxical relationship between rapid growth and rising corruption in China, others may find the book informative and attention-grabbing in its rich description of corruption and how it is understood and tackled in China. The book is thus worth reading not only by students of corruption but also by anyone who has interest in obtaining a better understanding of contemporary Chinese society and its economic transformation.
