China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [89]
Crime and Punishment
The breakdown of the monitoring system is accompanied by an increasingly dysfunctional system of punishing corrupt officials—despite the frequent use of the death penalty against high-profile offenders. The combination of ineffective monitoring and punishment unavoidably creates an institutional environment conducive to decentralized predation. In China’s case, official data on the punishment of corrupt officials indicate that the reported increase in official corruption may be attributed to the relative leniency with which corrupt officials are treated by Chinese anticorruption authorities. The low rate of criminal investigations targeting individuals accused of corrupt activities and the negligible probability of criminal penalties make corruption a low-risk and high-return activity that is extremely attractive to officials. More important, this evidence also points to collusion and mutual protection among corrupt agents.
Low ratesof investigation
Official figures on the government’s enforcement efforts against corruption report that about 80 percent of the corruption cases originated from tips provided by the public.49 But a public survey conducted by the CDIC in 1996 showed that 58 percent of the respondents reported that the information on corrupt activities they provided to authorities resulted in no action. Two-thirds reported reprisals from accused officials. 50 Published data on the prosecution of corrupt officials reconfirm these assessments. From 1993 to 1997, the procurators’ offices received 1,637,302 tips from the public on corrupt activities such as embezzlement, bribery, and abuse of power. About half these tips (841,233) received some attention from government prosecutors. The number of corruption leads that eventually resulted in formal criminal investigations totaled only 387,353, or about 46 percent of the cases officially accepted by the procuratorate. This means that about only one in four tips led to a formal filing, which does not necessarily result in a criminal investigation, let alone prosecution.
Results of initial dispositions of allegations of corruption similarly point to a relatively lenient approach to officials accused of corruption. Take, for example, the data released by the Ministry of Supervision (one of the anticorruption agencies) for 1991. For that year, the ministry accepted 168,124 corruption cases. Of these cases, 32,236 (19.2 percent) were closed after the accused offered “clarifications”; 14,900 (8.8 percent) were closed after the accused received “criticism and education” ; 11,021 (6.6 percent) were transferred to other government agencies; and 57,678 (32.1 percent) were disposed of in unspecified manners. Only 31.2 percent (52,389 cases) were filed for formal investigation. 51 A closer look at those who were most likely to receive a slap on the wrist shows that more senior officials were among the best protected. Whereas 21.4 percent of the township officials accused of corruption were formally investigated, only 4.5 percent of the officials at and above the rank of department or bureau (ting or ju) were. About half of the department or bureau-level officials were able to see their cases closed after offering “clarifications,” compared to about 21 percent of township-level officials.52
Moreover, the overall enforcement efforts slackened over the 1990s. Official data on corruption investigations in the decade revealed a marked decline in both the number of corruption cases “accepted” and the number of corruption cases “investigated” by the procuratoratc. From 1990 to 1999, the number of corruption cases “accepted” declined by 41 percent, and the rate of investigation (that is, the share of the accepted cases that resulted in official criminal investigations) fell from 50 to 37 percent. Although the rate rose to 50 percent in 2002, the number of corruption cases investigated in 2002 (43,258) was less than half of that in 1990 (88,595).53 Given that