Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The political economy of judicial corruption in China: a spatial relationship

  • Published:
East Asia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Like other developing countries, China has been struggling with corruption. Judicial corruption, in particular, damages the rule of law and presents a market disruption as an outcome of a lack of commitment by the government regarding property rights. This article seeks to explain the variations in judicial corruption within China, and it develops a theory of city-level corruption of judges. The theory is tested by an empirical study with data from the World Bank corruption survey using a Bayesian spatial linear model. While wealth appears to diminish corruption, there is also a strong spatial relationship with regard to the level of judicial corruption in China, indicating that as some regions become less corrupt, surrounding areas also experience a diminution in corruption. Thus, through a process organic to the current regime, China could experience an increase in judicial trustworthiness.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. A shortcoming of this and some of the other empirical works on corruption in China is reliance on news story coverage or prosecutions, which is itself subject to uncertainty given the tight media control and selective nature of prosecutions in China.

  2. Alternatively, the action that a citizen takes in order to protest injustice must be more costly to them.

  3. One possible alternative to ordinary least squares would be a beta regression, with the variable set to between 0.01 and 0.99. While this would have the advantage of avoiding any potential for predicting nonsensical results, it is computationally far more difficult, and no package currently exists for a spatial regression with a beta dependent variable. Furthermore, given the relative lack of extreme values in the level of trust in the judiciary, the potential for nonsensical predictions is substantially reduced.

References

  1. Habib M, Zurawicki L (2002) Corruption and Foreign Direct Investment. J Int Bus Stud 33:291–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Mauro P (1998) Corruption and the composition of government expenditure. J Public Econ 69:263–279. doi: 10.1016/S0047-2727(98)00025-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Méndez F, Sepúlveda F (2006) Corruption, growth and political regimes: Cross country evidence. Eur J Polit Econ 22:82–98. doi: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2005.04.005

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Acemoglu D, Robinson JA (2012) Why nations fail: the origins of power, prosperity and poverty, 1st ed. Crown Publishers, New York

    Google Scholar 

  5. North DC (1990) Institutions, institutional change, and economic performance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York

  6. Pei M (2007) Corruption Threatens China’s Future. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Policy Brief 55. Washington, DC

  7. The Supreme People’s Court (2016) Judicial Reform of Chinese Courts (White Paper). Beijing

  8. Liu APL (1983) The Politics of Corruption in the People’s Republic of China. Am Polit Sci Rev 77:602–623. doi: 10.2307/1957262

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Gong T (2002) Dangerous collusion: corruption as a collective venture in contemporary China. Communist Post-Communist Stud 35:85–103. doi: 10.1016/S0967-067X(01)00026-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Wedeman A (2004) The Intensification of Corruption in China. China Q 895–921

  11. Lu X (2000) Booty Socialism, Bureau-Preneurs, and the State in Transition: Organizational Corruption in China. Comp Polit 32:273–294. doi: 10.2307/422367

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Li H, Meng L, Wang Q, Zhou L-A (2008) Political connections, financing and firm performance: Evidence from Chinese private firms. J Dev Econ 87:283–299. doi: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2007.03.001

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Manion M (2004) Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Mainland China and Hong Kong, Harvard University Press. Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  14. Sun Y (2004) Corruption and Market in Contemporary China. Cornell University Press, Ithaca

  15. Allen F, Qian J, Qian M (2005) Law, finance, and economic growth in China. J Financ Econ 77:57–116. doi: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2004.06.010

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Glaeser EL, Saks RE (2006) Corruption in America. J Public Econ 90:1053–1072. doi: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2005.08.007

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Goel RK, Nelson MA (1998) Corruption and Government Size: A Disaggregated Analysis. Public Choice 97:107–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Cho YN (2003) Symbiotic Neighbour or Extra-Court Judge? The Supervision over Courts by Chinese Local People’s Congresses. China Q 176:1068–1083. doi: 10.1017/S0305741003000626

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Zhang Q (2003) The People’s Court in Transition: The prospects of the Chinese judicial reform. J Contemp China 12:69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Gong T (2004) Dependent Judiciary and Unaccountable Judges: Judicial Corruption in Contemporary China. China Rev 4:33–54.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Zou K (2002) Judicial Reform in China: Recent Developments and Future Prospects. Int Lawyer 36:1039–1062.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Gechlik MY (2005) Judicial Reform in China: Lessons from Shanghai. Columbia J Asian Law 19:97–137.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Peng B (2014) Sifa Tizhi Sixiang Gaige Xianxing Shidian [Four Items of Judicial Reform Started in Test Sites]. Renmin Ribao Peoples Dly 11

  24. Guo Y, Hu A (2004) The administrative monopoly in China’s economic transition. Communist Post-Communist Stud 37:265–280. doi: 10.1016/j.postcomstud.2004.03.005

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Wedeman A (1997) Stealing from the Farmers: Institutional Corruption and the 1992 IOU Crisis. China Q 805–831

  26. Treisman D (2007) What Have We Learned About the Causes of Corruption from Ten Years of Cross-National Empirical Research? Annu Rev Polit Sci 10:211–244. doi: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.081205.095418

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Boix C, Stokes SC (2003) Endogenous Democratization. World Polit 55:517–549.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Manion M (2004) Lessons for Mainland China from Anti-corruption Reform in Hong Kong. China Rev 4:81–97.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Liang Z, Ma Z (2004) China’s Floating Population: New Evidence from the 2000 Census. Popul Dev Rev 30:467–488.

  30. Sicular T, Yue X, Gustafsson B, Li S (2007) The Urban–Rural Income Gap and Inequality in China. Rev Income Wealth 53:93–126. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4991.2007.00219.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Tiebout CM (1956) A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures. J Polit Econ 64:416–424.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Hirschman AO (1970) Exit, voice, and loyalty; responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass

    Google Scholar 

  33. World Bank (2006) China—Governance, investment climate, and harmonious society: competitiveness enhancement for 120 cities in China. 1–138

  34. Finley AO, Banerjee S, Carlin BP (2007) spBayes: An R Package for Univariate and Multivariate Hierarchical Point-referenced Spatial Models. J. Stat. Softw. 19

  35. He Z (2000) Corruption and anti-corruption in reform China. Communist Post-Communist Stud 33:243–270. doi: 10.1016/S0967-067X(00)00006-4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Sung H-E Democracy and political corruption: A cross-national comparison. Crime Law Soc Change 41:179–193. doi: 10.1023/B:CRIS.0000016225.75792.02

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions, which helped the revision of this article. The authors also thank Robert Grafstein, Rongbin Han and Ning Liao for their constructive comments. All errors remain to their own.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Government, The College of William & Mary, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA, 23187–8795, USA

    Hongyu Zhang

  2. Department of Political Science, The University of Georgia, Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    Steve Kaszycki

Authors
  1. Hongyu Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Steve Kaszycki
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hongyu Zhang.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Fig. 5
figure 5

Box plots of covariates

Full size image
Table 4 Results of OLS
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zhang, H., Kaszycki, S. The political economy of judicial corruption in China: a spatial relationship. East Asia 34, 63–78 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-017-9265-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-017-9265-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation