Any totalitarian regime sets things up in such a way that officials or cadres have many opportunities and incentives for collecting bribes in exchange for either ignoring regulations or complying with them (i.e., by doing their jobs). That’s one form of corruption.
Another form is participating in the black market. There was less of this kind of “corruption” in Red China after the post-Mao Chinese Communist Party began to let people openly run private farms and shops so that fewer transactions had to be conducted on the sly.
Broken Earth
In his first book, Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese, published in 1983, Steven Mosher reported on the ubiquity of the corruption or “corruption” that he had observed during his months as a researcher in China a few years earlier.
The instrumental use of relationships, a practice deeply rooted in traditional Chinese mores, has become even more blatant since the revolution brought the marketplace under state control. The immediate, almost instinctive reaction of a Chinese who wants to make a purchase or obtain a service is to seek out an acquaintance with the appropriate connection. These networks of favor ramify with incredible complexity, often involving second- and third-hand transactions, the intermediaries creating obligations and carrying debts that they will settle gradually over time.
A sense of the all-pervasiveness of contemporary corruption can be gained through the realization that even the mere existence of a relationship by blood, marriage, or friendship with someone who is in a position to do a favor is considered to be prima facie evidence for the fact that such favors are done. There is simply no question in anyone’s mind that you make use of every available connection to purchase scarce goods, curry favor, finagle permission to build a new house, wrangle a better job assignment—in short, to engage in back-door machinations. And the truth of the matter is that nearly everyone does….
Cadres’ corruption is not limited to trafficking in the black market on the side, but includes frequent, far-reaching, and direct abuses of their position and authority. Bribe-taking is common and comes in all forms from accepting gifts from toadying underlings to out-and-out influence peddling. On several different occasions I heard Chinese friends complain that their superiors expected gifts to accompany any special requests, instancing not only such substantial considerations as a good work evaluation or a new job assignment but also such petty dispensations as a half day off to take care of personal business or special timing of a yearly vacation….
Much expense can be avoided if the petitioner has a connection that can be tapped. “Things are a lot more convenient if one knows people in the unit one is doing business with” is how one brigade Party secretary with long experience put the matter to me. “In fact,” he continued, “it is not simply a matter of convenience. If you don’t know someone, it is often impossible to get even routine matters taken care of unless you give them a hongbao [payoff]. This is simply the way business is done in China,” he concluded, “and probably the way it is done throughout the world.” He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded without conviction.
Officials also abuse their authority in other ways.
Another form of “corruption” is being disloyal in some way or other to the big boss, who is currently Xi Jinping. One way to be disloyal is to disagree about policy.
Millions are said to have been caught in the net of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign since he became big boss in 2012.
Big data
Now we learn that the CCP “will build a computer system that mines big data to track the online behavior of its 98 million members, searching for evidence of bribery and nepotism. The move sharpens President Xi Jinping’s decade-long campaign against graft.” Ever-more-intrusive surveillance by Big Brother is a great way to sharpen an anti-graft campaign.
It’s all apropos of the fact that the Party “must govern the Party with strict discipline,” as Xi told attendees of the recent Fifth Plenum.
There’s no need to drag this out, however. This problem of corruption in the Party can be solved right now, completely and for all time. The 98 million CCP members don’t have to minutely surveilled and analyzed to determine whether they’re corrupt. Let it be stipulated. They’re corrupt. All of them. Ergo, purge all of them. Announce that the Party is over. Xi Jinping is also corrupt. So he, too, must go. We must end the corruption.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “The Useful Disorder of Xi Jinping” (May 23, 2026)
StoptheCCP.org: “Chasing the Shadows of Xi Jinping’s War on Corruption” (December 8, 2024)
StoptheCCP.org: “China’s Corruption and Anti-Corruption Are Forever” (November 2, 2024)
