An Ineluctable Political Destiny:

Communism, Reform, Marketization,

and Corruption in Post-Mao China
Forest C. Sun
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 An Ineluctable Political
Destiny
Communism, Reform, Marketization,
and Corruption in Post-Mao China
Forest C. Sun
An Ineluctable Political Destiny
 Forest C. Sun

An Ineluctable
Political Destiny
Communism, Reform, Marketization,
and Corruption in Post-Mao China
Forest C. Sun
Halifax, NS, Canada

ISBN 978-981-99-3145-3 ISBN 978-981-99-3146-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3146-0

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For my family and my late brother
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Definition of Corruption 11
1.2 Explanations of Corruption 12
1.3 Study Approach and Structure 20
2 The Economic Reform 25
2.1 Economic Reform 25
The Historical Context and Rationale of Reform 25
Reform—Models, Policies, Stages, and Processes 29
Reform—Performance and Achievements 38
Reform—Gaps, Disparities, and Challenges 42
3 Official Corruption in the Reform Era 45
3.1 Corruption in the Pre-Reform Era 47
Acceleration of Corruption in the Reform Era 52
3.2 Patterns of Corruption and Economic Crimes 53
Embezzlement 54
Bribery 55
Misappropriation of Public Funds 59
Illegal Profiteering 60
Possession of Huge Amount of Assets from Unidentified
Sources 61
Concealing Deposits in Foreign Bank Accounts 61
Partitioning State-Owned Assets without Authorization 62

vii
viii CONTENTS

Unsanctioned Partition and Distribution

of Confiscated Properties 62
Neglect of Duty 62
Abuse of Authority 63
Squandering 67
Selling and Buying Public Offices 68
Arbitrary Use of Regulatory Power and Illicit Fund
Raising 69
Moral Decadence 71
3.3 The Breadth, Depth, and Intensity of Official Corruption 72
4 Official Corruption in the Post-1992 Period 93
4.1 Deepening of the Reform and Intensification of Official
Corruption 94
Character, Scope, and Tendency of Bribery
in the Post-1992 Period 99
4.2 Bureaucratic Corruption 100
Public Programs, Investments, and Services 104
5 Regulatory and Judicial Corruption 161
5.1 Regulatory Corruption 161
Land and Real Estate 162
State Resources and Energy 169
Tax Evasion and Tax Fraud 177
Customs and Inspection 181
Environment Regulation and Enforcement 185
Drug and Food Safety Administration 195
Securities Corruption 205
Smuggling 211
5.2 Judicial Corruption 221
6 Corruption Characteristic of Culture and Socialist
Reform China 235
6.1 Corruption Induced by Culture and Tradition 235
Guanxi and Guanxixue 237
Family and Crony Corruption 242
6.2 Malfeasances Characteristic of Socialism China 248
Collective and Organizational Corruption 248
Buying and Selling Offices 254
 CONTENTS ix

Squandering of Public Funds 258

Moral Decadence and Official Corruption 269
7 How Does China Fare Amid Unprecedented Official
Corruption? 275
7.1 The Double-Edged Effect of Transactive Corruption 277
The Economic Cost of Official Corruption 281
The Political Cost of Official Corruption 287
The Social Cost of Official Corruption 289
7.2 Corruption Control Efforts and Countermeasures 292
Anti-Corruption Institutions—Mandate, Functions,
and Interactions 292
CCP Efforts to CrackDown on Corruption Prior
to the 18th CCP National Congress 294
Crackdown on “Tigers and Flies”: Anti-Corruption
Campaign in the Xi Regime 300
8 What Are at Play and What Should Be Faulted For? 305
8.1 An Orthodox Approach and Theory of Corruption 308
8.2 Structural Determinants and Incentives of Corruption 312
8.3 Structural Defects Inherent in a Semi-Planned
and Semi-Market Economy 313
Excessive State Control and Intervention in Market
Economy 313
The Dual-Track Pricing System 315
Unintended Policy Outcomes 317
The Double-Edged Effect of Decentralization 318
Inequality in Income Distribution 319
Laxity in Supervision and Law Enforcement 321
8.4 Institutional Deficiencies Inherent in a Socialist
and Authoritarian State 321
The Dominance of Public Ownership 322
A Faulty Political System 325
Absence of an Independent Judiciary and the Presence
of an Extrajudicial and Politicized System 328
Laxity in Enforcement 332
Lack of Checks and Balances 334
8.5 Is Corruption Inherent in Chinese Norms and Culture? 337
x CONTENTS

9 Conclusion: The Dilemma of the CCP Anti-corruption

Strategy—Systemic Corruption and the Trap of Partial
Reform 345
9.1 Dilemmas Caused by the Partial Reform Trap 345
Misconfiguration of Political Institution and Market
Economy 349
Public Sector Advances While Private Sector Retreats 351
A Non-independent Judiciary 355
A Politicized Anti-corruption Institution 356
Crackdown on Civil Society and Press 358
9.2 Concluding Remarks 360
The Partial Reform Trap and the Paradox
of Anti-corruption Policy 364
9.3 The Final Remarks 370

Bibliography 375
Index 397
 Acronyms

CCCPC Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

CCDI Central Commission for Discipline Inspection
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CCTV China Central Television
CDI Commission for Discipline Inspection
CGTN China Global Television Network
CMC Central Military Commission
CPI Corruption Perceptions Index, Transparency International
CPIB Corrupt Practices Investigations Bureau, Singapore
CPLAC Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission
CPPCC Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
CSRC China Securities Regulatory Commission
CUFWD Central United Front Work Department
FCPA Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, U.S.
FDA Food and Drug Administration
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
GCB Global Corruption Barometer
GDP Gross Domestic Product
HPC High People’s Court
ICAC Independent Commission Against Corruption, Hong Kong
IPC Intermediate People’s Court
IPO Initial Public Offering
NCCCP National Congress of the CCP
NCCPPCC National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative
Conference
NPC National People’s Congress

xi
xii ACRONYMS

NPCSC National People’s Congress Standing Committee

PC Party Committee
PLAC Political and Legal Affairs Committee
PRC People’s Republic of China
PSC Politburo Standing Committee
SPC Supreme People’s Court
SPP Supreme People’s Procuratorate
TI Transparency International
WB World Bank

List of Chinese Newspaper

and Journal Abbreviations
CCTV China Central Television (Beijing)
CGTN China Global Television Network (Beijing)
DBCK Dubao Chankao (Qingdao)
FZRB Fazhi Ribao (Beijing)
MP Ming Pao Daily (Hong Kong)
TQSHWZB Tequ Shenghuo Wenzaibao (Shenzhen)
ZGJJJCB Zhongguo Jijian Jianchabao (Beijing)
ZJTV Zhejiang TV (Hangzhou)
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Cases filed and high-ranking officials investigated

and prosecuted by year 74
Table 3.2 Convicted national and sub-national leaders 80
Table 3.3 Convicted provincial party bosses and governors 81
Table 3.4 Convicted high-ranking officials at ministerial level 81
Table 3.5 Convicted party bosses and mayors of major cities 82
Table 3.6 Convicted top executives of state-owned mega
corporations 83
Table 3.7 Convicted high-ranking judicial and law enforcement
officials 84
Table 3.8 Convicted generals and lieutenant generals 86

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

It has been more than three decades since the People’s Republic of China
began to implement a series of rapid and radical reform policies and to
modernize the country that had been plagued by political struggles, insta-
bility, poverty, and backwardness since the early 1980s. Over the years
the world has witnessed the rapid rise of China economically, militarily,
and politically. China surpassed Japan in 2008 to become the 2nd largest
economy in the world by nominal GDP. According to the World Bank, in
2015 China’s nominal GDP reached $11 trillion USD, accounting for
14.8 percent of the world’s total only after the U.S. (24.3 percent).1
Until 2015 China had been the world’s fastest-growing economy with
its annual growth rate averaging almost 9 percent over three decades. Its
GDP per capita grew from $312 USD in 1980 to 8068 USD in 2015, an
increase of over twenty-five-fold in 35 years. By comparison, the U.S. and
Japanese economies grew by a tenth of China’s growth pace in the same
period. Since the early 1980s China has rapidly become the manufac-
turing hub of the world and is the largest exporter of goods in the world.
With the opening of the state to international trade and investment in the
1980s as advocated by Deng Xiaoping as well as a series of governmental
policies and market fundamentals to attract and enhance foreign direct
investment (FDI), China’s FDI strategy has been a great success. Over

1 iMarkets, February 24, 2017. http://www.finance.ifeng.com.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
F. C. Sun, An Ineluctable Political Destiny,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3146-0_1
2 F. C. SUN

the three decades, FDI to China has increased by eighty-two-fold from

20.6 billion in 1978 to 1705 billion in 2016.2
China’s rapid economic growth has accelerated social changes as well
and triggered rapid and massive urbanization in the reform years. On
one hand, the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) created massive
employment opportunities in the cities, on the other hand, the govern-
ment loosened rules restricting where citizens could live and work. Since
the early 1980s there have been continuous flows of rural youth into
urban centers, who bid farewell to the poverty-stricken home villages
and ventured into cities to seek higher income and a better life. From
1978 to 2015, China has seen its urbanization jump from 18 percent to
55.6 percent, more than tripled in less than four decades. The govern-
ment even perceived accelerated urbanization as a soaring testament to
the state’s transformation into an urbanized superpower.3
Rapid economic development and urbanization have triggered massive
flows of people, materials, and goods in the country and stimulated
large-scale developments in infrastructure, real estate, transportation,
logistics, etc. While rising skylines sprouting in China’s large cities have
reshaped their sky landscapes forever, massive and large-scale develop-
ments of highways, railways, subways, airways, and waterways, as well
as telecommunication over the years, have placed China well ahead of
many developing nations, maybe developed countries as well, in terms
of infrastructure development, city building, transportation efficiency,
communication, e-commerce, and energy and resource development.
Take China’s high-speed railway development as an example; by the end
of 2020, China had more than 37,900 km of high-speed rail lines in
service, the longest in the world. With a maximum speed of 350 kph
on many lines, the high-speed railway network connects all the major
mega-city centers in China, providing a fast and efficient alternative to
transportation for its 1.4 billion people and its vibrant industrial devel-
opment.4 Rapid development and enhancement of transportation and
telecommunication have significantly expanded Chinese citizens’ access
to information and increased their physical mobility. As of 2016, China’s

2 The World Bank, 2017. http://www.data.worldbank.org.

3 Adam Minter, “Has China Reached Peak Urbanization?” Bloomberg, July 18, 2016.
4 Xinhua News Agency, “Factbox: China’s High-Tech Achievements in 13th Five-Year
Plan Period,” XINHUA NET , July 19, 2022. http://www.news.cn/english/2021-11/
02/c_1310286160.htm (accessed July 13, 2022).
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Internet users accounted for 52.2 percent of the total population, a

dramatic increase from 1.8 percent in 2000.5 Based on data provided
by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s
mobile phone users exceeded 1.3 billion in 2015—nearly everyone in
China owns a mobile phone, of whom 29.6 percent are 4G users.6 The
numbers of both Internet and mobile phone users undoubtedly rank
China as one of the most connected countries in the world. While inno-
vation and technologies of electronic money payment and cash transfer
originated in the West, their applications and utilizations have been
further optimized and innovated in today’s China. Nowadays Chinese
consumers are definitely the most financially connected and technolog-
ically abled consumer group in the world in terms of mobile payment
methods and money transfer alternatives—using their smartphones they
can make almost any payments while shopping either online or in store
and transfer money with great ease and efficiency, either between bank
accounts or person-to-person. The giants of the banking world such as
JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are starting to publicly acknowledge
the innovation and dominance of mobile payment methods originated
in China, in particular, Tencent’s Tenpay and Alibaba Group’s Alipay.
In comparison to JPMorgan Chase’s annual payment processing of 94
million payments, Tencent, a Chinese technology giant, processed 46
billion payments in five days during the Chinese New Year, equaling to
800 million payments per hour.7
More importantly, what has made China so distinguished and promi-
nent in the reform era is its steady rise as a global manufacturing hub.
Dubbed “the world’s factory”, China has now become the largest manu-
facturer in the world, and its manufacturing sector has ranked No. 1
globally for 11 consecutive years since 2010, producing 28 percent of the
global manufacturing output. According to the Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology, China now boasts a complete industrial system,
with 41 major industrial categories, 207 medium industrial categories,

5 Internet Live Stats, July 2016. http://www.InternetLiveStats.com (accessed July 14,

2022).
6 He Yini, “China’s Mobile Users Hit 1.3 billion in 2015,” China Daily, January 26,
2016.
7 Josh Ye, “Big Banks on Notice that they’re Losing Ground to China’s Fintech
Giants,” CNBC, August 10, 2017. http://www.cnbc.com (accessed December 10, 2020).
4 F. C. SUN

and 666 small industrial categories. The proportion of high-tech manufac-

turing and equipment manufacturing to industrial value-added has been
steadily increasing over the recent decade.8
In parallel with the development of its advanced manufacturing sector
is the rise of China’s S&T and innovation. According to the Global Inno-
vation Index by the World Intellectual Property Organization, China’s
ranking in the index moved up from 29th place in 2015 to 12th in 2021,
a significant advancement in a relatively short period. What highlights
China’s rapid rise in science and technology in recent years include its
successful launch of Tianwen-1, China’s first Mars probe on the red
planet; sending Chinese astronauts via Shenzhou series spacecraft to its
Tiangong space station; the launches of the Chang’e-5 and Chang’e-4
probe on the Moon in 2020 and 2018, respectively; the building of a five-
hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world’s
largest filled-aperture and most sensitive radio telescope; etc. What under-
pins China’s outstanding performance in S&T is its policy and investment
in R&D and science and engineering education. China now ranks as
the world’s number one in producing undergraduates with science and
engineering degrees, accounting for almost one-quarter of the global
total. In addition, China now has outperformed any other country apart
from the U.S. in producing scientific publications and is the world leader
in terms of patent applications, making up 40 percent of the global total.9
While China has been demonstrating to the international community
a huge economic success or miracle over the years and is open-minded
and innovative in furthering economic reform and establishing the so-
called socialist market system, it has been, however, reluctant to push for
reforms in the political realm. Since the early days of the reform, the
CCP has been troubled by a series of negative consequences, most of
which are unintended from a policy perspective, and social issues. One
of them is political and administrative corruption. Concomitant with the
implementation of its rapid and radical reform and the beginning of the

8 Global Times, “China Becomes Major Manufacturing and Cyber Power After Decades
of Achievements: MIIT,” June 14, 2022. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202206/126
8083.shtml (accessed July 4, 2022).
9 Veinhilde Veugelers, “China is the World’s New Science and Technology Power-
house,” Bruegel, December 21, 2017. https://www.bruegel.org/comment/china-worlds-
new-science-and-technology-powerhouse (accessed July 5, 2022).
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

modernization process in the early 1980s, large-scale bureaucratic corrup-

tion began to spread across the Republic. Since then, corruption has been
plaguing the CCP leadership and remains one of the major concerns of
Chinese citizens. Compared with corruption in the previous periods (i.e.,
in the Mao era), corruption in the reform era is more bureaucratic in
nature and widespread in scale. Public surveys since the 1980s, to a large
extent, share alarming similarities in public opinion on corruption and
regard corruption as the most serious social problem of the post-Mao
era. Corruption, along with other social and economic problems such as
inflation and unfair distribution of social wealth, was the primary reason
that triggered the political unrest in 1989. Another tide of corruption
characterized by cases involving high-ranking officials, huge amounts of
grafted public funds, and the moral degeneration of the ethos of the
whole society, emerged in the aftermath of Deng Xiaoping’s southern
tour in early 1992. The purpose of the tour was to further the dynamics
and depth of the reform, but, unintentionally once again, it triggered
widespread rent-seeking and corruption. Corruption in today’s China is
no longer confined to officialdom; it has extended to other social spheres
and is exerting considerable impact on various aspects of the social and
economic life of the citizens.
Corruption in the reform era, in terms of both breadth and depth,
is indeed unprecedented in the history of the PRC. Since the 1980s,
particularly in the wake of the Tiananmen Movement, the CCP has been
initiating and implementing a series of anti-corruption campaigns to fight
this politically deadly phenomenon. However, the CCP’s anti-corruption
campaigns and efforts were knowingly ineffective and, to a large extent,
have failed to fundamentally curb and eliminate the phenomenon. Five
years after Xi launched his signature corruption crackdown in late 2012,
in July 2017, Sun Zhengcai, the youngest member of the Chinese Polit-
buro and the Party boss of Chongqing, was put under house arrest and
then was arrested on charges of power abuse and corruption. Sun, a rising
political star since the 2000s, was once regarded as a potential candidate
to succeed the CCP Party leadership. Sun was preceded by the downfall
of quite a few political heavyweights and Party and government leaders
between the 1990s and 2010s, including Zhou Yongkang (member of
the Politburo Standing Committee and the national chief of the police
and judicial system), Bo Xilai (member of the Politburo and Party boss
of Chongqing), Chen Xitong (member of the Politburo and Party boss
of Beijing), Chen Liangyu (member of the Politburo and Party boss of
6 F. C. SUN

Shanghai), Guo boxiong (member of the Politburo, vice chairman of the

Central Military Commission), Xu Caihou (member of the Politburo, vice
chairman of the Central Military Commission), and dozens of provincial
Party chiefs, governors and ministers. Over the years, particularly since the
2000s, there has been a rapid and dramatic rise in corruption committed
by political behemoths and high-profile Party and governmental leaders
and officials.
Traditionally the CCP, following the perceptions and practices of
the Mao era, relies heavily on internal disciplinary measures and polit-
ical campaigns to fight corruption, coupled with moral and ideological
education and enhancement. However, this approach proves to be prob-
lematic and ineffective. As the reform deepened in the 1990s and 2000s,
particularly since Deng’s well-known southern tour in 1992, transition
and transformation were inevitably expanded into land, real estate, SOE
(state-owned enterprises) restructuring and privatization, banking, as well
as securities sectors. As Yan Sun correctly points out, corruption is likely
to occur under two sets of circumstances. “One is the presence of oppor-
tunity, such as the extensive role of the government as a regulator,
allocator, producer, and employer; the weakening of institutional and legal
sanctions; and the prevalence of regulatory loopholes and legal ambigu-
ities. The other is the presence of motivation, such as confusion over
changing values; weakness of moral sanctions; relative impoverishment;
and a lack of alternative access to self-enrichment.”10 It is obvious that all
conditions or determinants, both politically, institutionally, and individ-
ually, are present in China’s economic reform and social transformation
process. Corrupt activities and practices have spread across the bureau-
cracy so widely and deeply that ordinary Chinese citizens have grown
increasingly skeptical of and concerned about the integrity of the govern-
ment and the ethics and honesty of governmental officials. According to
a report by BBC, the CCP’s corruption watchdog—the Central Commis-
sion for Discipline Inspection—announced in December 2016 that since
2013 more than one million officials had been caught and punished for
corruption, ranging from low-ranking officials to top central ministers,
as well as individuals of the business and media establishments. Today,
various platforms of social media such as Weibo and WeChat have become
popular forums for ordinary citizens to communicate and disseminate

10 Yan Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2004), 4.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

information and grievances, expose corruption, criticize governmental

non-performance and wrongdoing, and reveal corrupt and unethical
behavior and conduct in important social spheres such as health care,
education, environment, food, and drug safety, etc. One popular folk
saying vividly describes the scope and intensity of corruption in govern-
ment: “If the Party executes every official for corruption, it will overdo a
little; but if the Party executes every other official for corruption, it cannot
go wrong.” The outbreak of SARS in 2003 caused devastating conse-
quences both domestically and internationally, but the epidemic inspired
political humor among Chinese people to satirize bureaucratic corrup-
tion: “Lavish dinner and wining, the Party cannot cure it, SARS did
it. Public-funded sightseeing, the Party cannot cure it, SARS did it. A
sea of documents and meetings, the Party cannot cure it, SARS did it.
Deceiving those above and cheating those below, the Party cannot cure it,
SARS did it. Frequenting prostitutes, the Party cannot cure it, SARS did
it.”11 A recent widely circulated folk saying among social media compares
the income-generating potential among the graduates of the top Chinese
universities and jokingly and ironically puts the Central Party School,
the CCP’s training institute for high-ranking Party officials, on top of
the most prestigious universities in China, such as Tsinghua University,
Beijing University, the People’s University, Fudan University, and so on.
The saying goes on to describe that being a provincial or city Party boss is
perceived to be the most prestigious and affluent occupation that would
enable the officeholders to amass immense wealth in no time.
The dominance and monopoly of the Party and government in legis-
lation and regulation, resource allocation, land distribution, and infras-
tructure and development always function as a strong inducement or
enabler for rampant rent-seeking and corruption in the bureaucracy. As
more sectors have been put on the state’s drawing board for reforming,
restructuring, and market mechanism integration, more loopholes, proce-
dural ambiguities, and hence more lucrative opportunities and incentives
emerged for power abuse and power-money collusion and exchange. As
reform and restructuring in land and development, SOE, banking, stock
exchange, and securities further deepen, the breadth and depth of bribery,
embezzlement, illegal acquisition and misappropriation of state assets, as
well as stock and securities frauds, have elevated to a new high and the

11 Ibid., 2.
8 F. C. SUN

value and size of the funds involved in corrupt and criminal activities have
reached an alarming and unprecedented extent and scope since 1949.
Amassing tremendous wealth overnight through corruption and collu-
sions in land and real estate, infrastructure, finance, and securities was no
longer an illusion or daydream. As per Western scholars, reform era China
may have presented the rarest opportunities to amass a quick fortune in
human history. Fairy tales of fortune-making abound, vividly describing
how unlawful businessmen, with the help of their colluders or partners
in government, rapidly became extremely rich in the reform era. In sharp
contrast, however, tens of millions of laid-off workers of the state-owned
enterprises and their families became impoverished as SOEs proceeded to
the restructuring and privatization phase. It is the increasingly widened
income distribution gap and unfairness in social justice in Chinese society
that have aroused widespread skepticism and concerns over the reform
itself as well as bitter grievances and public anger toward bureaucratic
and business corruption. According to a report by the Beijing Univer-
sity Institute of Social Science Survey in 2014, the income disparity that
has been increasingly broadening since the 1990s started to show a clear
trend toward polarization and one percent of China’s population control
one-third of the country’s wealth. China’s Gini Coefficients, a widely
used economic inequality indicator, had grown sharply over the past two
decades. In 1994, the Gini coefficient for family net worth was around
0.45, whereas by 2012 the coefficient had risen to a shockingly 0.73.
It is known that societies with a Gini coefficient of over 0.4 tend to be
vulnerable to increased risks of widespread social unrest.12 Corruption
is obviously a crucial contributing factor to the state’s rapidly worsening
income inequality and growing public discontent toward the regime in
reform China.
The new century has witnessed a dramatic increase in the size or value
of bribery, embezzlement, and public funds misappropriation. While big
cases entailing dozens of millions of yuan may subject corrupt officials to
the death penalty or life imprisonment in the 1980s and 1990s, corrupt
cases involving hundreds of millions of yuan are no longer uncommon in
the new century. In contrast to the severity of the punishment in the early
period, senior Party chiefs and high-ranking government officials impli-
cated in major cases are often sentenced to life imprisonment rather than

12 Jonathan Kaiman, “China gets richer but more unequal,” The Guardian, July 28,
2014.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

capital punishment. As the CCP and Chinese scholars acknowledge, while

the returns for being corrupt have increased dramatically in the new phase
of the reform, the risk and cost of being corrupt have actually diminished.
This may constitute an ongoing challenge for the Party’s anti-corruption
institutions and control efforts. A study reveals that in the latter half of
the 1990s, the economic loss caused by corruption in the form of welfare
and benefits may account for 13.2–16.8 percent of GDP.13
Widespread corruption has been exerting devastating influence over
the society and, as a result, the social ethos, moral standards, and norms
of Chinese culture have deteriorated to an unprecedented low level in
the post-Mao era. As the income distribution gap increasingly broadens,
people who have been economically left behind tend to play catchup by
deploying all means, licit or illicit. As a popular adage goes, no official
will choose to be clean if they are provided with venal opportunities.
This saying, to a large extent, vividly describes not only the mentality
and psychology of the bureaucrats but also the average people in almost
every walk of life. Unethical, immoral, and even unlawful behavior, means,
and practices in seeking gains and profits have become new normal, and
as a popular proverb puts it, nowadays there is hardly any “clean soil”
left for honesty and integrity. It may not be an overstatement that the
Chinese social moral and ethos are currently in a state of crisis, due
largely to rampant corruption, severe social wealth inequality, and other
social injustice. In the early years of the reform, sectors responsible for the
provision of public goods and social services such as housing, electricity,
communication, health, education, etc. used their monopoly positions
to generate excessive profits through manipulation, extortion, and graft.
The often-voracious behavior of the companies has led to various util-
ities being dubbed “tigers”, such as “housing tiger”, “electricity tiger”
and so on, referring to the way the personnel took advantage of their
monopolistic authority to make questionable and corrupt money.14 The
traditional and deep-rooted respect for teachers in Chinese culture is
now being thrown into turmoil by seemingly widespread questionable
and unethical conduct and practices in the education system as headmas-
ters and teachers seek to make extra income by extorting cash gifts from

13 Hu Angang, cited in “Corruption Wiped Out 13 percent to 16 percent of China’s

GDP, Researcher Says,” by Peter Wonacott, Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2001.
14 He Qinglian, “On Systemic Corruption in China and its Influence,” 2011, 8.
10 F. C. SUN

parents, forceful student enrollments for school-run cram schools, and

other questionable practices. In comparison, however, it is the degen-
erated occupational ethics and the utmost profit-seeking behavior and
practices in the health sector that has the most degrading and damaging
impact on society. Surgeons soliciting or accepting cash or gifts prior to
operations, doctors prescribing expensive and unnecessary medicine for
kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies, and patients required to take
unnecessary check-ups to maximize usage of hospitals’ medical instru-
ments and equipment, to name just a few, are common practices in
today’s hospitals. Lack of occupational ethics and widespread corruption
in the healthcare system are destroying people’s trust in and respect for
medical professionals and the system, and unsurprisingly, cases of clashes
between patients and medical professionals, bloodsheds in hospitals, and
even murders of medical staff have been on the rise in recent years. As
He bitterly points out, in today’s China “rarely in civilized societies do
occupational ethics sink to such a terrible status.”15
It may be of diverse opinions to assess and pinpoint the exact stage
and scope of corruption in reform China, given its broadly based pene-
tration and presence in various spheres of the state, economy, and social
life. Andrew Wedeman asserts that as China’s reform advances to new
stages, corruption changes form and shape as well, “becoming less based
on plunder and more based on the buying and selling of public author-
ity”. While perceiving the nature of corruption in China as predatory,
like corruption in Equatorial Guinea and Somalia, Wedeman argues that
corruption in the post-Mao era was “more parasitic than predatory in the
sense that it fed off the growing economy rather than on the economy’s
vitals”. In other words, the damage caused by corruption may be less
detrimental to the Chinese economy than to other transition economies,
given the strong impetus of an ever-expanding economy in the reform era.
However, what is perceived to be the long-lasting effect of corruption is
its contribution to the formation of an informal corrupt culture. Rampant
corruption forms fertile ground and “breeds a culture of corruption in
which corruption becomes informally and quasi-acceptable” in a regime
or society and it can “swamp a regime’s ability to resist” and control.
Once the tipping point is passed, corruption may explode “at exponential

15 Ibid., 9.
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

rates as the odds of detection rapidly diminish.”16 As shall be presented

and discussed in later chapters, corruption in China may have not reached
the level or status of “endemic”, but it seems at least to be in the mode
of “epidemic”.

1.1 Definition of Corruption

The term “corruption” means different things in different societies. Even
in the same society, its implications vary in different historical periods.
Like many other terms of social sciences, the term “corruption” enjoys
no universally accepted definitions. As K. Gibbons points out, “defini-
tions of political corruption have become so numerous as to permit their
classification into types”.17 The major difficulties of defining corruption
lie in the fact that the concept is so elusive and subject to so many
different explanations across cultures and time periods that “a definition
incorporating all of the perceptual and normative subtleties is probably
unattainable.”18 Some writers even explore the subject in detail without
defining it. Robert J. Williams is right when he points out that “the search
for the true definition of corruption is, like the pursuit of the Holy Grail,
endless, exhausting and ultimately futile”.19 In spite of all the ambiguities
and troublesomeness of defining corruption, nevertheless, we still need a
serviceable definition that would provide a theoretical framework in which
the analysis of the Chinese issues can be conducted.
As this study is formulated to examine and analyze official corrup-
tion in a specific transitory society, the definition of corruption, therefore,
should be conceptualized to adequately address various dimensions of the
phenomenon that both the state and the society condemn as corrupt.
The working definition tends to be broad enough to incorporate both
abuses of public power and deviations from official standards, prescribed

16 Andrew Wedeman, Double Paradox: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption in China
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 141.
17 Kenneth M. Gibbons, “Toward an Attitudinal Definition of Corruption,” In Arnold
J. Heidenheimer, Michael Johnston and Victor T. LeVine (eds), Political Corruption: A
Handbook (New Brunswick (U.S.A.): Transaction Publishers, 1989), 165.
18 Michael Johnston, “The Political Consequences of Corruption,” Comparative Politics
(July 1986): 460.
19 Graeme C. Moodie, “On Political Scandals and Corruption,” Government and
Opposition Vol. 15, No. 2 (1980): 209.
12 F. C. SUN

norms, and morality that Chinese society denounces as corruption. This

definition would embrace not only the conventional pecuniary patterns of
corruption such as illicit power-money exchanges but also non-monetary
patterns such as illicit exchanges of power-for-power, nepotism, squan-
dering, privilege-seeking, etc. While some acts may arouse widespread
grievances and resentment among the masses, they appear to be “grey”
or “white” corruption in terms of official standards. Patronage and nepo-
tism might be two apparent examples in this regard. Incorporation of
the concept of deviations from prescribed norms and standards in the
working definition would enable the study to conceptualize and analyze
official corruption in this specific context more accurately. Thus, this study
perceives corruption as bureaucratic behavior and acts that deviate from
the duties of public office and the prescribed norms of a given society for
personal and cliquish gains.

1.2 Explanations of Corruption

There are various approaches to the analysis of corruption in various
academic disciplines, and these approaches probe into various geneses
and causes of the phenomenon and explore respective remedies for the
problem. As in any other society, corruption in China is a very complex
phenomenon, and a variety of factors can be attributed to its genesis.
There exist various approaches to the study of corruption, each of which
explores a particular dimension of the issue and provides specific expla-
nations of the phenomenon. Many political scientists examine a political
system and its processes and argue that the genesis of corruption is in fact
embedded in political institutions and economic structures. There exist
strong correlations between specific political institutions and the pres-
ence and prevalence of deviations and corruption. In particular, socialist
regimes with weak institutions are more prone to deviance, corruption,
and graft. As the state takes on economic reform and modernization, it
can easily trigger surging corruption in the process.20
Of particular relevance to surging corruption in China’s reform era
is Huntington’s well-known theory of modernization and corruption.
Huntington views corruption as a product or consequence of state
modernization. While some cultures may be more prone to corruption

20 Xiaobo Lu, Cadre and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the Chinese
Communist Party (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 14–16.
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

than others, but in most cultures, corruption tends to escalate when the
states start to intensify their modernization process. Huntington argues
that three conditions resulting from the modernization process can cause
corruption in a society. First, modernization involves a change in the
basic norms and values in a society. New norms, standards, and criteria
in a modernizing society regarding “what is right and wrong lead to a
condemnation of at least some traditional behavior patterns as corrupt”.
In addition, the modernization of a bureaucracy and society requires
recognition of the distinction and difference between public responsi-
bility and private interest. Such distinctions would label some practices
under the traditional value system as nepotism and corruption. Secondly,
modernization creates new sources of wealth and power, which, to a large
extent, induce corruption. Corruption helps assimilate new groups with
resources into the political sphere and facilitates connections between
people with power and people who control wealth and resources. The
former trade political power for money, whereas the latter is money for
political power. Thirdly, modernization causes corruption through “the
expansion of government authority and the multiplication of the activities
subjected to government regulation”. These include not only laws and
regulations governing industry, trade, finance, customs, and taxes, but
also those regulating popular and profitable operations and occupations
such as gambling, liquor, and even prostitution. Heavy governmental
intervention and regulation in a modernizing society tend to subject
these sectors and industries to rent-seeking and corruption. Corruption
resulting from the expansion of governmental regulation may function
as “one way of surmounting traditional laws or bureaucratic regulation
which hamper economic expansion”.21
The economic approach to corruption might have been the widely
accepted methodology among China scholars. Originating in economics
in the 1970s and early 1980s, the school studies the theory of “rent-
seeking” and probes the economic aspect of corruption. Rent-seeking is
derived from the economic concept of “rent”—earnings in excess of all
relevant costs; in a non-economics term it may refer to monopoly profits.
Rent-seeking is aimed to acquire access to or control over opportunities

21 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.:

Yale University Press, 1968), 492–500.
14 F. C. SUN

for earning rent.22 China scholars apply this perspective to corruption in

the reform era. They argue that corruption in this period is, in reality,
an activity of “rent-seeking”—individuals “rent” public power at lower
cost in the hope of maximizing their personal gain. Chinese officials are
both “rent-generators” and “rent-seekers” because they “both generate
rent opportunities for others and seek such opportunities to benefit them-
selves by virtue of a monopoly”. In the Chinese context, rent-seeking, to
a large extent, refers to “the behavior by government officials or agen-
cies of seeking illicit profits through a monopoly over critical resources or
regulatory power”.23
Tradition and culture constitute another popular approach to the
explanation of corruption among scholars in political science, sociology,
and economics. The sociocultural approach holds that corruption is
inevitable in certain states as it constitutes part of the culture and society,
and developing nations are in general more prone to corruption than the
developed states as the underlying traditional cultures tend to be the prin-
cipal genesis of corruption. There is no exception in the case of China as
the traditional Chinese culture is often faulted for widespread nepotism,
bribery, and corruption in the reform era. As will be illustrated in later
chapters, cases and empirical evidence abound in the study of China to
support and substantiate arguments and assertions held by the cultural
approach. Derived from a culture that has been traditionally valuing
family, kinship, and friendship norms and ethos, guanxi networks were
(and maybe still are) being broadly utilized by citizens, entrepreneurs,
and officials alike to generate reciprocal benefits, both material and
non-material such as nepotism, to each other. While concerned with a
long-lasting culture of corruption that had emerged in the feudal society
in ancient China, critics blame the CCP for its failure to transform such a
culture. It is suggested that the Party needs to replace the current value
system with a new, stable, and well-articulated moral system to effectively
curb corruption in the Party and the society.
China scholars also seek an internal and organizational approach
to probing official corruption in the Communist regime. Rather than
attributing official corruption to China’s market transition and economic

22 Jacqueline Coolidge and Susan Rose-Ackerman, “High-Level Rent Seeking and

Corruption in African Regimes: Theory and Cases,” World Bank, 1995.
23 Lu, Cadre and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the Chinese Communist
Party, 12–13.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

liberalization, in his book Cadre and Corruption, Xiaobo Lu probes

official corruption in a broader social and political context in which
corruption occurs. Lu argues that “organization involution” is the under-
lying cause of rising corruption in the PRC since the CCP came to
power in 1949. Corruption in the PRC under its communist regime
emerged as the regime embarked on an evolutionary trajectory in the early
years of the republic. Lu attributes official deviance, including corrup-
tion, to the CCP’s failure to adapt itself to a changing environment
in the post-revolutionary period that has weakened the organization’s
(regime) capability to maintain committed, coherent, and deployable
cadres since 1949. The CCP, as an organization, has failed to trans-
form itself through rationalization and bureaucratization that characterize
a Weberian model of modern bureaucracy. Instead of blaming corruption
as a malaise of a transitional society, which occurs when an imper-
fect market dictates the behavior of officials with redistributive power,
Lu perceives official deviance and corruption as an outcome of choices
made by cadres acting within certain structurally formulated confines that
are perceived and judged by the organization (regime) as deviant and
aberrant. As the regime started to depoliticize and modernize the admin-
istrative apparatus in the reform era, “official deviance, which has always
been present, became qualitatively more perverse and quantitatively more
pervasive”. Party officials often failed to put the interest of the regime
above those of the more intimate circles, and corruption, under the
circumstances, became a routine phenomenon.24 In the era of economic
reform and market transition, in which cadre corruption became more
pervasive, serious, and regime-threatening, reform itself, nonetheless, is
not perceived by the author as the fundamental cause of corruption.
Some scholars within China hold similar arguments and blame the
regime’s political structure and power system or arrangements as the root
cause of corruption in general. As cited in Sun, Wu Jinglian, a prominent
economist in China, frequently faults the “intervention and destruction
of economic activities by bureaucratic power.” Academics and analysts of
the neoliberal school are firm believers in the axiom that “power corrupts
and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. They, as a school, hold the
excessive Party-state power and power abuse as the fundamental cause
of corruption and other major problems in the economy and society. The

24 Lu, Cadre and Corruption, 228–233.

16 F. C. SUN

Party-state power has permeated all spheres of the polity and society and
exerts tremendous influence over and impact on the economy and the life
of the citizens. Reduction and elimination of corruption, according to the
thought, call for the restriction and reduction of the government power
itself. As a remedy, they propose a reduction of governmental control
and intervention in the economy and the establishment of a market
mechanism, with measures including SOE privatization, protection of
property rights, promotion of nonstate enterprises, etc.25 Others warn of
the dangers of the collusions between the state agents and businesses and
organized crime at a time of sharply rising income inequalities, and worry
that market transition coupled with rampant corruption would lead to
economic retardation, distortion, bubbles, and social unrest. Corruption
has become a “predatory aspect” of China’s reform and the undisciplined
state apparatus haunted by corruption is hampering fair competition in
China and impeding the reform.26
Still others perceive corruption as unintended consequences of the
CCP’s intended policies. Ting Gong argues that corruption, instead
of stemming from certain cultures or social structures, is in reality a
“product in generative process”. More particularly, in the process of
restructuring the society and the economy in the immediate aftermath
of the takeover of the state power, the CCP’s purposive policies have
resulted in various policy contradictions and dilemmas that have in turn
led to official corruption. In the reform era, for instance, while the Party
intended to revitalize the economy by granting local governments and
enterprises more autonomy and decision-making power and replacing
the central planning system with a market mechanism, a wide range of
power abuses and rampant official speculation had occurred as unin-
tended outcomes of these reform policies. From the perspective of policy
outcomes, “human knowledgeability is always bounded by unconscious
or unintended consequences of action” in spite of mankind’s ability to
observe their behavior and actions, and structures of societies are “pro-
ducible and reformable rather than being given”. Corruption control,

25 Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China, 10.

26 Dali L. Yang, Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of
Governance in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 12.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

as argued by this approach, is in fact a question of unintended policy

outcomes prevention and correction.27
The principal–agent model perceives corruption as illegal and volun-
tary transactions between two parties (the agent and the customer)
with a detrimental effect on a third party, i.e., the principal. A corrupt
agent intentionally abuses power delegated by his principal and devi-
ates from his commitment to the principal in an attempt to benefit
himself from illegal transactions that hurt the principal’s interest.28 In
the public domain, it involves government officials (agents), govern-
ment (principal) and the electorate, the ultimate principal, and citizens/
businessmen (customers). Corruption, in this sense, entails two essen-
tial elements: an illegal voluntary transaction between the agent and the
customer, and the unfaithfulness to the principal. Based on the prin-
cipal–agent theory and framework derived from institutional economics,
Jiangnan Zhu proposes a different explanation to official corruption in
reform China. Zhu argues that given the current Chinese political system,
political culture, hierarchy, and governance framework and procedures,
career advancement potential or the “promotion likelihood” for an offi-
cial, under certain circumstances, can induce corruption. Provincial and
local administrators, according to Zhu, are agents of the central govern-
ment and simultaneously principals of their subordinates at lower levels
in the bureaucratic hierarchy. Fast rise or promotion in the multi-layered
hierarchy serves as a strong incentive for middle-level officials to perform
or to buy off superiors at higher levels or to use both means depending
on one’s “promotion likelihood” and other factors. Determining factors
for officials’ career advancement and promotion generally include an offi-
cial’s age, education level, local performance and achievements (mainly
economic and GDP targets), and personal connections with superiors at
higher levels in the hierarchy. It is suggested that officials with a mediocre
likelihood of further promotion have an obvious tendency or motivation
to engage in corrupt activities. Comparatively, they are worse off than the
rising stars as the high performers often have some distinct advantages
that others do not have; on the other hand, they are better off than the
laggards as the low performers’ chances for further promotion are nil.

27 Ting Gong, The Politics of Corruption in Contemporary China: An Analysis of Policy

Outcomes (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1994), 121–132; 149–162.
28 Osvaldo H. Schenone, “An Economic Approach to Corruption,” Universidad de San
Andres, 2002.
18 F. C. SUN

The mediocre performers would bet on all means including corruption

to come up with more advantages and to cultivate more personal connec-
tions, possibly through bribes, to facilitate and secure a promotion.29
There has been a growing trend of buying and selling public offices in the
Chinese officialdom in the reform era and this phenomenon is justifiably
an attributing factor to the tendency.
In contrast to the views and arguments of neoliberal scholars, the CCP
leadership and the so-called New Left scholars in China trace the genesis
of corruption from other sources. Scholars of the school fault the weak-
ening of state institutions and capacity for widespread corruption since
the reform, and criticize the central government’s “blind faith” and zeal
in a market system and mechanism, especially after 1992, for the deterio-
ration of state authority and loss of control over local governments. Some
scholars in the New Right camp, however, also acknowledge the obvious
causal linkages between deteriorating institutions and surging corruption
in the reform era. While many studies of Chinese corruption attribute
the problem to structural causes or factors such as institutions and poli-
cies, a few recent studies link increasing corrupt practices such as abuses
in state enterprise reform, managerial corruption and labor protests, and
other deviations to the intensified implementation of reform policies in
the post-1992 period.30
The CCP regime holds a quite different perspective on the genesis
of corruption. The CCP leadership mainly takes an ideological approach
to tackling the problem. According to this approach, corruption, first of
all, is the moral degeneration of individual officials; and then ideological
contamination in general and a bourgeois decadent ideology in particular
is perceived to be another major cause. In their view, capitalist mentality
and lifestyle are in fact synonyms of corruption. Therefore, “the corrosive
capitalist ideologies and values” have often been blamed in both Mao’s era
and the reform period for corroding the Party members and cadres. This
approach also relies one-sidedly on countermeasures that are ideologi-
cally oriented to combat corruption. The CCP leadership often requires
leading cadres to “conscientiously enhance their personal moral and ideo-
logical standards” in order to effectively resist the corrosive influence of

29 Jiangnan Zhu, “Officials’ Promotion Likelihood and Regional Variation of Corrup-

tion in China,” A Ph.D. Dissertation, Northwestern University, December 2008.
30 Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China, 7–9.
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

bourgeois ideology. Political movements and ideological education are

therefore important means to accomplish this end. Due to its overem-
phasis on ideological and moral factors and negligence of the systemic
defects inherent in the political system and the economic structure, this
approach has failed to reveal the root causes of corruption and hence
seems ineffective and incapable of eradicating bureaucratic corruption.
Does corruption in China, like corruption in other developing nations
as Huntington predicts, correlate with the process of modernization
and market transition? Are China’s political system and institutions, like
other communist regimes, the root causes of the persistent and perva-
sive corruption particularly in the new regime? Is the Chinese culture
particularly prone to corruption? How can we effectively curb bureau-
cratic corruption under the circumstance of the deepened economic
reform? Is Xi’ Jinping’s signature corruption crackdown able to eradi-
cate the problem and is it endurable in the long run? The questions to be
raised here may be endless. It seems perplexing that in China there has
been limited systematic research ever conducted on this subject, although
everybody is talking about and denouncing corruption. According to
Jean-Louis Rocca, “analyses so far often only reveal various cases of
corruption and conclude by commenting on the retrograde aspect of the
Chinese state”. These articles seem to be “too static—not considering the
historical and cultural dimensions of politics—and too superficial— just
concentrating on anecdotal aspects of corruption”.31 Although Rocca’s
assessment may seem somewhat outdated, his view may still be rele-
vant to the mainstream approach of state propaganda on the subject.
Since the official or orthodox diagnosis of the phenomenon, though
ambiguous and even misleading, might have predetermined the theo-
retical framework of the research on the subject, there still exist some
degree of political risks that go along with research on corruption if one
digs too deep into the subject. This may prevent scholars and observers
within China from tracing sources and seeking answers that may point the
direction toward the political system and institutions of the state.

31 Jean-Louis Rocca, “Corruption and its Shadow: An Anthropological View of

Corruption in China,” The China Quarterly No. 130 (1992).
20 F. C. SUN

1.3 Study Approach and Structure

While acknowledging the relevance of other perspectives to the analysis
of corruption, this study takes a holistic approach to tracing the sources
and to determining the genesis of official corruption in modern China.
Among various theories and perspectives on the origin of the degrada-
tion, the study mainly focuses on the structural/institutional approach
to the scrutiny of malfeasance. Structuralism is a broad concept that
concerns “concepts of societies, institutions, and social groups of various
kinds where these entities are viewed as sui generis wholes, irreducible to
their parts”, and is embodied in several different approaches to corrup-
tion.32 Unlike the modernization approach that views corruption as a
by-product of the social and economic development of a society at certain
stages and focuses on external, or socioeconomic, structural—the main
approach adopted by this study—explores genesis of corruption through
systemic and institutional attributes, i.e., internal, or organizational, struc-
tures. It holds that certain political systems and bureaucratic structures
are more prone to corruption due to some inherent structural defects. In
other words, the root causes of corruption lie in these systems and struc-
tures themselves, and the incidence and level of corruption might have
been predetermined by attributes and characteristics inherent in these
organizational structures. Kenneth Jowitt views corruption in communist
states as “innate in a state structure built along Leninist organizational
lines”. He further points out that three factors contribute to corruption
in communist regimes: (1) the existence of “a composite of heroic, status,
and secular orientation”; (2) institutional emphasis on some components
that associate with bureaucratic hierarchy such as privilege, power, and
status; and (3) lack of a sense of “public domain” that minimizes the
state’s “commitment to society”.33 Jowitt’s analysis is correct but lacks
comprehensiveness. He has failed to answer the question of where and
how these structural characteristics have been generated and to reveal
more crucial systemic factors conducive to bureaucratic corruption in
communist states.
This study is based on a multi-causal model that seeks to substantiate
the institutional and structural approaches to corruption by providing

32 Gong, The Politics of Corruption in Contemporary China, 27.

33 Stephen K. Ma, “Reform Corruption: A Discussion on China’s Current Develop-
ment,” Pacific Affairs Vol. 62, No. 1 (Spring 1989): 43–44.
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

a comprehensive analysis of official corruption in post-Mao China. It

argues that, though a variety of factors attribute to the genesis and spread
of corruption especially in the reform era, the root causes of the issue
lie in China’s social system and political and economic structures. The
main argument of this study is threefold: (1) China’s public ownership
of the means of production under the communist regime and the tradi-
tional political culture have predetermined the nature, potential scope,
and the persistence of certain corrupt practices; (2) the political system
and the bureaucratic structure vest party officials with excessive discre-
tionary power on one hand, on the other hand, the economic reform and
a series of unsophisticated reform policies and programs rendered them
abundant opportunities and incentives for power abuse for personal gain;
and (3) the lack of an effective power-constraining mechanism and the
absence of a democratic supervisory system—a crucial component of a
system of checks and balances in a political regime—aimed to countervail
and balance the increasingly decentralized economic power at local level
in changing conditions have made the bureaucracy more susceptible to
corruption. Moreover, what has compounded the dilemma is the “par-
tial reform trap” that the Party-state is currently stuck in. The conflict
between an increasingly liberated economy and a virtually untouched
political institution can be traced to the geneses of new problems and
challenges and therefore warrants systemic reconfiguration of institutions
and governance to emancipate the regime from the trap. When boiling
down to corruption control, the same argument holds—systemic corrup-
tion calls for systemic institutions and solutions rather than one-sidedly
and heavy reliance on enforcement and punishment.
This study also probes the traditional and cultural domain of the
phenomenon in an effort to contribute to and substantiate the socio-
cultural approach to the explanation of corruption. As illustrated in
numerous cases of corruption in reform China, traditional norms and
values as well as cultural attributes prove to act as powerful, though not
dominant, contributing factors that are conducive to corruption. With
the adoption of the Western governance and managerial frameworks and
gradual commercialization of patron–client relationships, the influence of
traditional norms and the utility of “guanxi” networks seem to be fading
and retreating in the post-Mao era. However, as characteristic attributes
of corruption in both imperial and modern China, traditional and cultural
norms and beliefs prove to have long-lasting influence over the venal
behavior and acts of officialdoms across dynasties and regimes.
22 F. C. SUN

This book is divided into nine chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 provide an

overview of China’s economic reform since the Deng era. The economic
reform and openness of the country to the rest of the world since 1978
have injected vitality into the economy; however, rampant corruption,
on the other hand, has been plaguing the CCP leadership since then.
Highlights of the reform include its origin, policies, programs, processes,
performance, and achievements, as well as challenges, gaps, and dispar-
ities. These two chapters also serve as a backgrounder for the genesis
of official corruption in the reform era, laying out the background and
contexts in which official corruption emerges, evolves, develops, and
spreads. Chapter 3 introduces the common patterns and manifestations
of irregularities, corrupt acts, and economic crimes in reform China. The
two chapters intend to convey how reform policies and malfunctioning
of the government induce incentives for rent-seeking and loopholes of
policy formulation and implementation create opportunities for power
abuse and corruption. Chapters 4 and 5 are the main body of this study,
addressing and discussing corruption in Party apparatus, governments,
judiciary and law enforcement. Contents are organized into three parts—
bureaucratic corruption, regulatory corruption, and corruption in the
judiciary and law enforcement. While pinning down the patterns, actors,
loci, and distribution of various malfeasances throughout the course of
the economic reform, these two chapters seek to distinguish themselves
from the methodologies of other studies by classifying corruption into
detailed categories and sub-categories, accompanied by abundant cases
and examples of the irregularities and offenses, most of which were major
corruption cases that had caught nationwide attention. A major advantage
of the approach is to illustrate the breadth, loci, as well as inducements of
corruption, originating from either political institutions, economic struc-
tures, or sociocultural norms and contexts and also to offer insights
into why and how these malfeasances are derived from the defective and
distorted institutions and governance of socialist China in the reform era.
A portion of Chapter 5 is dedicated to the probe of the linkages and
influence between traditional Chinese norms and values and the patterns
and ethos of corruption in the Chinese bureaucracy and society at large in
the modern day. Chapter 6 discusses irregularities and misconduct charac-
terized by a socialist state in transition like China, such as organizational
corruption, squandering of public funds, buying and selling public offices,
etc. Chapter 7 discusses the impact and consequences of official corrup-
tion, as well as an overview of the CCP’s efforts and countermeasures
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

to curb and stamp out the problem in the reform era. Chapter 8 strives
to trace the sources and geneses of corruption in reform China through
various perspectives and explanations. It takes a holistic approach to the
problem but focuses on structural and institutional factors that underpin
the root causes of official corruption in socialist China. The final chapter
concludes the study. It narrows down to the most fundamental factors
that would catalyze systemic changes in China’s institutions for sustained
corruption control and prevention. While being skeptical of the effective-
ness and endurability of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign in the long run,
the author endeavors to explore various options and measures that may
have policy implications in helping make necessary changes to the current
strategies and institutions of corruption control and prevention.
 CHAPTER 2

The Economic Reform

2.1 Economic Reform

The Historical Context and Rationale of Reform
The Cultural Revolution concluded with Mao’s death in September 1976
and the downfall of the “Gang of Four” headed by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing
in October the same year. The disastrous effects of the Revolution, by
1976, had impacted Chinese citizens from every walk of life. The political
disorder and social turmoil resulting from the Revolution had paralyzed
the legal system, distorted culture and education, harmed administra-
tive efficiency, held back the development of science and technology, etc.
More importantly, however, the Great Leap Forward (GLF), the move-
ment of People’s Communes and the Cultural Revolution had jointly
brought the economy to the verge of collapse. In a peaceful international
environment that favored political stability and economic development,
half of the world had been devoting themselves to innovate, develop
and even revolutionize their sciences and technologies, industries, and
economies by taking advantage of a new round of scientific and tech-
nological innovations, whereas the People’s Republic of China, however,
had come to an almost complete standstill in innovation and economic
development during the same period. In this sense, the Chinese, under
Mao’s rule and the influence of his continuous mass-mobilization political
campaigns and radical production movements, had been left well behind
the rest of the world economically and technologically, and the nation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
F. C. Sun, An Ineluctable Political Destiny,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3146-0_2
26 F. C. SUN

had lost two decades in terms of time and opportunities to innovate

and develop its economy in parallel with the neighboring “Four Asian
Dragons” and the developed nations. From an international perspective,
these two decades witnessed rapid innovation and development in infor-
mation technology, atomic energy technology, biotechnology, and space
technology in the U.S., Western Europe, Japan, and the Soviet Union. In
1957, the GDP of China, Japan, and the U.S. were $36.9 billion (USD),
$30.8 billion (USD), and $440.5 billion (USD) respectively, and Japan’s
figure accounted for only 83 percent of China’s GDP. However, till 1978,
while China’s GDP rose to $122.3 billion (USD), the U.S. and Japan’s
GDP had increased to $2112.3 billion (USD) and $973.9 billion (USD),
respectively; Japan had obviously made a great stride in economic growth
with its economic aggregate in 1978 reached almost eight times that of
China. Over the same 20-year period, Japan’s annual GDP growth aver-
aged 8.5 percent during 1955–1960, 9.8 percent during 1960–1965 and
11.8 percent during 1965–1970. Between 1955 and 1970, Japan’s GDP
grew more than sevenfold and overtook Germany in 1968 to become
the world’s second-largest economy after the U.S. China’s GDP growth
rates in the 1960s, however, averaged merely 0.2 percent. With respect to
the neighboring countries and regions, for example, the economic aggre-
gate of South Korea in early 1950 was comparable to that of Shandong
province, China; till the 1980s, however, South Korea began to rise as an
emerging economic power in the Asia–Pacific Region with its GDP grown
several times that of Shandong. In 1977, Hong Kong’s total imports and
exports amounted to $19.6 billion (USD), whereas the Chinese figure for
the same year was only $14.8 billion (USD). This seemed to be extremely
disproportionate when taking into account Hong Kong’s city status, its
population base, and its limited economic capacity.1
The Republic then was stricken with extreme backwardness and impov-
erishments with the annual income of peasants averaged only 62.8 yuan
(an equivalent of about 8 US dollars). It was estimated that the economic
loss resulted from the 10-year Cultural Revolution amounted to half a
trillion yuan (RMB); to put it in perspective, half a trillion yuan equaled
to 80 percent of the state’s total infrastructure investment over the three
decades since 1949, and exceeded the total national fixed assets for

1 Author unknown, “The Historical Background of the Reform and Opening-Up” (in
Chinese). http://www.wenku.baidu.com/view, September 17, 2017, 4.
 2 THE ECONOMIC REFORM 27

the same period.2 Of the ten-year duration of the Cultural Revolution,

economic growth had been negative for three years. Over the 20-year
period between 1957 and 1976, salary growth overall had been nega-
tive with the average annual salaries of the public sector dropping from
624 yuan in 1957 to 575 yuan in 1976, a decline of 7.9 percent. A
rationing system had been put in place by the government until the end
of the Cultural Revolution, regulating the rationing of various essential
consumer goods such as grains, meat, cooking oil, sugar, cloth, etc. The
living condition of urban residents was generally appalling. According to
data from the Ministry of Construction drawn from a survey of 182
large and medium-sized cities in 1978, the per capita housing area in
urban centers averaged 3.6 square meters. 6.89 million households or 35
percent of the total households in these cities were basically homeless or
households that did not have shelters. Housing condition in Shanghai
was even worse. According to Shanghai housing data in 1984, there were
44,000 cases in which two households had to share one room, and a
cohort of over 260,000 residents had a per capita housing area of less
than two square meters.3
Apart from the economic hardship and damages to the superstructures,
a considerable number of people had suffered a great deal both physically
and psychologically from this political calamity. According to statistics, 2.9
million people were prosecuted for politically oriented “crimes” during
the period, among whom many were imprisoned, killed or sent into
internal exile.4 Another source indicates that among the 12 million cadres
nationwide prior to the Cultural Revolution, 2.3 million or 19.2 percent
of the total were wrongfully investigated and charged during the Cultural
Revolution. The most victimized group were senior officials at and above
the deputy minister or deputy provincial governor level, and officials who
were investigated and prosecuted accounted for a surprisingly high ratio
of 75 percent. During the campaign, numerous people were tortured and
humiliated at struggle meetings, some of whom even committed suicide
to free themselves from these psychological insults. Deaths resulting from

2 Author unknown, “A Review of the Historical Background and the Great Significance
of the Reform and Opening-Up in Contemporary China” (in Chinese). http://www.
wenku.baidu.com/view, 1–2.
3 Author unknown, “The Historical Background of the Reform and Opening-Up” (in
Chinese). http://www.wenku.baidu.com/view, September 17, 2017, 2.
4 Gong, 109.
28 F. C. SUN

prosecution and torture were in the range of over 60,000 during the
Revolution.5 Grievances, complaints and anger permeated all over the
state at the later stage of the Revolution:

the intellectuals were angered at the persecution they have suffered at

the hands of the radicals; young people resented Mao’s betrayal of the
Red Guard movement; workers were tired of stagnant levels of consump-
tion and crowded living conditions. All were weary of continuous mass
movements and ideological indoctrination, and dismayed by the intense
factionalism that still plagued the leadership of the Party after ten years of
Cultural Revolution.6

The harms to education, science, and technology, and culture were

particularly severe. The traditional national university entrance examina-
tions, an important talents selection institution to guarantee supply of
quality students for universities and colleges, were put on hold during the
Cultural Revolution, which resulted in a long-lasting and severe shortage
of talent that was essential and critical for development and advancement
in science and technology, industry, agriculture, and the socioeconomic
spheres. The consequences to the state’s science and technology sector
were disastrous. A large number of scientists were wrongfully struggled
and prosecuted, which dealt a detrimental blow to the capacity of the
science and technology sector. Among the 171 senior scientists of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, 131 of them were investigated
or designated as the objects of down with. 229 scientists in the Chinese
Academy of Sciences system nationwide died as a result of prosecution and
humiliation.7 The turmoil in education led to large-scale school closures
and caused a rise in illiteracy rate for the period. A census in 1982 revealed
that illiteracy and semi-illiteracy in China were in the range of 230 million,
accounting for almost one fourth of the national population. Over the
20 years between 1958 and 1978, social development in China had been

5 Author unknown, “The Historical Background of the Reform and Opening-Up” (in
Chinese). http://www.wenku.baidu.com/view, September 17, 2017, 1.
6 Harding H, China’s Second Revolution: Reform After Mao (Washington, D.C.: The
Brookings Institution, 1987), 37.
7 Author unknown, “The Historical Background of Reform and Opening-Up”, 2.
 2 THE ECONOMIC REFORM 29

stagnant and the quality of life basically remained unimproved.8 In short,

the pre-reform China was facing political, economic, and ideological hard-
ships and huge pressures for change both domestically and internationally,
and remained extremely uncompetitive on numerous fronts on the world
stage.
A variety of factors attributed to the reform in the immediate aftermath
of Mao’s era. The fundamental drive for reform was the aforementioned
internal political and economic situations. The new Party leadership was
impelled to take sweeping initiatives to pull the country out of the crises,
promote economic growth, and restore political and social order so as to
assure the survival and legitimacy of the CCP. The international environ-
ment also exerted considerable pressure on the Party-state. As discussed
previously, in sharp contrast to the stagnation of the Chinese economy
and the backwardness of the society, the so-called “Four Asian Little
Dragons”—South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan—had
made great strides in economic growth and had significantly enhanced
the quality of life of their citizens. The success of its east Asian neigh-
bors propelled the Chinese leadership in a desperate move to seek drastic
changes that would warrant its political survival and economic growth.
On the other hand, China’s relatively independent status in the socialist
camp, in contrast to the Eastern European socialist bloc, allowed it to
undertake reform without worries about the reaction of other socialist
nations. Under these circumstances, Harding suggests that “the reforms
later undertaken by Deng Xiaoping were inevitable “given both the
internal difficulties and external conditions”.9

Reform—Models, Policies, Stages, and Processes

The economic failure since the mid-1950s was largely attributable to
rigid political control and extensive Party interference in economic affairs,
and political priorities such as “class and class struggle” had overridden
economic objectives since the Anti-Rightist movement. In addition, the
flawed system of planned economy modeled after the Soviet economic
system proved to be against the law of market and canons of economics,

8 Author unknown, “A Review of the Historical Background and the Great Significance
of the Reform and Opening-Up in Contemporary China”, 2–3.
9 Harding, 39.
30 F. C. SUN

and had resulted in significant economic inefficiency, low productivity,

and severe shortage of consumer goods and supplies, and widespread low
morale and disincentive for production among workers in urban enter-
prises and farmers in People’s Communes in the pre-reform era. There
existed a general consensus among the elites in the wake of the Cultural
Revolution that dramatic turnarounds in both politics and economy
must be carried out to steer the country out of the disastrous situation.
In December 1978, under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping, the Third
Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee terminated the erroneous
political line of “continuous revolution under the proletarian dictator-
ship”, and formally declared the shift of the focus of the Party’s work
from class struggle toward the goal of building socialism through the
Four Modernizations. Since the Third Plenum the basic state policies
of “reform” and “opening-up” had been gradually evolved and firmly
established, and this policy has been guiding the nation to evolve from a
poor and backward country to the second-largest economy in the world
since 1978. Reform, mainly economic reform, after a period of experi-
mentation and implementation, was further consolidated and designated
to replace the highly concentrated planned economy system in Mao’s
era with the so-called socialist market economy system. The policy of
“opening-up” was formulated to steer China out of isolation, and to
boost exchanges with the outside world in the areas of trade, economic
affairs, science and technology, management and governance, etc. In a
broader sense, opening-up also means internal openness in the domestic
market. As economic reform phased in, government began to gradually
loosen up its grip on industry and commerce, in particular the state enter-
prises, to allow private businesses to play an increasingly important role in
the economy of the state. Privatization of state enterprises, for example,
opened up opportunities for citizens and private enterprises to partici-
pate in the operation and management of economic entities in economic
sectors that had been traditionally dominated by the state.
China’s mode of reform and its trajectory of economic development
since 1978 differ in various dimensions from those of the former Soviet
Union and the Eastern European bloc nations. The former Soviet Union
and its Eastern European bloc took a “big bang” approach to reform
and aimed to make comprehensive, radical, and speedy changes in the
political, economic, and social systems of the state. Russia began with
reform in the political sphere which was followed by large-scale privati-
zation of its state enterprises; in the meantime, dramatic economic and
 2 THE ECONOMIC REFORM 31

social reforms were also underway. Its policy framework for political and
economic reform known as “Perestroika” is mainly a top-down approach.
China, however, adopted a more incremental approach to reform with
a clear focus on its economic system and the market economy. The
Chinese reform started with initiatives to decollectivize the agriculture
sector and to incentivize peasants to increase agricultural production by
granting them greater control of land and farming planning. The success
of economic reform in rural China was considered a precedent to inspire
privatization and reform in other dimensions of the economy. Overall, this
is a bottom-up approach characterized by experimentation and incremen-
tality, a determining factor that has contributed to the success of China’s
economic transition over the succeeding years. While economic reform
proceeded on an incremental basis with prudence and caution, reforma-
tive measures in the social and political spheres were initiated to facilitate
the implementation of the economic reform.
Over the course of the reform for the past three decades, political
reform, seemingly sensitive and elusive under the Communist regime in
the wake of the Tiananmen Movement in 1989, had also been put on
the agenda and began to evolve slowly as economic reform proceeded.
Political reform, in this sense, presumably has various dimensions such as
promoting democracy, legal reform, separating enterprises from govern-
ment, downsizing and streamlining government apparatus, transforming
government functions and innovating administrative modes, improving
the supervisory system, and maintaining stability and unity. Reform in
the social domain is aimed to establish and improve the institutions and
systems of social security, healthcare, education, housing, etc.
The initial phase of the reform formally began with the introduc-
tion of the Production Responsibility System (PRS) in agriculture in
1978, the purpose of which was to replace collective farming (communes)
with household farming (the household responsibility system). Under this
system, land was contracted out to individual households; after fulfilling
the contracts, peasants had the right to dispose of their excess grain and to
engage in nonagricultural pursuits.10 Implementation of the PRS brought
about prompt and positive results in rural China, and by 1985 agricultural
production had increased by 25 percent. Also diversified and developed

10 Thomas B. Gold, “Under Private Business and China’s Reforms,” In Richard Baum
(ed), Reform and Reaction in Post-Mao China: The Road to Tiananmen (New York:
Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc., 1991), 85–86.
32 F. C. SUN

was the sideline production in rural areas. The economic reform in the
agricultural sector led to not only self-sufficiency in grain production and
consumption among households in rural China but also surplus produc-
tion and income to improve their living conditions. The PRS program
was completed in 1983, marking a successful transition in agricultural
production relations.
The early 1980s witnessed the advent of economic reform in urban
centers. With the introduction of a dual-price system to industry, state-
owned enterprises were allowed to sell surplus products above the planned
or assigned quota, and at the commodities market, by the same token, the
dual-price system dictated pricing of the in-plan and the market (above-
plan) priced commodities. Also established in the early 1980s was the
legitimacy of private businesses. With the creation of a series of Special
Economic Zones along the coast or in major urban centers, coupled
with streamlined government regulations, favorable policies, and taxa-
tion incentives for FDI (foreign direct investment), the period witnessed
a dramatic increase in foreign investment in these regions in the form
of foreign corporations/subsidiaries and joint-ventures. These Special
Economic Zones have gradually evolved into engines of economic growth
for the state and directly contributed to the formation and development
of clusters of industries in the inland regions.
The period between October 1984 and early 1990s featured a series
of programs to reform the urban economic structure. Measures and
programs of the sort included enterprise profit retention, granting enter-
prises more decision-making power for production, marketing, wages,
employment, and investment, relaxing price control over a significant
number of goods and materials, “tax for profit” aimed at allowing enter-
prises to keep surplus profits after tax, considerably reducing mandatory
planning for production, creating capital and labor markets, separating
ownership of SOEs from management by subcontracting out smaller
state enterprises to individuals or groups, and establishing a shareholding
system for large state enterprises.11 Statistics show that the number
of materials and commodities controlled and distributed by the state
dropped sharply in this period, from 256 in 1978 to only 20 in 1985;
profits retained by enterprises had increased three times since 1979; as

11 Nina P. Halpern, “Economic Reform, Social Mobilization, and Democratization in

Post-Mao China,” In R. Baum (ed), Reform and Reaction in Post-Mao China: the Road
to Tiananmen, 41–42; Gold, 86.
 2 THE ECONOMIC REFORM 33

a result of price relaxing, items with state-set prices constituted only

20 percent of the total in 1986, in comparison to 98 percent eight
years earlier.12 Meanwhile, loosened governmental control and interven-
tion in private enterprises stimulated the development and growth of
the private sector. Township-village enterprises, firms nominally owned
by local governments but often de facto private ownerships, began to
emerge, develop, and eventually became the rivals of the state-owned
enterprises in the domestic market. The period also saw the decentraliza-
tion of the state/central administrative control and the granting of more
decision-making power and autonomy to provinces and local authori-
ties to boost economic growth and experiment with ways to privatize
the state sector. After Deng’s famed southern tour in 1992, economic
reform regained momentum after a pause of three years due partly to
the Tiananmen Movement in 1989 and partly to the resistance and
opposition of the leftist elite led by Chen Yun to the increasingly inten-
sified reform in the 1980s. Growth of the private economy picked up
again and privatization of the state sector began to accelerate following
Deng’s southern tour. As a prelude to deepening reform in the finance
sector, the Shanghai Stock Exchange was re-established in November
1990 after a 41-year hiatus since the founding of the new regime in
1949. In short, what all these reform attempts in the 1980s and early
1990s had strived to achieve was to promote enterprise autonomy, expand
the private economy, reduce mandatory planning for the production and
distribution of resources, and enhance market mechanisms. The Four-
teenth Party Congress of October 1992 formally adopted the concept
of “China’s socialist market economy”, affirming a transformative shift
from the command economic system to market mechanism in resource
allocation and production.
To facilitate and speed up the process of economic reform, other
reform measures with respect to organizational innovations were also
initiated and carried out in the 1980s. This is considered part of the
political reform to augment reforms on the economic fronts. The most
far-reaching move toward organizational reform was the separation of the

12 Dorothy J. Solinger, “Urban Reform and Relational Contracting in Post-Mao China:

An Interpretation of the Transition from Plan to Market,” Studies in Comparative
Communism Vol. XXII, No. 2/3 (1989): 177.
34 F. C. SUN

Party and government administration as well as the separation of govern-

ment and enterprises.13 Government in socialist countries is generally
subordinate to the Party committee. The Party Committee usually sets
up a variety of departments to oversee their counterparts in government.
Concerned about the negative impact of these dual-bureaucracies upon
economic reform, the CCP leadership, first of all, abolished those func-
tionally duplicated departments in the Party committee system. Moreover,
stipulations were introduced to prohibit leading Party officials from
concurrently holding top government posts. In enterprises, Party commit-
tees were no longer engaged in the routine work of the management;
instead, their major work was confined to political tasks and ideolog-
ical education. The separation of Party committee and government also
induced the separation of government and enterprises. To reduce govern-
ment’s control over and intervention in enterprises’ production and
operation, the “Manager Responsibility System” (Director Responsibility
System) was introduced to enterprises in 1986. The system granted enter-
prise managers all-round responsibility for production, sales, operation,
employment, wage, and benefits.14 Another important organizational
reform attempt was the decentralization of resource allocation, invest-
ment, and managerial powers. Initiatives of this sort had significantly
enhanced local governments’ capacities to regulate and manage the local
economy. By 1988, enterprises run by local authorities had accounted for
most of the state enterprises whereas the number of the center-owned
industrial enterprises dropped dramatically to only 190, in comparison to
more than 400,000 in the pre-reform era.15
The period of the 1990s and early 2000s was characterized by
continuous privatization of the state sector and the deregulation and
streamlining of trade. The years 1997 and 1998 witnessed large-scale
privatization of the state enterprises, and all state-owned enterprises,
except for a limited number of large state monopolies in the sectors of
banking, telecommunication, petroleum, railway, etc., were divested and
sold to private investors and groups. As a result of the intensified privati-
zation campaign, the number of state-owned enterprises had dropped by

13 Oiva Laaksonen, Management in China During and After Mao in Enterprises,

Government, and Party (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1988), 238.
14 Jan Prybyla, “Adjustment and Reform of the Chinese Economy,” In Franz Michael,
China and the Crisis of Marxism-Leninism, 81.
15 Gong, 115.
Another random document with
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preserving the old village intact. Eventually there will have to be a
ring-road round all old cities, like Oxford, which stand at the
intersection of important highways, or the concentration of traffic at
the centre will become unmanageable.
We have hardly grown accustomed yet to the great new arterial
roads, though several are already in use. They seem to me to
represent one of our highest achievements in civil engineering as
they sweep majestically through cuttings and over embankments
with an uninterrupted width of a hundred feet or more. In some ways
they are the biggest thing we have in England, out of scale with our
doll’s-house villages and landscapes, and out of character with our
little winding lanes. It will be years before the trees that line them
turn them into magnificent avenues, but by that time we shall have
learned to accept them and even to admire them. Presumably we
shall see an end of telegraph-poles soon, and that will be all to the
good. But there are other things that engineers might bear in mind.
The great road that runs south-west from Birmingham to the Lickey
Hills, a noble highway in width, is disfigured by tramway poles and
wires. Is that necessary in 1927? Surely the petrol-engine, which has
done much to spoil the country, can atone for some of its crimes
here by taking the place of electrically driven vehicles?
In Birmingham, as in the narrow streets of Ipswich, and—still worse
—in the beautiful Wharfedale valley, is to be seen a more frightful
abortion, the “trackless tram.” There has been a proposal to extend
this hideous system in Wharfedale on a broad highway cutting
across some fine country. Surely motor-buses could serve every
purpose that the lumbering trackless tram fulfils.
The new arterial roads start with a clean sheet: it is to be hoped that
it will remain clean. Recently the Minister of Transport addressed a
circular to local authorities, reminding them that, under the powers
conferred on them by the Advertisement Regulation Act of 1907,
they could take action in respect of unsightly advertisements along
the great new arteries, and urging them to do so. One distinct
advantage of modern road-construction is that the dust nuisance has
practically ceased to exist. Another innovation that has recently
appeared is a small black and white “lighthouse” at every important
crossing. The Ministry of Transport might institute a competition for
designs for these useful but not always beautiful accessories.
The question of road-development is inextricably bound up with the
larger question of town-planning, on which I have touched already in
another connection. Before approaching the vital matter of
controlling the design of individual buildings, we must consider this
wider aspect. The fact is that town-planning enthusiasts are
disappointed with the progress made since the passing of the 1909
Act. We had hoped for more far-reaching results. The nation as a
whole has failed to realise the importance of this question or the
great responsibility that legislation has put upon all local authorities.
Whether from the point of view of appearance, of health, or of mere
business, town-planning is the only national method of providing for
the future.
It is futile to write letters to The Times about lost opportunities:
common-sense would have saved the situation in nearly every case,
for town-planning is idealised common-sense. People who have
bought a house in a half-developed suburb wake up one morning to
find a shop rising on the opposite side of their road. They pack up
their furniture and flit to another half-built district a mile further out;
and then it happens again. So they keep on moving, at considerable
expense to themselves. They lose all interest in local affairs, indeed
they never stay long enough to acquire such an interest, and nobody
gains by their journeys except the removal contractor. But in a town-
planned district an area is set apart for dwelling-houses, another for
shops, another for factories. The position of each area is determined
by local conditions, by the “lie of the land,” by the prevailing wind,
and by the situation of railways and roads. There is a place for
everything, and everything is in its place. This branch of town-
planning is called “zoning.” Sites are reserved for municipal
buildings, for schools, churches, cinemas and all the other
requirements of our complex life. Roads are planned wide where
heavy traffic is anticipated, narrow elsewhere. Thus in a properly
planned area there is no need for large sums to be paid out of the
rates for compensation when a road has to be made or widened,
because the land for the road has been earmarked in advance. A
man who erects a shop in a new street runs no risk of having made
an error of judgment in selecting his site: he knows that this will be
the main shopping street and no other. Thus town-planning is good
business, but like many other movements for reform its inception
was due to far-sighted dreamers. However, it has not yet caught hold
of the popular imagination, and, in the recent case of the East Kent
coalfield, where, if ever, there was a crying need for its adoption, the
imaginative enterprise of some leading Men of Kent seems to have
started the movement which made it possible. This last example
shows admirably how town-planning may be utilised to save the
countryside. In one sense East Kent could not be saved: coal had
been found there, and was too valuable to be neglected, for, after all,
we cannot afford to throw away any of our natural resources at the
present time. Yet it was unthinkable that this lovely district, the cradle
of our race and the playground of half London, should be allowed to
become a second Black Country. So everything that can be done will
be done to preserve Canterbury and Sandwich and other priceless
relics of antiquity, to save trees, to prevent the blackening of the
fields by smoke and the disfigurement of the landscape by tall
chimneys, above all to avoid any repetition of those squalid black
villages that have driven miners to desperation in other colliery
districts. This is one of the ways in which town-planning can serve
the nation.
The development of a modern town is inevitably centrifugal; it
spreads and sprawls outwards along the main roads into the country
unless that tendency be checked. Every mile that it grows outwards
means a few minutes’ extra time for travelling to and from work,
congestion increases at the centre, and the country—as a place for
recreation—is driven further and further away. A feeling that this
system is essentially wrong has resulted in some well-meant efforts
to create “Satellite Towns,” of which Letchworth and Welwyn are
examples. They are satellites to London in the sense that London is
within hail for emergencies: thus Harley Street is a useful resort in
some cases, while the sanctuary of the British Museum Reading
Room satisfies bookworms, and Oxford Street contents the other
sex. But the main object of the promoters was to remove industries
and workers bodily into the country, so that labour might be carried
on in pleasant surroundings, never more than a few minutes’ walk
from green fields. The intention is to limit the ultimate population of
these towns to 30,000-50,000. When that figure is reached, another
centre will be started. So far, neither town has grown very rapidly,
and industry has been slow to move out, in spite of the heavy cost of
carrying on business in London. But the “Satellite Town,” a
praiseworthy attempt to secure the amenities of the old country town
for modern workers, is a factor to be reckoned with in the future. The
new L.C.C. town at Becontree in Essex is being properly laid out on
rational town-planning lines, but is to be purely residential, for people
working in London, so does not constitute a “Satellite Town.” A
remarkably successful scheme for providing something better than
the ordinary haphazard suburb, which normally deteriorates with the
certainty of clockwork, is to be seen in the Hampstead Garden
Suburb. This will never deteriorate appreciably, because its residents
are guaranteed against any interference with their amenities. It is laid
out scientifically, not merely exploited on short-sighted commercial
methods.
But though so much can be done by means of town-planning, that
new power has not yet been utilised to any appreciable extent in
regard to controlling the actual design of buildings. The high level of
design achieved at Hampstead and Welwyn is due to private control
exercised by a Company, but Ruislip, Bath, and—quite recently—
Edinburgh, have adopted the clause in the Town-Planning Act which
allows an authority to prescribe the “character” of buildings, and thus
to veto any design which, in their opinion, is likely to conflict with the
amenities of the place.
There was, as we all know, a great development of municipal
housing after the War. It was encouraged, subsidised, and even
controlled to some extent by the State, which still continues its work
in that direction, though in a greatly modified form. The houses
erected under these auspices have been subjected to a great deal of
criticism, much of it both ignorant and ill-natured. Let us recall the
circumstances. A vast number of dwellings had to be provided in a
great hurry for men who had every claim on the nation’s gratitude.
Through no fault of their own they were homeless. For a variety of
reasons these houses were very expensive, even allowing for the
general rise in prices. There was a wave of idealism in the air, and
the authorities had taken opinions from every reliable source as to
the type of house required: these were to be “homes for heroes,”
with a bath h. and c. A book of designs was prepared in Whitehall for
the guidance of local authorities and their architects. These designs
met with general approval among competent critics, but with some
derision from the general public, who greeted the “homes for heroes”
as “rabbit-hutches” or “boxes.” That was because they were devoid
of trimmings and built in small groups instead of in long rows. There
are housing-schemes good and bad, but most people who
understand architecture and who are prepared to wait a few years,
till hedges and trees have given these simple buildings their proper
setting, consider that the new houses generally represent an
advance on anything done hitherto. Simplicity in building is, within
limits, a virtue, especially in the country.
The design of these houses was entrusted to architects to an extent
never approached previously; sometimes they were the work of
private practitioners, sometimes of young architects employed under
the direction of the local surveyor, sometimes by the local surveyor
or engineer himself. The degree of ability in design possessed by
these several functionaries is naturally reflected in their products. In
that queer book Antic Hay, Mr. Aldous Huxley makes an eccentric
architect, “Gumbril Senior,” voice his views on the design of artisan
houses: “I’m in luck to have got the job, of course, but really, that a
civilised man should have to do jobs like that. It’s too much. In the
old days these creatures built their own hovels, and very nice and
suitable they were too. The architects busied themselves with
architecture—which is the expression of human dignity and
greatness, which is man’s protest, not his miserable acquiescence.”
But Gumbril Senior was a visionary, and most architects feel that
they can do much to save England in her present plight. The trouble
is that they are allowed to do so little.
It is equally possible to expect a reasonably high standard of design
in the other buildings erected under a local authority: its schools,
libraries, and so on. Nor ought one to find unworthy architecture
produced by any Government Department, whether it be a post-
office, a telephone-exchange, a military barracks, or a coastguard
station on a lonely cliff. There was a time when every post-office and
police-station bore the marks of red-tape, but of late there has been
a noteworthy change for the better. Again and again one sees with
pleasure a village post-office or telephone-exchange which
harmonises perfectly with the old village street. No longer are the
designs stereotyped; local tradition and local colouring are
considered. As time passes we may hope to witness the
disappearance of the hideous sheds and huts that survive to remind
us of the War, now so long ended.
Apart from national and municipal architecture, the design of which
must be assumed to be in competent hands, there is a great deal of
building carried out by large corporate bodies who have it in their
power to insist on good design, and above all on design which
accords with local surroundings. Among these are railway
companies, banks, “multiple” shops, and brewery companies. Among
many of these various undertakings there seems to be positively an
architectural renaissance at work, and real imagination is being
displayed at last. The Underground Railways in and round London
are employing clever artists to design their stations and notices and
posters, some of the other railways are providing really attractive
houses for their employees, and both public-houses and banks in the
country-towns are slowly beginning to take on the colour of their
environment. There are two other types of commercial undertaking
which might well follow this excellent example: the cinema
companies and the garage proprietors. Between them they continue
to furnish us with a plentiful stock of eyesores all over the country,
mainly because they are striving to attract notice and because they
always forget to take their hats off to the village street. If the Council
for the Preservation of Rural England can do anything to teach them
better manners they will effect a real service to England.
Occasionally one sees an attractive petrol-station: a few pounds
spent in prizes would produce a crop of good designs from
architects. One hesitates to offer any advice to the builders of
churches of any kind, but here again one asks no more than decent
respect for the spirit of old England.
The toughest nut to crack in all this matter of design is, however, the
question of the shop and the dwelling-house, under which head I
include, as a matter of courtesy, the bungalow. An Englishman’s
house is his castle, and he resents any interference with the rights of
the subject. Is it reasonable to impose on him any restriction as to
the outward appearance of his home, in regard to its design, its
colour, or the materials of which it is composed? It is true that he has
to submit to local building by-laws which prescribe the thicknesses of
walls, size of timbers, precautions to be taken against fire, and many
matters concerned with health. Often he has to place his house a
specified distance back from the road, behind what is called a
“building-line.” But the local authority is not empowered to interfere in
any matter of æsthetics, unless it adopts the Town-Planning Act and
enforces the clause, already mentioned, relating to the “character” of
buildings.
But such “interference” is not unknown in the case of leasehold
property. Many owners of large estates insert clauses in leases
prescribing the materials to be used in building, the size of house to
be erected, perhaps the tints to be used in painting, and almost
always insist that painting is to be done every so many years. They
may also require that no garages, sheds, or other excrescences are
to be added to the building without the permission of their surveyor. It
is quite reasonable to suggest that these restrictions might be
increased to achieve the purpose we have in mind. Thus the
frequent instances that we see of a row of stucco dwellings being
distempered different colours, and thereby destroying the effect of a
balanced architectural scheme, might be avoided. The present ruling
autocrat in Italy has recently introduced a measure to deal with this
very point, and tenants of houses in a street have to distemper their
external walls the same colour at the same time. Much of the
“restless” appearance of modern streets and terraces is due to a
neglect of this obvious procedure. A concerted appeal to large
owners of property to safeguard the amenities of their estates by
further action on various lines might lead to great improvement, and
something might even be done in the same direction by restrictive
covenants in conveyances of freehold land.
Much has been said lately about the necessity for the control of the
speculative builder who continues to provide most of the smaller
houses and bungalows and shops in this country, and this is the
most difficult problem of all. Such control must obviously have the
sanction of the law to be effective, and therefore must be ultimately
vested in the local authorities, for it is impossible to imagine that
Whitehall is to be held responsible for the approval of every plan in
the country. As I have already pointed out, the rural districts present
the most urgent case for our attention, and here control is most
difficult of all. In a great city like Manchester or Leeds a local Fine Art
Committee might be formed of people competent enough and
disinterested enough to exercise this very delicate function in a
statesmanlike way, without fear or favour. Edinburgh, Bath and
Oxford have already led the way: towns like Cambridge, Coventry,
and Canterbury would be well advised to follow suit. Birmingham has
an Advisory Art Committee without statutory powers.
But imagine the Rural District Council of Nether Footlesby dealing
with a design by Sir Felix Lutfield, r.a., for a large country-house in
their area, for it must be remembered that control of design would
apply to houses great and small, designed by architects great and
small as well as by people who were not architects. These worthy
men might reject his plans because they disliked the appearance of
the chimneys; or Councillor Trapp, a plumber by calling, might have
a grievance against Sir Felix owing to an unfortunate difference of
opinion arising from a previous association in building. It is evident
that such a position is unthinkable. Nor would the situation be
materially improved if the two auctioneer-architects practising in
Nether Footlesby, the retired art-mistress living in the village, and the
Vicar of the parish, were entrusted with this responsible task. It
needs little imagination to realise that a small advisory committee of
this calibre would be nearly as dangerous and quite as futile as the
Rural District Council itself. Even if control were administered on a
county basis, there are small counties in England where it would be
difficult to enlist a committee of men whose decisions would be
readily accepted by the bigwigs of the architectural profession. It
seems to me that a very carefully drafted scheme of control might be
organised for most of the large cities and perhaps half the counties
of England, though even then the situation would bristle with
difficulties, but for the more scattered districts—where at least an
equal number of mistakes is being made—the problem seems
insoluble. The London Society and the Birmingham Civic Society are
the sort of bodies that might be trusted to frame a scheme, but even
they would experience many setbacks before they obtained statutory
powers. Much good work in the direction of controlling unwise
development in France has been done by the local Syndicats
d’initiative, bodies which exist to preserve the amenities of each town
or district. A study of the methods used in France, and of measures
adopted recently in Italy, would doubtless be helpful in our own case.
Failing control of this kind, it has been suggested that the builder
must be “brought to his senses,” in the diplomatic words of a writer in
The Times of January 7th, 1927. But, so long as the builder
continues to sell his houses without any difficulty and at a
considerable profit, he may not see any reason for admitting that he
is deficient in sense. Who, for instance, is to be empowered to stop
him decorating his gables with a ludicrous parody of half-timbering,
made of inch boards which warp in the sun? The small builder
obtains many of his designs from printed books or from weekly
journals, and the following authentic extract from a recent publication
shows how it is done:
“Having a plot of land 80-ft. frontage by 120-ft., I should be
pleased if some reader would submit a plan and elevation-
sketch of a detached house, something attractive, dainty,
and very arresting.”
The words I have italicised explain some of our present troubles. The
desire of the builder and of his client, for the “very arresting” house
causes many of the incongruous additions to our landscape.
Something might be done, as the President of the R.I.B.A. has
suggested, to supply the builder with stock designs of good
character, adapted to the needs of each locality; for, as I have noted
before, the use of copybooks in the eighteenth century produced
houses which if sometimes dull were at least dignified and often
charming. But a process of very slow conversion will be necessary
before we can hope to rid the public of this desire for “very arresting”
buildings.
In the control of design would have to be included restrictions on
colour and material so far as is reasonable, but it is quite
impracticable nowadays to insist that a man building a house in a
Yorkshire dale must employ the traditional stone walls and stone
slates: it is doubtful if anybody will ever legally prevent him using the
pink asbestos-cement tiles that clash so violently with the dull tones
of the landscape. Similarly, it is idle to expect that a modern factory
building should be erected to harmonise perfectly with rural
surroundings: one can only ask that its designer may bear in mind
the spirit of the place, and treat it as tenderly as circumstances
permit. But we may reasonably press for further action in the
abatement of factory smoke and domestic smoke, for that nuisance
spreads forty or fifty miles away from industrial areas, and cities like
Leicester—where smoke is hardly visible—are few and far between.
The Coal Smoke Abatement Society has long worked towards this
end, and its arguments are familiar to most people. Its supporters
are convinced that smoky chimneys are wasteful as well as
unhealthy and unpleasant. But it seems certain that we can eliminate
a large part of our coal-smoke by utilising electric power far more
extensively than we now do, by harnessing our rivers and by utilising
all the waste water-power that is running from reservoirs to towns in
aqueducts and pipes.
It has been suggested lately that much of the ugliness of colliery
districts might be mitigated by judicious planting of trees on pit-
banks. But smoke is one factor that prevents this, for it blackens and
stunts all vegetation. Then the recent coal-strike showed that in any
such emergency gleaners would soon be at work on the banks,
grubbing for coal among the tree-roots. Lastly, even if trees did grow
in such inhospitable soil, there is some doubt whether they would be
tenderly treated by those for whose benefit they were planted.
It has been pointed out, earlier in this chapter, that Acts of
Parliament have already empowered local authorities to remove
unsightly hoardings and advertisements of all kinds, so that it only
remains now for public opinion to press them to proceed in this
admirable work. The author of Nuntius, in this series of essays,
prophesies that advertising will not become more aggressive, adding
that a sign which spoils a beautiful landscape is a very ineffective
advertisement and hence that the “few existing” (sic) will soon
disappear. Let us hope so. But one hesitates to accept his earlier
statement that, if there were no hoardings on empty sites, these
would become rubbish dumps. At all events, the recent action of the
petrol combines in removing their hideous advertisements nearly all
over the countryside represents a great victory for public opinion. On
the whole, advertising is becoming more artistic, possibly more
restrained. But house-agents continue to be terrible sinners in this
respect. Close to my home is an avenue, still miraculously
preserving its beauty, though surely doomed. But at the end of it is a
group of seven enormous hoardings erected cheek-by-jowl by rival
agents and completely spoiling a fine vista. I cannot see that any
hardships would be inflicted on those Philistine touts if all agents’
boards were restricted to a maximum size of 2 square feet. Those
who wished could still read them, others need not. There are many
little details of design in village streets—the inn-signs, the lettering of
street-names, the lamp-standards—capable of improvement on
simple lines. In this connection one may mention the work of the
Rural Industries Bureau which, among its other activities in
encouraging the rustic craftsman, has endeavoured to find
employment for the village blacksmith on simple wrought-iron
accessories in common use and has prepared a selection of designs
for his guidance.
Some day a genius may show us how to make wireless masts less
unsightly, or perhaps we may be able to discard them altogether as
science advances. But this innovation has not greatly spoiled our
villages, nor does it seem probable that air travel will much affect the
appearance of the countryside: a few more aerodromes perhaps,
and on them, it is to be hoped, a more attractive type of building. The
air lighthouse or beacon will spring up here and there; another
subject for the ambitious young architect in competition.
But though it is now evident that a very great deal may be done for
the preservation of rural England by the exercise of legislative
powers which local authorities already possess, and by pressure on
corporate bodies and private landowners of the best type, the
ultimate success of the new crusade will depend on its ability to
influence public opinion. Two kinds of opinion are involved, that of
the country dwellers themselves, and that of the urban invaders of
the countryside. Probably most young people now employed in
remote villages and on farms would give their skin to get away from
what they regard as the monotony of rural life, and one must
sympathise with that view. The introduction of wireless and cinemas
will make their existence less irksome, and the phenomenal increase
of motor-bus facilities allows them to travel cheaply and frequently to
the nearest town, with its shops and bright streets. But none of these
things will teach them to prize the country, rather the reverse, for
many of the films they see show them uglification at its worst—in the
ricketty shacks of Western America. It might be possible to teach
them to admire their own heritage by occasional lectures at the
village institutes on town-planning and architecture; not the
architecture of great cathedrals and of foreign buildings like the
Parthenon, but the simple homely architecture of the village church,
the village barn, and the village cottage. A competent lecturer
accustomed to such an audience, avoiding like the plague all
sentimental talk about the glory of country life, might explain the
beauty of old bridges and mills, the simple skill of old craftsmen, in
such a way that his hearers would be less anxious to substitute
suburban vulgarities for everything that their rude forefathers of the
hamlet had made. Recently there was organised, in my own village,
an exhibition of drawings, engravings, maps, old documents, etc.,
illustrating the history and development of the district. It was visited
by a large number of people, including many children, and
undoubtedly it aroused much interest in things that had hitherto
passed unnoticed.
The urban motorist, whether he travels in a Rolls-Royce or a
charabanc, often provides an equally difficult problem. He may be a
superior person of great wealth, who avoids the hackneyed resorts
of trippers because he objects to the sight of beer-bottles and paper
bags on the heather, but, as a humorous artist recently reminded us,
he probably goes to a more secluded common and instructs his
chauffeur to leave the champagne bottles and disembowelled
lobsters under a gorse-bush there, for he has the soul and breeding
of the tripper, and litter does not offend him. The beach X—— in
Romney Marsh, already mentioned, was littered from end to end with
newspapers, cigarette packets, and confectioners’ debris, when last I
saw it.
Untidiness, ugliness, lack of respect for history and beauty, an
insane craze for speed in getting from one futile pursuit to another,
blatant advertisement, sordid commercialism—these are some of the
things we have borrowed from American life to vulgarise our own.
But when Americans come over to England, the thing that impresses
them most—far more than anything we can do in our towns—is the
harmony and peace of the English village and the English
countryside. They feel in their bones that there we “have them beat.”
It is simply heart-breaking, to those of us who know how future
uglification may be avoided and how much of the blundering of the
past may be remedied, to see the process of deterioration steadily
continuing. With more of brains and less of greed, more of public
spirit and less of vested interests, rural England may yet be saved.
 SOME ADDRESSES
The Council for the Preservation of Rural England,
33, Bloomsbury Square, W.C. 1.
The Garden Cities and Town Planning Association,
3, Gray’s Inn Place, W.C. 1.
The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings,
20, Buckingham Street, W.C. 2.
The Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society,
7, Buckingham Palace Gardens, S.W. 1.
The Coal Smoke Abatement Society,
7, Buckingham Palace Gardens, S.W. 1.
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or
Natural Beauty,
7, Buckingham Palace Gardens, S.W. 1.
The Scapa Society for the Prevention of Disfigurement in
Town and Country,
7, Buckingham Palace Gardens, S.W. 1.
The Rural Industries Intelligence Bureau,
20, Eccleston Street, S.W. 1.
 TO-DAY AND
TO-MORROW
Each, pott 8vo, boards, 2/6 net
THIS series of books, by some of the most distinguished
English thinkers, scientists, philosophers, doctors, critics,
and artists, was at once recognized as a noteworthy
event. Written from various points of view, one book
frequently opposing the argument of another, they provide
the reader with a stimulating survey of the most modern
thought in many departments of life. Several volumes are
devoted to the future trend of Civilization, conceived as a
whole; while others deal with particular provinces. It is
interesting to see in these neat little volumes, issued at a
low price, the revival of a form of literature, the Pamphlet,
which has been in disuse for many years.
Published by
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
Broadway House: 68-74 Carter Lane, London, E.C. 4.

FROM THE REVIEWS

Times Literary Supplement: “An entertaining series.”
Spectator: “Scintillating monographs.”
Observer: “There seems no reason why the brilliant To-day
and To-morrow Series should come to an end for a
century of to-morrows. At first it seemed impossible for the
publishers to keep up the sport through a dozen volumes,
but the series already runs to more than two score. A
remarkable series....”
Nation: “We are able to peer into the future by means of that
brilliant series [which] will constitute a precious document
upon the present time.”—T. S. Eliot.
Manchester Dispatch: “The more one reads of these
pamphlets, the more avid becomes the appetite. We hope
the list is endless.”
Irish Statesman: “Full of lively controversy.”
Daily Herald: “This series has given us many monographs of
brilliance and discernment.... The stylistic excellences of
this provocative series.”
Field: “We have long desired to express the deep admiration
felt by every thinking scholar and worker at the present
day for this series. We must pay tribute to the high
standard of thought and expression they maintain. As
small gift-books, austerely yet prettily produced, they
remain unequalled of their kind. We can give but the
briefest suggestions of their value to the student, the
politician, and the voter....”
Japan Chronicle: “While cheap prophecy is a futile thing,
wisdom consists largely in looking forward to
consequences. It is this that makes these books of
considerable interest.”
New York World: “Holds the palm in the speculative and
interpretative thought of the age.”

VOLUMES READY
Daedalus, or Science and the Future. By J. B. S. Haldane,
Reader in Biochemistry, University of Cambridge. Seventh
impression.
“A fascinating and daring little book.”—Westminster
Gazette. “The essay is brilliant, sparkling with wit and
bristling with challenges.”—British Medical Journal.
“Predicts the most startling changes.”—Morning Post.
Callinicus, a Defence of Chemical Warfare. By J. B. S.
Haldane. Second impression.
 “Mr. Haldane’s brilliant study.”—Times Leading Article.
“A book to be read by every intelligent adult.”—
Spectator. “This brilliant little monograph.”—Daily News.
Icarus, or the Future of Science. By Bertrand Russell,
f.r.s. Fourth impression.
“Utter pessimism.”—Observer. “Mr. Russell refuses to
believe that the progress of Science must be a boon to
mankind.”—Morning Post. “A stimulating book, that
leaves one not at all discouraged.”—Daily Herald.
What I Believe. By Bertrand Russell, f.r.s. Third
impression.
“One of the most brilliant and thought-stimulating little
books I have read—a better book even than Icarus.”—
Nation. “Simply and brilliantly written.”—Nature. “In
stabbing sentences he punctures the bubble of cruelty,
envy, narrowness, and ill-will which those in authority
call their morals.”—New Leader.
Tantalus, or the Future of Man. By F. C. S. Schiller, D.Sc.,
Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Second
impression.
“They are all (Daedalus, Icarus, and Tantalus) brilliantly
clever, and they supplement or correct one another.”—
Dean Inge, in Morning Post. “Immensely valuable and
infinitely readable.”—Daily News. “The book of the
week.”—Spectator.
Cassandra, or the Future of the British Empire. By F. C. S.
Schiller, D.Sc.
“We commend it to the complacent of all parties.”—
Saturday Review. “The book is small, but very, very
weighty; brilliantly written, it ought to be read by all
shades of politicians and students of politics.”—
Yorkshire Post. “Yet another addition to that bright
constellation of pamphlets.”—Spectator.
Quo Vadimus? Glimpses of the Future. By E. E. Fournier
d’Albe, D.Sc., author of “Selenium, the Moon Element,”
etc.
“A wonderful vision of the future. A book that will be
talked about.”—Daily Graphic. “A remarkable
contribution to a remarkable series.”—Manchester
Dispatch. “Interesting and singularly plausible.”—Daily
Telegraph.
Thrasymachus, the Future of Morals. By C. E. M. Joad,
author of “The Babbitt Warren,” etc. Second impression.
“His provocative book.”—Graphic. “Written in a style of
deliberate brilliance.”—Times Literary Supplement. “As
outspoken and unequivocal, a contribution as could well
be imagined. Even those readers who dissent will be
forced to recognize the admirable clarity with which he
states his case. A book that will startle.”—Daily
Chronicle.
Lysistrata, or Woman’s Future and Future Woman. By
Anthony M. Ludovici, author of “A Defence of
Aristocracy,” etc. Second Impression.
“A stimulating book. Volumes would be needed to deal,
in the fullness his work provokes, with all the problems
raised.”—Sunday Times. “Pro-feminine, but anti-
feministic.”—Scotsman. “Full of brilliant common-
sense.”—Observer.
Hypatia, or Woman and Knowledge. By Mrs. Bertrand
Russell. With a frontispiece. Third impression.
An answer to Lysistrata. “A passionate vindication of the
rights of women.”—Manchester Guardian. “Says a
number of things that sensible women have been
wanting publicly said for a long time.”—Daily Herald.
Hephaestus, the Soul of the Machine. By E. E. Fournier
d’Albe, D.Sc.
 “A worthy contribution to this interesting series. A
delightful and thought-provoking essay.”—Birmingham
Post. “There is a special pleasure in meeting with a
book like Hephaestus. The author has the merit of really
understanding what he is talking about.”—Engineering.
“An exceedingly clever defence of machinery.”—
Architects’ Journal.
The Passing of the Phantoms: a Study of Evolutionary
Psychology and Morals. By C. J. Patten, Professor of
Anatomy, Sheffield University. With 4 Plates.
“Readers of Daedalus, Icarus and Tantalus, will be
grateful for an excellent presentation of yet another
point of view.”—Yorkshire Post. “This bright and bracing
little book.”—Literary Guide. “Interesting and original.”—
Medical Times.
The Mongol in our Midst: a Study of Man and his Three
Faces. By F. G. Crookshank, m.d., f.r.c.p. With 28
Plates. Second Edition, revised.
“A brilliant piece of speculative induction.”—Saturday
Review. “An extremely interesting and suggestive book,
which will reward careful reading.”—Sunday Times.
“The pictures carry fearful conviction.”—Daily Herald.
The Conquest of Cancer. By H. W. S. Wright, m.s., f.r.c.s.
Introduction by F. G. Crookshank, m.d.
“Eminently suitable for general reading. The problem is
fairly and lucidly presented. One merit of Mr. Wright’s
plan is that he tells people what, in his judgment, they
can best do, here and now.”—From the Introduction.
Pygmalion, or the Doctor of the Future. By R. McNair
Wilson, m.b.
“Dr. Wilson has added a brilliant essay to this series.”—
Times Literary Supplement. “This is a very little book,
but there is much wisdom in it.”—Evening Standard. “No
 doctor worth his salt would venture to say that Dr.
Wilson was wrong.”—Daily Herald.
Prometheus, or Biology and the Advancement of Man. By H.
S. Jennings, Professor of Zoology, Johns Hopkins
University.
“This volume is one of the most remarkable that has yet
appeared in this series. Certainly the information it
contains will be new to most educated laymen. It is
essentially a discussion of ... heredity and environment,
and it clearly establishes the fact that the current use of
these terms has no scientific justification.”—Times
Literary Supplement. “An exceedingly brilliant book.”—
New Leader.
Narcissus: an Anatomy of Clothes. By Gerald Heard. With
19 illustrations.
“A most suggestive book.”—Nation. “Irresistible.
Reading it is like a switchback journey. Starting from
prehistoric times we rocket down the ages.”—Daily
News. “Interesting, provocative, and entertaining.”—
Queen.
Thamyris, or Is There a Future for Poetry? By R. C.
Trevelyan.
“Learned, sensible, and very well-written.”—Affable
Hawk, in New Statesman. “Very suggestive.”—J. C.
Squire, in Observer. “A very charming piece of work, I
agree with all, or at any rate, almost all its
conclusions.”—J. St. Loe Strachey, in Spectator.
Proteus, or the Future of Intelligence. By Vernon Lee, author
of “Satan the Waster,” etc.
“We should like to follow the author’s suggestions as to
the effect of intelligence on the future of Ethics,
Aesthetics, and Manners. Her book is profoundly
stimulating and should be read by everyone.”—Outlook.