Corruption has been a significant problem in the People's Republic of China. Like other socialist economies that have undertaken economic reforms, such as post-Soviet Eastern Europe and Central Asia, reform-era China has experienced increasing levels of corruption.Yan 2004, p. 2 In Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, China ranked 76th out of 182 countries, with a score of 43 out of 100.
Public surveys on the mainland since the late 1980s have shown that corruption is among the top concerns of the general public. According to Yan Sun, Associate Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York, it was cadre corruption, rather than a demand for democracy as such, that lay at the root of the social dissatisfaction that led to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Corruption undermines the legitimacy of the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government, adds to economic inequality, undermines the environment, and fuels social unrest.
Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, corruption has not slowed as a result of greater economic freedom, but instead has grown more entrenched and severe in its character and scope. In popular perception, there are more dishonest CCP officials than honest ones, a reversal of the views held in the first decade of the reform and opening up period of the 1980s. Chinese political scientist Minxin Pei argued in 2007 that failure to contain widespread corruption is among the most serious threats to China's future economic and political stability. He estimated that year that bribery, kickbacks, theft, and the waste of public funds cost at least three percent of GDP.
By the 2000s and early 2010s, corruption had grown to be an extensive problem, impacting government administration, armed forces, law enforcement, healthcare and education. CCP cadre corruption in China has been subject to significant media attention since CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping announced his anti-corruption campaign following the CCP's 18th National Congress, which was held in November 2012. Many high-ranking government and military officials have been found guilty of corruption because of this campaign. According to analysts Neil Thomas and Wang Shengyu, the campaign also led to an overall decrease in petty bribery and open embezzlement. According to the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, China has advanced under Xi on metrics of "control of corruption" and "government effectiveness", moving from around the same as other upper-middle-income countries to well above the average. Other academics have found that recent anti-corruption campaigns have increased the value of personal connections and driven a rise in other forms of corruption. Writing in 2024, academic Lan Xiaohuan states that China exhibits relatively little petty corruption compared with other developing countries.
History
Imperial China
The spread of corruption in traditional China is often connected to the Confucian concept of renzhi () as opposed to the legalist "rule of law" (). Profit was despised as a preoccupation of the base people, while the true Confucians were supposed to be guided in their actions by the moral principle of justice ().
Another kind of corruption came about in Tang China, developed in connection with the imperial examination system.
In the late Ming dynasty, robust international trade brought an influx of silver into China, enriching merchants and becoming a target of government officials. In the early 1600s, literary works like The Book of Swindles created typologies of fraud, including categories such as "Government Underlings" and "Corruption in Education."
Republic of China
The widespread corruption of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, is often credited as being an important component in the defeat of the KMT by the CCP's People's Liberation Army. Though the Nationalist Army was initially better equipped and had superior numbers, the KMT's rampant corruption damaged its popularity, limited its support base, and helped the communists in their propaganda war.
People's Republic of China Getting high-quality, reliable, and standardized survey data on the severity of corruption in the PRC is enormously difficult. However, a variety of sources can still be tapped, which "present a sobering picture," according to Minxin Pei, an academic with expertise on Chinese affairs.
Official deviance and corruption have taken place at both the individual and unit levels since the founding of the PRC. Initially, the practices had much to do with the danwei () (literally, "unit") system, an outgrowth of communist wartime organs.Lü 2000, p. 236 In the PRC, the reform and opening up policy of Deng Xiaoping were much criticized for making corruption the price of economic development. Corruption during Mao's reign also existed, however.Lü 2000, p. 235: "It is true that corruption by cadres existed in the Maoist era."
Emergence of the private sector inside the state economy in post-Mao China has tempted CCP members to misuse their power in government posts; the powerful economic levers in the hands of the elite have propelled the sons of some party officials to the most profitable positions. For this, the CCP has been called the "princelings' party" (), a reference to nepotistic corruption in some periods of Imperial China. The relatives of several prominent political leaders are reported to have generated large personal wealth in business, including relatives of former Premier Wen Jiabao,David Barboza, "Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader" , The New York Times, 25 October 2012. Retrieved 27 October 2012. current CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, and former Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai.Michael Forsythe. "Bo Xilai Clan Links Included Citigroup Hiring of Elder Son ", Bloomberg, 23 April 2012 Attacking corruption in the CCP was one of the forces behind the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
The politically unchallenged regime in China creates opportunities for cadres to exploit and control the rapid growth of economic opportunities, and while incentives to corruption grow, effective countervailing forces are absent.
Both structural and non-structural corruption has been prevalent in China. Non-structural corruption exists around the world, and refers to all activities that can be clearly defined as "illegal" or "criminal," mainly including different forms of graft: embezzlement, extortion, bribery, etc. Structural corruption arises from particular economic and political structures; this form is difficult to root out without a change in the broader system.
Weak state institutions are being blamed for worsening corruption in reform-era China. New Left scholars on China criticize the government for its apparent "blind faith" in the market, and especially for its erosion of authority and loss of control of local agencies and agents since 1992. Others also see strong links between institutional decline and rising corruption.Yan 2004, p.8 Corruption in China results from the Party-State's inability to maintain a disciplined and effective administrative corps, according to Lü Xiaobo, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College. The Chinese reform-era state has also been an enabling factor, since state agencies have been granted regulatory power without institutional constraints, allowing them to tap into new opportunities to seek profits from the rapid growth in businesses and the economy. This takes place at both the departmental and individual levels.Lü 2000, p. 252 Corruption here is part of the dilemma faced by any reforming socialist state, where the state needs to play an active role in creating and regulating markets, while at the same time its own intervention places extra burdens on administrative budgets. Instead of being able to reduce the size of its bureaucratic machinery (and therefore opportunities for corruption), it is instead pressed to expand further. Officials then cash in on the regulatory power by "seeking rents."Lü 2000, p. 254
However, not all forms of corruption are uncontrolled. Yuen Yuen Ang’s research shows that although bribery increased sharply from the 2000s onward, other predatory forms of corruption—such as embezzlement and misuse of public funds—declined simultaneously. Moreover, methods of bribery have become more sophisticated.
In 2010, in a rare move prompted by concerns over stability, Li Jinhua, vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (NCCPPCC) and former long-serving auditor general of the National Audit Office, issued a warning in the People's Daily, calling for better legal structures and greater supervision over the business dealings of officials and their children. He said the rapidly growing wealth of CCP officials’ children and family members "is what the public is most dissatisfied about".
According to a January 2014 investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, more than a dozen family members of China's top political and military leaders are linked to offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands. The report shows that the brother-in-law of China's current paramount leader, Xi Jinping, and the son-in-law of former premier Wen Jiabao are among those using offshore financial havens to avoid tax and transfer money overseas. The Golden Shield Project has blocked foreign news sites that have reported on the scandal.
Among the targets of the anti-corruption campaign since 2012 are Yao Gang, Vice-chairman at the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), China's top security regulator. He was investigated by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in November 2015, after a stock market rout rocked global markets.
A 2022 study by researchers at the University of Navarra and the University of Manchester suggested that certain forms of corruption increased under the general secretaryship of Xi Jinping. In particular, corruption involving CCP cadres and so-called "political scammers" has increased.
The campaign has also led to an overall decrease in petty bribery and open embezzlement. According to the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, China has advanced under Xi on metrics of "control of corruption" and "government effectiveness", moving from around the same as other upper-middle-income countries to well above the average. According to one study, the campaign led to stronger environmental protection, leading air pollution at the city-level to decrease by around 20.3 percent. Another study showed that companies lost some of the political protection that protected them from punishment for environment. The anti-corruption campaign also helped reduce corruption during the battle against poverty that was launched in 2015, with research suggesting that in normally corruption-prone counties, the anti-corruption campaign helped increase poor households’ incomes and reduced poverty by decreasing state expropriation and limiting households' exclusion from transfer payments and formal credit from state financial institutions. In research and development spending, the campaign led to lowered corruption in the allocation of resources, making them "more merit-based and more likely to flow to firms that later produced stronger innovation outcomes".
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