China suffers from widespread corruption. For 2014, China was ranked 100th out of 175 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, on par with Algeria and Suriname, and comparable to Armenia, Colombia, Egypt, Gabon, Liberia, Panama, Bolivia, Mexico, Moldova and Niger. It ranked less corrupt than neighbors Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal but more corrupt than neighbors India, Bhutan, Macau, Hong Kong and Mongolia. Means of corruption include graft, bribery, embezzlement, backdoor deals, nepotism, patronage, and statistical falsification.[1] Public surveys on the mainland since the late 1980s have shown that it 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 corruption, rather than democracy as such, that lay at the root of the social dissatisfaction that led to the Tiananmen protest movement of 1989.[3] Corruption undermines the legitimacy of the CCP, adds to economic inequality, undermines the environment, and fuels social unrest.[4] Since then, corruption has not slowed down as a result of greater economic freedom, but instead has grown more entrenched and severe in its character and scope. Business deals often involve participation in corruption.[5] In popular perception, there are more dishonest CCP officials than honest ones, a reversal of the views held in the first decade of reform of the 1980s.[3] China specialist Minxin Pei argues that failure to contain widespread corruption is among the most serious threats to China's future economic and political stability.[4] Bribery, kickbacks, theft, and misspending of public funds costs at least three percent of GDP. Opinion surveys of Party officials and Chinese citizens over recent years set identify corruption as one of the public's top concerns. Every year researchers at the Central Party School, the CCP organ that trains senior and midlevel officials, survey over 100 officials at the school. Between 1999 to 2004 respondents ranked corruption as either the most serious or second most serious social problem.[4] Similarly, in late 2006 the State Council’s Development Research Center asked 4,586 business executives Almost one-quarter said that their local officials were “bad”; 12 percent said they were “very bad.”[4] In a commercial environment, corruption may be prevalent because many employees aren't loyal to their employers, seeing themselves as "free-agent entrepreneurs" first and foremost.[21] They use their employers as a way to make money, both for themselves and for their "guanxi social-circle network." The imperative of maintaining this social circle of benefits is seen as a primary goal for many involved in corruption.[21] Official corruption is among the populace's greatest gripes against the regime. One folk saying vividly illustrates how the public sees the issue, according to Yan Sun: "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."[3] In contemporary China, bribe taking has become so entrenched that one party secretary in a poor county received repeated death threats for rejecting over 600,000 Renminbi in bribes during his tenure. In 1994, in another area officially designated "impoverished," a delegation of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization arrived for a conference on development, but upon seeing rows of imported luxury cars outside the conference site asked the local officials "Are you really poor?"[3] A rare online opinion poll in 2010 by the People’s Daily found that 91% of respondents believe all rich families in China have political backgrounds. China's housing boom, and the shift of central government policy towards social housing, are providing officials to siphon off properties for personal gain. The Financial Times cites a number of public scandals involving local officials in 2010: for example, in province, eastern China, a complex of 3,500 apartments designated as social housing in Rizhao, Shandong, was sold to local officials at prices 30-50 per cent below market values. Whether the effects of corruption in China are solely positive or negative is a subject of hot debate. Corruption favors the most connected and unscrupulous, rather than the efficient, and also creates entry barriers in the market for those without such connections. Favors are sought for inefficient subsidies, monopoly benefits, or regulatory oversight, rather than productive activity Bribes also lead to a misdirection of resources into wasteful or poor-quality projects. Further, since corrupt payments are usually done in secrecy, they are more likely to be used in the same way, driving the proceeds of illegal transactions into foreign bank accounts. Such capital flight costs national growth

• published: 13 Apr 2015
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