McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014 April, 2014 | Page 10

Abstract
Recent decades of anticorruption practices by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have
been studied monolithically by using aggregate data. This paper rejects such approaches
and attempts to put forth a dichotomous approach. Using quantitative analysis, this
paper demonstrates that there is a statistically significant correlation between the rank of
allegedly corrupt officials and how the cases are handled by the CCP.

T

By Yishi Pan

Literature Review

Some examples are Andrew Wedeman’s Double
Paradox: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption in China
(2012) and Sun Yan’s Corruption and Market in Contemporary China (2004).

A Dichotomous Approach
to Studying Anticorruption
Practices by the Chinese
Communist Party

he Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) has been carrying out a
high-profiled ‘war on corruption’
since it adopted market reform in 1978. The
liberalization of economic activities have
created large incentives for bureaucrats at
all-levels to participate in corrupt activities.
Existing literature largely focuses on the
efficacy of the anticorruption practices by
using aggregate data, treating all corrupt
officials as a homogenous entity1. This
project rejects such monolithic approach,
and advocates for a dichotomous approach
that differentiates high-ranking from lowranking officials, in the hope that it may
shed light on the question of how the
CCP carries out the ‘war on corruption.’
Using quantitative methods, the paper will
show that how cases are handled by the
Party, depending on whether they involve
high-ranking or low-ranking officials, is
significantly different. Since aggregate
data fails to capture the nuances between
the two groups, multiple linear regressions
were run in R using original data collected
specifically for this research project. The data
set is constructed based on the principle of
pairing each corrupt high-ranking official
who was prosecuted between 2008 and 2013
with a low-ranking