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Concealing Corruption: How Chinese Officials Distort Upward Reporting of Online Grievances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2018

JENNIFER PAN  and
KAIPING CHEN
JENNIFER PAN*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
KAIPING CHEN*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
*
Jennifer Pan, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, Building 120, Room 110 450 Serra Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2050 (jenpan.com).
Kaiping Chen, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Communication, Building 120, Room 110450 Serra Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2050
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Abstract

A prerequisite for the durability of authoritarian regimes as well as their effective governance is the regime’s ability to gather reliable information about the actions of lower-tier officials. Allowing public participation in the form of online complaints is one approach authoritarian regimes have taken to improve monitoring of lower-tier officials. In this paper, we gain rare access to internal communications between a monitoring agency and upper-level officials in China. We show that citizen grievances posted publicly online that contain complaints of corruption are systematically concealed from upper-level authorities when they implicate lower-tier officials or associates connected to lower-tier officials through patronage ties. Information manipulation occurs primarily through omission of wrongdoing rather than censorship or falsification, suggesting that even in the digital age, in a highly determined and capable regime where reports of corruption are actively and publicly voiced, monitoring the behavior of regime agents remains a challenge.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 112 , Issue 3 , August 2018 , pp. 602 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2018 

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Footnotes

Our thanks to Jianghong An, Rita Lu, Yanchen Song, Feiya Suo, Zhiheng Xu for excellent research assistance; to Steven Balla, Peter Lorentzen, Guillermo Rosas, Lily Tsai, the SMAPP Global meeting, and Bay Area China Social Science Workshop participants for their extremely helpful comments and suggestions; and to the Stanford Asia-Pacific Scholars Fund, Stanford China Fund, and Stanford IRiSS Faculty Fellows Program for research support.

References

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