Appendix: Chapter 7 Construction of Comparative Corruption Indices
Building on Glaeser and Goldin (Reference Glaeser and Goldin2006), Ramirez (Reference Ramirez2014) conducts an innovative historical comparison of Chinese and American corruption at equivalent stages of economic development. He uses media reports in a bundle of American newspapers to approximate the level of corruption in each of the two cases. The comparable periods he uses are China from 1990 to 2011 and United States from 1870 to 1930. He concludes that corruption in China is not as alarming as it appears, compared with the US historical experience. Furthermore, as America grew richer, corruption declined, reaching a similar level to China.
While Ramirez’s approach is commendable, there is a serious flaw in his method: he uses American newspapers to measure corruption in the United States and China. Using this source, it is no surprise that reported levels of corruption in China will be considerably lower than in the United States. In other words, he undercounts Chinese corruption.
For my analysis, therefore, I modify Ramirez’s analysis in two key respects. First, I measure reported corruption using indigenous news outlets in each case: the same bundle of American papers for the United States and the People’s Daily in China. I apply the same media measure to the People’s Daily in Chinese. Corruption (fubai) and China (zhongguo) are searched together, then deflated by the word “government” (zhengfu). The 1990–2011 data is from the People’s Daily Electronic Edition; for the 2012–2016 data I took averages of index values for the People’s Daily from the China National Knowledge Database (CNKI) and the Apabi Digital Newspaper Collection.
Second, I modify Ramirez’s selection of comparable years, using income data from the Penn World Table, which is the same source the author used. Upon closer examination of his methodology, I find that his selection of comparable years was open to interpretation and could be improved. I selected a different set of years during which the income per capita of China and that of the United States were, in my judgment, closer than in Ramirez’s study. The comparable periods selected for my analysis are listed in Table 7.1.
1 Tom Orlik, “Eight Questions: Andrew Wedeman, China’s Corruption Paradox,” The Wall Street Journal, 26 March 2012.
1 Cai (Reference Cai2015).
2 Also quoted in “China Bets Future on Inland Cities,” Reuters, 3 August 2010.
3 “国家贫困县河南固始:顶风建“豪衙” 伸手要救济 [The Poverty County Gushi of Henan],” Jingji Cankaobao, 29 October 2007. He was not alone, as studies find the sale of public offices rampant in poor regions of China (Zhu Reference Zhu2008).
5 Whiting (Reference Whiting, Naughton and Yang2004); Edin (Reference Edin2005); Cai (Reference Cai2015); Ang (Reference Ang2016).
6 “Hunan City’s Top Cadres Hit with Massive Vote-Buying Case,” South China Morning Post, 30 December 2013.
7 “童名谦被免去湖南省政协副主席职务 [Tong Mingqian Removed from Office in Connection with Vote-Buying Scandal in Hengyang],” People’s Daily, 27 January 2014.
8 “Mediocre official Tong Mingqian” (起底庸官样本童名谦) [Chinese], Southern Weekend (Nanfang Zhoumo), reposted in Sohu, 26 June 2014.
9 The filmmaker Zhou Hao also produced the earlier mentioned documentary, The Transition Period.
10 Dennis Harvey, “Sundance Film Review: The Chinese Mayor,” Variety, 30 January 2015.
11 Pei (Reference Pei2016, 183).
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