Martin Jacques on China: Is China’s anti-corruption drive unprecedented?

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Editor’s note:

China has long been plagued by corruption, but implementing measures to effectively crack down on wrongdoing has proven a tough task. Since 2012, a far-reaching anti-corruption drive under the direction of President Xi Jinping has sought to root out bribery and other transgressions in the Communist Party of China and across the country.

In Martin Jacques on China, the academic addresses the key questions: Why was the anti-corruption drive deemed necessary? And how has China approached the task in different ways to other countries?

One of the most interesting conferences I’ve been to was two or three years ago in China. An international conference on the anti-corruption campaign, which gave me quite new insight into why it was important and so on. And at the end we met the person in charge of the anti-corruption campaign, Wang Qishan who I thought was most impressive.

He explained a number of things with a directness and an eloquence which I found very convincing.

VCG Photo

He said first of all, that the corruption was really undermining support for the communist party and for the governing system. And as a result the situation was in some degree of decay and unless something was done about it, the consequences for governance was going to be very severe.

He laid it on the line in a very very strong way. I was very impressed by that.

The second thing was the singularity with which the question has been addressed. I can’t think of any other country in the world.

Let’s face it, corruption is rampant in many many countries in the world, by the way, including the United States, including my own country. And I can’t think of another country that has absolutely driven a campaign on corruption, a long-term campaign and now a permanent campaign against corruption in a way that China has done.

(British journalist and academic Martin Jacques, the author of global bestseller When China Rules The World, is one of the leading Western commentators on Chinese affairs. He is a Senior Fellow at Cambridge University and a Visiting Professor at Fudan and Tsinghua universities. Martin Jacques on China is an eight-part video series discussing issues affecting China’s future.)