Two eagles, one crooked arrow

By E.I.

ANTI-corruption laws and regulations are a dime a dozen in China. Even though there are already around 1,200 on the books, a few new ones have been issued every year since the 1970s. So it will raise few eyebrows to see the government rolling out yet another regulation, this time aimed at local-level administrators.

The new regulation “for rural grass-roots cadres to perform their duties” officially defines everything that is not allowed, ostensibly so that village-level administrators can do their jobs in a less corrupt manner. In reality they enjoy so little autonomy that the directive can only be aimed at other goals: shifting the blame for China's endemic corruption away from the centre and tightening Beijing's control over local-level officials.

Redistribution of land by unseen powers-that-be is extremely unpopular among Chinese citizens, especially those who live and work on it. Because of this, land appropriation has been one of very few policy areas—like the similarly unpopular one-child policy—that grants village-level administrators, at China's lowest level of government, some discretion in enforcement. That buys cover for their higher-ups. The flip side of the coin is that local officials may be especially tempted to misappropriate land (or the funds raised by its redevelopment) for personal gain, without fear of their superiors ever learning of it.

In the 1980s the Communist Party decided to introduce local elections to enlist the public's help in supervising town- and village-level officials. These days about half of the administrators who make up any village committee are elected. The other half, the village party committee, are appointed directly by the CCP. In theory, the village chief (head of the elected body) has more power than the village party secretary (head of the appointed body) and should act as a check on the party at the local level. In practice, he does not. Instead the party reigns supreme in this parallel structure, as it does on the national scale.

The Communist Party doesn't want ordinary people to become so skilled at monitoring officials as to challenge the party—or to create “public-order disturbances”, which is often the same thing. This is why “difficult” villages often have their elections taken away when they produce leaders who question their higher-ups too vigorously.

As it happens, corruption is what irks semi-represented citizens the most. The new land-acquisition regulation enumerates an impressive variety of low-level misconduct that will not be tolerated. Contracting land illegally, seizing land from farmers, hindering investigations into cases of misconduct, accepting bribes, embezzling official funds to spend on private events—all are forbidden and may be punished by the withholding of salary bonuses or by sacking, and perhaps worse. But none of this is out of the ordinary; such strictures are decreed almost as commonly as the crimes they are meant to stop are committed.

The new regulation's wording reveals another agenda entirely. Two separate articles identify the proscribed practices as acts that “obstruct social order” and “damage party-masses relations”. Not exactly the garden-variety definition of corruption. Experts say that the timing of this regulation may be related to Beijing's sensitivity about social stability in the lead-up to the transfer of power in the Politburo next year. Corruption can never be stamped out completely, but reducing visible incidences of it (ie, among local officials, who are for most people the personal face of the party) should help to placate the masses for the time being, experts say.

By reimposing control from above, the central government is tacitly acknowledging that its version of democratic accountability doesn't work and isn't sustainable. Beijing cannot expect rural citizens to monitor their administrators by democratic means without their eventually demanding the ability to challenge policies passed down from the top. Yet it is not at all clear that this top-down fix will be any more effective. Academic studies favour devolving power to low-level governments on the grounds that democratic accountability tends to aligns authorities' incentives more closely with those of the people and thus reduces corruption. A 2011 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, which sought to measure local-level corruption by way of looking at land-appropriation in Chinese villages, found evidence to support this. Although there were still a few egregious incidences of graft, on average the introduction of elections had a salutary impact. Village officials had been deterred in their rent-seeking. This progress looks like something that will be sacrificed by the new rule.

Other experts argue that doing a better job of informing villagers of their land rights and the laws that protect them could give them the means to put more effective pressure on wayward officials. This is optimistic. The Chinese government is certainly more tolerant of citizen activism than it once was. But stability still comes first. The challenge is how to balance a measure of democracy, enough to yield anti-corruption benefits, while at the same time maintaining political control. More democracy doesn't always mean less corruption—many former Soviet-block countries became even more corrupt after political reforms in the 1990s than they were before.

In China's rural villages, where it seems that a dash of democracy was enough to yield positive results, this new regulation seems to be a step in the wrong direction. Then again, laws and regulations in China are often just ideals, signalling to villagers that Beijing is “committed” to corruption. Such assurances are worth little in practical terms, but they will have to suffice for now.

(Picture credit: AFP)