How do Chinese courts punish corruption? This paper demonstrates how China strategically leverages its court system to signal anti-corruption resolve by transferring high-level corruption cases to local courts in distant jurisdictions. Assigning cases to distant courts insulates the judiciary from local political interference through geographic recusal and prevents the formation of a focal point for elite coordination by creating uncertainty about which court will be designated. Using an original dataset of high-ranking officials convicted of corruption since the 18th Party Congress, this paper finds that: 1) during the court designation stage, the more severe the case, the more distant the court, and the specific location of the court cannot be easily inferred from previous assignment records or case profiles; and 2) at the conviction stage, given the same case severity, courts that are farther away tend to impose longer sentences. These findings suggest that despite the prevalence of local judicial capture and protectionism, the local court system can still be strategically employed as an institutional tool for punishing corruption.

中国的法院如何惩治腐败? 本文展示了中国如何通过策略性运用其法院体系, 将腐败案件移送至距离较远的异地法院审理以传递出反腐决心。异地审理通过地域回避机制使得司法免受地方政治干预, 并通过不确定的法院指定机制避免形成精英协同行动的焦点。基于一份涵盖十八大以来因腐败被判刑的高级官员的原创数据集, 本文发现: 1) 在法院指定阶段, 案件情节越严重, 更有可能被分配至距离更远的法院, 且具体的法院位置难以从既往的指定记录或案件特征中推断; 2) 在定罪阶段, 在案件严重程度相同的条件下, 距离更远的法院判处刑期更长。这些发现表明, 在地方司法俘获和地方保护主义普遍存在的情况下, 地方法院体系仍可以被策略性地运用, 作为惩处腐败的制度性工具。