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Systemic Irregularity and Spontaneous Property Transformation in the Chinese Financial System*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

X. L. Ding
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Extract

Although the Chinese leadership and international observers disagree on many things about China, they share at least one assessment: corruption has penetrated China's public sector, and the state financial system is among the worst examples. In Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index released annually since the early 1990s, China has been placed either into the bottom group (“the most corrupt”) or at the lower tier (“more corrupt than the majority”). During the Asian financial crisis The Economist even called the Chinese state banks “the worst banking system in Asia.” The Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin, when addressing a 1996 general meeting on Party discipline, marked several domains as the “major problem area” where big corruption and crime cases concentrated, and the financial sector topped the list. The Prosecutor General, in his 1998 work report, urged law enforcers to pay special attention to the abuses of power by financial officials.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 163 , September 2000 , pp. 655 - 676
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2000

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References

1. For details visit <http://www.transparency.de/documents/cpi/index.html>.

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14. Under government regulations, a licensed chop-maker must see a written authorization by a local government office when taking an order for organizations' chops. But since the mid-1980s many private operations, mostly run by a single artisan, have entered the chop-making business. They can make a good income largely by providing services to dubious customers. Chinese journalists informed the author that in south-east cities like Shenzhen and Haikou, one can even purchase sham chops of ministries at the price of 2,000–3,000 yuan per piece. The quality of these shams varies considerably.

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56. The author is indebted to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this summary.

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