The Lions’s Share, Act 2. What’s Behind China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign?

Guilhem Fabre, The Lions’s Share, Act 2. What’s Behind China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign?, FMSH-WP-2015-92, april 2015.

As we have seen in a previous working paper ( « The lion’s share : What’s behind China’s economic slowdown ? »), China’s elite have largely benefited from control of state assets and manipulation of the factors market (land, labor and capital) during the first decade of this century. Along with strong growth and social mobility, the accumulation of wealth has created some of the most flagrant social polarization worldwide, much higher than the official statistics. Instead of taking concrete measures to correct these inequalities, according to the new blueprint of reforms launched by the 3rd Plenum in November 2013,  the new direction has focused on a gigantic campaign against corruption. The choice of the « tigers » targeted at the highest  level reflect an aspect of political infighting.
Two preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the BRICS Seminar in Moscow (October 2014, People’s Friendship University), and in the FMSH, Paris ( January 2015). This working paper will be presented at the BRIC Seminar to be held in April 2015 at the CESP, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. The author thanks his colleagues Victor Rodwin (NYU), Pierre Salama (BRICS Seminar, FMSH) and Zhang Ning (China Centre, EHESS) for their very useful comments and revision of this working paper.
In the same series, the author published a previous working paper, entitled The Lion’s Share. What’s behind China’s economic slowdown, FMSH-WP-2013-53, october, 2013 (https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/FMSH-WP/halshs-00874077).