習近平「打虎」：反貪抑或肅敵？ - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學政治學系碩士學位論文 National Chengchi University Department of Political Science Master’s Thesis. ‧ 國. 學. 治政大 Fighting Xi Jinping’s Tiger Hunt: 立 Corruption or Fighting Enemies?. 習近平「打虎」：反貪抑或肅敵？ ‧ er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. n. v i n Ch i U e h n c g 指導教授：寇健文博士研究生：李嘉撰 Advisor: Dr. Chien-wen Kou Author: Jia Li. 中華民國一〇五年七月 July 2016.

(2) 致謝辭生活真是不可預期的奇妙旅程，亦是不可預期的痛苦旅程。正像某位「長者」說的，一個人的命運當然要靠自我奮鬥，但也要考慮到歷史的進程。我也不知道我一個西子湖畔的杭州人，怎麼就跨過海峽，來到了指南山下。儘管從地理上講，台北算是我中學畢業後離家最近的一個落腳點了；但在心理上，這灣黑水溝可能比太平洋還要寬。本科時候在香港大學，有緣與兩岸三地的朋友們一道參與官晴學姊主持創辦. 政治大. 的「海峽尋新香港論壇」。恰逢時代大潮打來，官晴姊作為首屆陸生去往台大，. 立. 而後我也在第二年成為政大政治所的第一位陸生。「台灣」在我心中一直占有一. 學. ‧ 國. 個柔軟的位置，但我卻從沒想到過來台念研究所；若非與那班「海峽尋新」朋友們的緣分，我恐怕根本不會來到這裡。能夠開啟這段旅程，首先要感謝他們。. ‧. 我在 2012 年 9 月第一次走進綜院南棟七樓，迄今已四年過去，其中三年我. sit. y. Nat. 在台灣。短短四年彈指一揮，兩岸間的大氣候卻經丕變。在台陸生的小氣候也變. io. er. 化頗大，迷思漸散，一切歸常（但「三限六不」不動如山，這或許是唯一的例外）。. al. 感謝生活，讓我擁有這段計畫外的人生，讓我體會到「身分認同」的份量，觀察. n. v i n Ch 到「你」與「我」的最善良和最醜惡，親嘗到在大歷史中被裹挾於浪尖的一粒小 engchi U 水滴的滋味。. 能完成政大的學業，首先要感謝的當然是指導教授寇健文老師。老師的視野、思路和學風讓我無比欽佩。毫不誇張地說，老師完全改變——甚至可以說塑造——了我的學術興趣，使我從民主化轉向威權政治。老師不斷地予我以啟發和包容，不計較我的遷延怠惰，允我先行赴美再回台完成論文，又容忍我的碩論項目給他帶來的無數麻煩。我不知怎樣才能完整表達對老師的謝意。感謝熊瑞梅與張執中兩位老師擔任我的口試委員。從大綱到成文，這篇論文離不開兩位口委的批評和鼓勵。本文的早期版本曾在「2014 年中國政治學會年會」上發表，當時幸得周嘉辰老師的評論，給我的論文指出了問題和方向。研究. i.

(3) 所的課程是無價財富，感謝政治系的林超琦老師、黃紀老師、蔡中民老師、盛杏湲老師、郭承天老師，社會系的劉雅靈老師，還有台大的蘇宏達老師和吳玉山老師。承蒙諸位老師在課裡課外的指點，我才能擁有相對完整的學術訓練，進而有機會在學術路上繼續向前走。在台三年，有無數學長姊曾提攜我、幫助我。在政大陸生聯誼會和台陸交流會的經歷讓我與許多朋友相識相知，也受到彭立忠老師和政大生僑組諸位老師的熱心關懷。在陸生中，在政治所，在政大，在指南山外，種種因緣讓我擁有了許多朋友，他們讓我的台灣生活充滿溫暖。我在台灣最寶貴的收穫，就是瞭解到：美好的人和事從來不會相見恨晚，只需要我們足夠勇敢。也要感謝曾經相伴的朋. 政治大最後，也是最重要的，感謝我的父母親。古訓有云：「父母在，不遠遊，遊立. 友，雖然我已不在那班列車上，但我仍希望它能把故人載向美麗的遠方。. ‧ 國. 學. 必有方」；我卻愈遊愈遠，愈遊愈不知其方何在。人世間最慷慨者，莫過於父母親；而相形之下，我輩在面對父母時簡直就是世間最吝嗇的人。爸爸媽媽，謝謝. ‧. 你們。. 此身長為政大人，唯有謹記校歌所詠：身正意誠，親愛精誠。. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. ii. 李嘉. v 年 7 月 31 日星期日 i2016 n U 於台北木柵保儀路.

(4) Abstract Is Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign genuinely fighting corruption, or does it serve to expand Xi’s power? This “hunt for tigers and flies” is second to none in the history of the Communist Party of China. In the first 29 months of Xi’s tenure, 104 “tigers” – corrupt cadres at or above vice-provincial/ministerial level – have been confirmed of being brought down in the campaign, including 4 national leaders. It is Xi’s first sweep of his new broom and tells a story more than anticorruption itself. This thesis. 政治大. studies the early stage of Xi’s campaign against corruption from November 2012 to. 立. March 2015 from quantitative and network perspectives and illustrates the political. ‧ 國. 學. dynamics that drive anticorruption in a period when the new autocrat consolidates his power. First, the thesis examines the temporal and geographical/functional. ‧. distribution of tigers and concludes that it is a thorough campaign fueled by the. sit. y. Nat. autocrat’s increase of power. The process of Xi Jinping’s consolidating power pushes. io. er. through anticorruption. Second, analysis of the tiger succession shows that Xi Jinping. al. does not often apply outsider succession to fill the vacancies by his own loyalists. It. n. v i n Ccampaign suggests that the anticorruption notUdirectly expand his power by h e n gdoes h c i personnel appointment. Third, this thesis draws a colleague network of the fallen. tigers and uses centrality measurement to identify factional structure in the sociogram. Network analysis helps find out whether Xi Jinping takes advantage of the tiger hunt to strike down his enemies and, if he does, who he targets at. It turns out that there are factional groups that Xi cracks down, and the purge creates a favorable climate for Xi’s transcendence from a first-among-equals leader in power-sharing arrangements to an unchallengeable autocrat.. Keywords: anticorruption, China, Xi Jinping, network analysis, faction. iii.

(5) Contents. Tables............................................................................................................................ vi Figures .........................................................................................................................vii Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1.1. Background and Research Question .............................................................................. 1 1.2. Literature Review ........................................................................................................... 5 1.3. Main Argument ............................................................................................................ 13 1.4. Research Design ........................................................................................................... 17 1.4.1. Unit of Analysis .................................................................................................... 18. 政治大. 1.4.2. Time Scope ........................................................................................................... 19 1.4.3. Tiger Distribution and Succession ........................................................................ 21. 立. 1.4.4. Colleague Network of Tigers ................................................................................ 22. ‧ 國. 學. 1.4.5. Source of Data ...................................................................................................... 24 1.5. Summary ...................................................................................................................... 25. Chapter 2: Tiger Distribution and Succession ........................................................ 27. ‧. sit. y. Nat. 2.1. Temporal Distribution .................................................................................................. 27 2.2. Geographical/Functional Distribution .......................................................................... 32 2.2.1. Central Civilians ................................................................................................... 33. er. io. 2.2.2. Local Civilians ...................................................................................................... 35 2.2.3. Military Officers ................................................................................................... 37 2.3. Succession and Outsider Successors ............................................................................ 40. al. n. v i n 2.4. Summary ...................................................................................................................... 45 Ch engchi U Chapter 3: Colleague Network of Tigers ................................................................. 47 3.1. Coding Career Tracks of Tigers ................................................................................... 47 3.2. Formation of Colleague Ties ........................................................................................ 50 3.3. Circles in the Sociogram .............................................................................................. 54 3.4. Centrality and Network Positions ................................................................................ 59 3.5. Summary ...................................................................................................................... 64. Chapter 4: Factions and Circles in Tiger Network ................................................. 66 4.1. Zhou Yongkang Circle: the Campaign’s Priority Target .............................................. 66 4.2. Su Rong Circle: the Second Largest Faction................................................................ 69 4.3. Bai Enpei Circle: A Yunnan-Based Faction ................................................................. 71 4.4. Xu Caihou Circle: Less Significant Than Expected ..................................................... 72 4.5. Shanxi Circle and Ling Jihua: Nest Corruption, Not Faction ...................................... 73 4.6. Summary ...................................................................................................................... 75. iv.

(6) Chapter 5: Conclusion ............................................................................................... 78 5.1. Results and Explanations ............................................................................................. 78 5.1.1. Anticorruption: More Than Power Struggle ......................................................... 78 5.1.2. Power Consolidation: the Fuel of Anticorruption ................................................. 79 5.1.3. Factions: Cracked Down to Create A Climate ...................................................... 80 5.2. Limitations and Future Research ................................................................................. 80 5.2.1. Boundary of Network ........................................................................................... 81 5.2.2. Colleagueship and Other Social Relations ............................................................ 82 5.2.3. Anticorruption and Central Inspection System ..................................................... 83 5.3. Summary ...................................................................................................................... 84. References ................................................................................................................... 86 Academic Literature ............................................................................................................ 86 Non-Academic Literature.................................................................................................... 95. 治政 Appendix 1: List of Tigers in the Anticorruption Campaign............................................. 103 大 Appendix 2: List of Relevant 立Institutions ......................................................................... 109. Appendices ................................................................................................................ 103. ‧ 國. 學. Appendix 3: List of Chinese Names ..................................................................................115 Appendix 4: Administrative Rank Levels of Tigers ...........................................................117 Appendix 5: List of Abbreviations .................................................................................... 121. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. v. i n U. v.

(7) Tables Table 1-1: Number of Tigers in Xi Jinping’s Early Tenure ............................................ 4 Table 2-1: Central Civilian Tigers ................................................................................ 34 Table 2-2: Genuine Outsider Succession Cases ........................................................... 44 Table 3-1: Top 10 Tigers in PageRank Score ............................................................... 62 Table 4-1: Circles in Summary .................................................................................... 76. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vi. i n U. v.

(8) Figures. Figure 2-1: Temporal Distribution of Tigers ................................................................ 28 Figure 2-2: Provincial Distribution of Tigers............................................................... 36 Figure 2-3: PLA Tigers in Combat Units ..................................................................... 37 Figure 2-4: PLA Tigers in Non-Combat Units ............................................................. 38 Figure 2-5: Frequency of Insider and Outsider Succession ......................................... 42 Figure 3-1: Tie Formation Exemplified ....................................................................... 51. 治政 Figure 3-3: PageRank of Circles .................................................................................. 63 大立 Figure 3-2: Colleague Network of Tigers .................................................................... 55. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vii. i n U. v.

(9) Chapter 1: Introduction In the first chapter, we portray a general picture of the ongoing anticorruption campaign in the Communist Party of China (CCP) under Xi Jinping’s (習近平) command. We associate it with the acts of Xi’s two predecessors, Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), and establish a pattern that anticorruption upsurge is observed in all of their early tenures. We then raise the question of what motivate these anticorruption campaigns: a pursuit of either regime legitimacy from good. 政治大. governance, or personal autocracy by purging enemies.. 立. ‧ 國. 學. This chapter reviews the relevant literature on corruption, especially in the context of communist China, and tries to answer it in an analytical framework provided by. ‧. authoritarian politics theories. Anticorruption campaign brings about an environment. sit. y. Nat. that a new autocrat needs for the purpose of breaking the power-sharing arrangements. io. al. er. that cage him. The last section of this chapter lays out the research design of this. n. thesis, including its unit of analysis, time scope, empirical evidence to be examined. Ch. and strategies to do that, and source of data.. engchi. i n U. v. 1.1. Background and Research Question Why do all the three paramount leaders of CCP in the post-Deng era begin their tenures by a furious anticorruption campaign? It seems an established pattern that the coronation of a new autocrat is followed by the downfall of high-ranking cadres for corruption. Jiang Zemin took the office of the General Secretary of CCP in 1989, yet he lived in the shadow of party elders like Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) and Chen Yun (陳雲) and military strongmen like the Yang Brothers (楊家將, yang jia jiang). It was not. 1.

(10) until the Fourth Plenary Session of the 14th Central Committee1 in September 1994 that Jiang truly ruled the party-state in name and in reality (Kou, 2010a). Soon after that, Chen Xitong (陳希同), the Party Chief of Beijing Municipality who had been for long rumored as a major challenger of Jiang’s authority, was put under inspection by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) in July 1995 and finally sentenced to imprisonment in 1998. Chen was the only member of the Political Bureau of CCP Central Committee (Politburo) who was investigated and put in jail for corruption during Jiang’s rule.. 政治大 to the annual reports of Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the number of senior state 立. A similar drama was put on show in the early stage of Hu Jintao’s tenure. According. ‧ 國. 學. officials – either defined as those at or above vice-divisional level or as those at or. above vice-provincial/ministerial level2 – who are prosecuted for corruption reaches. ‧. its peak of Hu Jintao’s entire tenure in 2004 (Chang, 2014). The year of 2004 is the second full year after Hu became General Secretary and he fully took over the. y. Nat. sit. supreme power no earlier than the September of this year when he was elected the. n. al. er. io. Chairmen of Central Military Commission (CMC)3 at the Fourth Plenary Session of. i n U. v. the 16th Central Committee. Two years later, his Politburo decided to investigate into. Ch. engchi. Chen Liangyu (陳良宇), the Party Chief of Shanghai Municipality and a Politburo member, for reasons of corruption in September 2006.. Xi Jinping, like his predecessors, began his rule with an iron fist punch against corruption. The scale of his campaign has gone beyond expectations of most Chinese 1. In this thesis, “Central Committee” refers to the CCP Central Committee unless specified otherwise. The full-/vice-provincial level is alternatively and equally known as full-/vice-ministerial level. The usage of these two alternatives depends on the administrative context of discussion. This thesis uses “full-/vice-provincial level” to refer to either of them. 3 There are two bodies sharing the same name of CMC in China: one as a party organ and the other as a state organ. The party CMC and state CMC are institutionally parallel in the sense that they are exactly the same organ composed of the same leadership, supported by the same staff and exercising the same powers. The tenures of two CMCs do not completely coincide: the party CMC is elected in party congresses, usually in the autumn or winter of a year, while the state CMC is re-elected accordingly in the following National People’s Congress in the next March. During the brief periods of different leaderships, the party CMC is in actual military command. Therefore, “CMC” in this thesis refers to the party organ unless specified otherwise. 2. 2.

(11) nationals and foreign analysts. Up till March 2015, Xi has put 104 tigers4 under disciplinary inspection (see Table 1-1 and Appendix 1), including 4 incumbent or retired national leaders, 4 full members of Central Committee, 10 alternative members of Central Committee and 2 CCDI members. Even retirement5 is no longer a safe exit. Zhou Yongkang (周永康), the former security tsar and a Standing Member of the 17th Politburo, and Xu Caihou (徐才厚), a retired Vice-Chairman of CMC, are often referred to as the two symbolic figures down in the campaign to prove the seriousness of Xi Jinping in combatting corruption. Zhou is the first and so far the only full-state-level leader that has ever been taken down for corruption in CCP history and. 政治大. Xu was the highest-ranking military officer on this 90-year long list by the time of his. 立. downfall.6. ‧ 國. 學. What makes Xi’s campaign different from the precedents of Jiang and Hu is its. ‧. massive scale. The number of tigers in the early stage of Xi’s tenure far exceeds that of the same periods of Jiang and Hu. In his first two years from 2002 to 2004, Hu. y. Nat. sit. Jintao brought down only 19 tigers, while Xi Jinping put down 82 tigers from 2012 to. n. al. er. io. 2014, more than 4 times the number of Hu. In fact, before the 18th Party Congress, the. i n U. v. total number of CCP cadres at or above vice-provincial level who are punished. Ch. engchi. because of corruption is merely 133 in the entire history of the party (Yang, 2013).7 It takes Xi 29 months to strike down almost as many tigers as all his predecessors did in total.. 4. “Tiger” in this thesis is defined as a senior cadre at or above vice-provincial level or a military officer at or above vice-army level who is disciplined due to corruption. For a brief illustration of relevant administrative rank levels of CCP cadres, see Appendix 4. 5 “Retirement” in this thesis refers to not only full retirement but semi-retirement too, the latter of which is known as “retirement from leading posts” (退居二線, tuiju erxian). Accordingly, a retired cadre in this thesis can be completely relieved from any public service or be shifted to those “second-front” (二線, erxian) units, including but not limited to People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). 6 Guo Boxiong (郭伯雄) has surpassed Xu Caihou in the military tiger ranking. Falling in April 2015, Guo was a Vice-Chairman of CMC between 2002 and 2012, but he ranked second in CMC members while Xu ranked third. 7 The original figure in Yang’s statistics is 136 but it includes 3 tigers struck down by Xi Jinping. According to another study (Zhang, 2012), there have been 76 cadres, at or above vice-provincial level, criminalized for bribery in CCP history. 3.

(12) As we see from Table 1-1, 72 civilian cadres and 32 military officers were put under disciplinary inspection for corruption in the first 29 months of Xi’s rule. The only full-state-level leader among them is Zhou Yongkang. The other two vice-state-level civilian leaders are Su Rong (蘇榮) and Ling Jihua (令計劃), both as Vice-Chairman of the National Committee of CPPCC. Among the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers, the only national leader is Xu Caihou.. Table 1-1: Number of Tigers in Xi Jinping’s Early Tenure 1. Rank Level Number of Tiger. 立. ‧ 國. Note:. 政治大 VMR 6. 學. Rank Level2 Number of Tiger. Civilian Cadres FS VS 1 2 Military Officers VS FMR 1 0. FP 7. VP 62. Total 72. FA 10. VA 15. Total 32. ‧. 1. Civilian rank levels: FS: full-state level; VS: vice-state level; FP: full-provincial level; VP: vice-provincial level.. VS: vice-state level;. FMR: full-military-regional. level; VMR:. y. Nat. 2. Military rank levels:. sit. vice-military-regional level; FA: full-army level; VA: vice-army level. An army officer at. io. er. full-/vice-army level is generally equal to a civilian official at full-/vice-provincial level. Full- and vice-military-regional levels in army ranking are between full-/vice-state and full-/vice-provincial. al. n. levels in civilian ranking.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Against the background of this massive scale, is corruption the sole consideration when Xi Jinping’s tiger-hunting machine looks for targets? The Bo Xilai (薄熙來) scandal from early 2012 to late 2013, full of Shakespearean drama, gives us a glimpse of the fierce factional infighting going on in Beijing politics. Many suspect, quite reasonably, that Xi may need to take advantage of a political movement, e.g. in the name of cleansing corruption, to fight his enemies so that he can quickly consolidate authority. The full-scale purge of Zhou Yongkang’s followers in this anticorruption campaign seems to confirm the theory. Further, it has come to our attention that there have been no major princeling (太子黨) or member of the Shanghai Gang (上海幫) 4.

(13) on the tiger list. Does this imply an element of factional politics in Xi’s corruption fighting? Is Xi Jinping actually fighting corruption, or merely fighting his enemies?. This is the question of this thesis. The cadres under study are those at or above vice-provincial level and were brought down in Xi Jinping’s tiger hunt from November 2012 to March 2015. The thesis focuses only on the most high-ranking corruption cases because they are more “political” than thousands of lower-ranking cases. A study on these tigers is expected to tell us more about the factional dynamics, if any, in anticorruption.. 政治大 The time scope of this thesis serves theoretical purposes. The early stage of an 立. ‧ 國. 學. autocrat’s rule is a period of uncertainties. On one hand, the new autocrat attempts to consolidate his power among regime elites and set new parameters (or as Xi himself. ‧. calls them, the “New Normal”, 新常態, xin changtai) for the rest of his tenure, pointing out the direction he shall lead his country toward. On the other, the autocracy. y. Nat. sit. is relatively vulnerable to challenges from both regime elites and the general public.. n. al. er. io. These challenges can be legitimate – from the regime’s perspective – like formal. i n U. v. impeachment; they can also be illegitimate, like coup d’etat of military officers or. Ch. engchi. revolution by the people. It is a period of unsettled equilibrium of political dynamics and it is extraordinarily interesting to see what role anticorruption campaign plays in this process.. 1.2. Literature Review There are many approaches to the definition of corruption, but it is most commonly defined in a behavior-classifying way. (Johnston, 1996) In general, corruption is defined as the abuse of public offices deviating from formal rules and norms in order to serve private ends. (Huntington, 1968; Manion, 2004; Wedeman, 2012; Fackler & 5.

(14) Lin, 1995) This definition has a counterpart in the Chinese language: yi quan mou si (以權謀私). (Tu, 2012) The “private ends” hereof are not limited to individual interest. They also include those of one’s close family or private clique. (Nye, 1967). Corruption in communist China draws wide attention from political scientists and abundant research has been done in a variety of issues. First, scholars dig into archives to study the history of corruption inside the revolutionary party. Second, corruption has presented itself in a fairly evolutionary way in the reform era, and many studies describe how corruption develops in contemporary China and its. 政治大 corruption, and more specifically which political factors contribute to the occurrence 立. relationship with economic growth. Third, scholars try to illustrate what cause. ‧ 國. 學. of corruption in China. Fourth, there is a policy demand for effective countermeasures to fight corruption and some scholars dedicate their work in putting forward proper. ‧. advice. Last but certainly not least, political scientists are interested in the political motivation behind anticorruption efforts, whose patterns are particularly shaped by. y. Nat. n. er. io. al. sit. the regime’s legitimacy consideration.. i n U. v. Historically, the battle against corruption of CCP dates back to its very birth. On. Ch. engchi. August 4, 1926, CCP issued its first anticorruption policy paper after an extended meeting of Central Committee, which gave the direction to eliminate all corrupt cadres from the party. (Institute of Discipline Inspection and Supervision, 2002) In the first years after CCP took power in mainland China, the party launched a series of anticorruption battles, e.g. “Three Anti” (三反, san fan) and “Five Anti” (五反, wu fan). Chuanli Wang (2004) and Zhimin Shang (2003) both point out that these battles successfully suppressed overuse of public assets for cadres’ personal comfort and drove corruption issue off the list of CCP’s major concerns in the decades to come.. It is widely agreed, however, that increasing corruption has turned a most profound 6.

(15) problem for the regime ever since the economic reform and opening-up. Julia Kwong (1997) suggests that this issue is partly responsible for the Tiananmen movement in 1989. Zengke He (2003) provides a calculation of corruption case number that increases by 20% annually between 1979 and 2001. It is estimated by Angang Hu (2001) that corruption leads to economic loss that is worth about 13.2% to 16.8% of China’s total GDP in the late 1990s. In Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, Chinese mainland is the 83rd cleanest among 168 economies in 2015, the 100th among 175 economies in 2014, and the 80th among 177 in 2013.8. 政治大 (2004) summarizes the trends that corruption in China is enduring a qualitative 立 Scholars present various directions in which corruption grows. Andrew Wedeman. ‧ 國. 學. change as high-level, high-stakes corruption is increasing more rapidly than other forms of official malfeasance. But in his more recent work, Wedeman (2012) also. ‧. reminds us that corruption cases, in the measurement of cumulative frequency and increase rate, reach a peak in the mid-1990s and have been kept at a high yet stable. y. Nat. io. sit. level in the 21st century. Yong Guo (2008) makes similar observations. In answering. n. al. er. which fields are most prone to corruption, Ting Gong and Muluan Wu (2012) identify. i n U. v. government procurement, construction contracting, land transaction and personnel. Ch. engchi. management as the most vulnerable areas.. Corruption is developing in Chinese bureaucracy in certain patterns. Zengke He (2003) finds that the problem does not only erode across functional units of government but also spreads itself upward to the top level of state apparatus. Yong Guo (2008) and Andrew Wedeman (2009) suggest that high-level officials are able to evade from disciplinary inspection for a longer period in the 2000s than in earlier time, and Qian Tu (2012) furthers the point that many of them even get promoted concurrently with their corrupt acts. Both Zengke He (2003) and Yong Guo (2008) reveal that corrupt 8. The Corruption Perceptions Index is retrieved from http://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/ 7.

(16) cadres do not act alone. In many cases, the entire unit (單位, danwei) is compromised because a considerable proportion of unit staff conspire together led by their cadres in charge – so-called “nest cases” (窩案, wo an).. Wedeman (2012) labels the post-Mao era as a tale of two Chinas: one of economic miracle and the other of rapidly worsening corruption. This paradox poses a theoretical challenge to scholars. (Nie, Zhang & Jiang, 2014) Huntington (1968) explains that corruption helps economy by allowing business to surmount laws and regulations that are too rigid and over-centralized by an ineffective government. The. 政治大 in China grows along with the overall socio-economic development in the 1990s. 立 finding of Chuanli Wang (2001) seems to confirm this mechanism because corruption. ‧ 國. 學. Xing Ni and Shan Shan Chen (2013) arrive at the opposite findings, though. They study the 15 vice-provincial-level municipalities9 and find that economic growth has. ‧. an effect of restraining corruption in these areas of early development.. y. Nat. io. sit. Students of politics attribute corruption in China to many causes, mostly related to the. n. al. er. tremendous social changes in the course of economic and political reforms.. i n U. v. Cross-national studies suggest that developing or transition countries, especially those. Ch. engchi. with low income and poor economic openness, are prone to corruption. (Svensson, 2005) Huntington (1968) takes Britain and America to exemplify that corruption tends to be at a high point when the country endures the intensest modernization. The change of basic values, creation of new sources of wealth and power and expansion of government and regulation contribute to corruption.. As for China, in particular, many works point to the market economic reforms in which rent-seeking opportunities come along and the lag of political reform. Yong. 9 The 15 vice-provincial-level municipalities are Guangzhou, Wuhan, Harbin, Shenyang, Chengdu, Nanjing, Xi’an, Changchun, Jinan, Hangzhou, Dalian, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Xiamen, and Ningbo.. 8.

(17) Guo (2006) refers to the transitional nature of contemporary China’s economy as the root cause of corruption. Guo (2008) studies 594 reported cases during 1978-2005 and concludes four major causes: marketization and economic opening-up; fiscal and administrative decentralization; privatization; and globalization. Yiping Wu (2008) uses provincial data from 1993 to 2001 and identifies a significant positive correlation between fiscal decentralization and level of corruption. Songliang Yang and Shu Keng (2011) provide an inverse causality, however. They base their study on provincial data from 1989 to 2000 and suggest that fiscal decentralization has a negative impact on corruption. According to Yang and Keng, it is the increasing proportion of. 政治大 corruption. From the perspective of civil servants, Angang Hu and Yong Guo (2002) 立 infrastructure investment in total public spending that contributes to the growth of. ‧ 國. 學. conclude that a rational self-interested official is expected to act corruptly for two major reasons: low formal income in the current salary system and low risk of. ‧. exposure and punishment. Qian Tu (2012) underlines the role of low income in civil service and Xing Ni and Shan Shan Chen’s (2013) empirical data also suggest that. y. Nat. n. er. io. al. sit. reasonable relative salary helps reduce corruption.. i n U. v. Morality matters too. Huning Wang (1990), a former political scientist and now an. Ch. engchi. incumbent member of Politburo, emphasizes the significance of moral decay of cadres and nationals. They are under the influence of both traditional clientelism and emerging money worship in the market economy. Qingyu Ma (2002) specifically discusses how Chinese culture of informal rules (潛規則, qian guize) affects modern corruption.. Political institutions are often held responsible. In the analysis by Samual Huntington (1968), he highlights China as an example of centralized bureaucracy, a type that is more prone to corruption in general. The CCP regime is highly horizontally centralized at each administrative level. Qian Tu (2012) calls for power checking in 9.

(18) China’s unitary power structure where party committees hold the monopoly over the process of policymaking, implementation, and supervision. The monopoly hinders effective anticorruption.. Party cadres are politically incentivized to corrupt in the CCP regime. Xiaobo Lü (2000) gives a theoretical framework with the core concept of “organizational involution”. CCP fails to adapt to routinization and maintain its revolutionary competence and identity. The party members, therefore, seek to adjust through traditional modes of operation that gives rise to a patrimonial regime. Samual. 政治大 and promotion prospects of low-level cadres, and Simon Fan and Herschel Grossman 立. Huntington (1968) sees corruption as a compensation for the lack of political standing. ‧ 國. 學. (2000) further argue that corruption is a substitute motive for cadres to take on entrepreneurship in developing local economy.. ‧. Some arrangements in cadre management affect level of corruption. Xing Ni and. y. Nat. io. sit. Shan Shan Chen (2013) confirm a positive correlation between level of corruption and. n. al. er. tenure length of the municipal party chief. Gang Chen and Shu Li (2012) and Yijiang. i n U. v. Wang, Wei Chi and Wenkai Sun (2008) find that post exchange (崗位交流, gangwei. Ch. engchi. jiaoliu) helps reduce corruption yet outsider succession (異地調任, yidi diaoren) leads to a rather complicated result.. Government size can be a factor, as suggested by Xing Ni and Shan Shan Chen (2013) that the relationship between number of government employees and level of corruption reveals itself in an inverted U curve. Larger government size has a mixed effect on corruption level: positive effect by more rent-seeking, and negative effect by the affluence of public service.. What measures can effectively deter corruption? As a general rule, Robert Nowak 10.

(19) (2001) suggests that democracy, economic openness and, most importantly, growth tend to help but only in a slow manner. Zengke He (2000) agrees with Nowak that democratic political reform is essential in any serious fight against corruption, while Yan Sun and Michael Johnston (2009) find democracy ineffective in checking corruption based on their comparative study of China and India.. Most policy advice focuses on institutional design. Scholars like Qian Tu (2012) and Huihua Nie and Zhihui Tong (2014) underline power checking and supervision. Others suggest that the incentive structure of cadres for corruption should be. 政治大 caught as the most decisive measure, while Melanie Manion (2004) suggests that the 立 manipulated. Angang Hu and Yong Guo (2002) take the amplification of risk of being. ‧ 國. 學. government should reduce the payoff of corrupt acts and make the reduction publicly known. There are debates about whether a Hong Kong- or Singaporean-style. ‧. independent anticorruption agency will work in China: Zengke He (2008) endorses such an agency, but Jakob Svensson (2005) takes Hong Kong and Singapore as mere. y. Nat. io. sit. exceptions to the failure in general. Besides institutional design, Chuanli Wang (2001). n. al. er. reminds us of the importance of anticorruption strategy, and Xing Ni (2003) specifies. i n U. v. his three-part strategy: moral education, social movement, and institutional constraint.. Ch. engchi. Anticorruption efforts are often meant to achieve something beyond anticorruption. CCP does not have a constant incentive to fight corruption in a universal standard. For example, Jun Zhang, Yuan Gao, Yong Fu and Hong Zhang (2007) decide not to take corruption case number as a genuine indicator of corruption level, but instead as an indicator of the intensity of anticorruption measures. As Simon Fan and Herschel Grossman (2000) point out, discipline enforcement on corrupt cadres can be highly selective for economic and political purposes.. Economically, Elizabeth Quade (2007) regards the periodic and concerted attempts of 11.

(20) anticorruption as by-products of economic policy decisions. Anticorruption serves to reduce over-investment and decrease inflation. Quade’s theory is furthered by Ting Gong (1994), who argues that all anticorruption campaigns are designed to facilitate “higher” political goals: regime transformation from 1949 to 1953, regime consolidation from 1954 to 1966, and modernization since 1978.. Politically, anticorruption partly derives from the regime’s legitimacy concern. Leslie Holmes (1993) asserts that leaders in communist states are well aware that corruption undermines the ideological foundation of their rule and they have to take proactive. 政治大 (2004) claims that those campaign-style 立. measures in response. Many scholars agree that this general assertion applies to China. Melanie Manion. countermeasures are. ‧ 國. 學. actually aimed at boosting regime legitimacy. The discussion of whether they are effective in eliminating corruption can be completely off the point because, as Andrew. ‧. Wedeman (2005) points out, Chinese leadership will be satisfied as long as corruption is “under control”. Guilhem Fabre (2001) highlights the dilemma where CCP regime. y. Nat. sit. is trapped when fighting corruption: “should one fight corruption to save the country. n. al. er. io. or not fight it to save the party?” As the result, the party often purposefully omits. i n U. v. high-level, high-stakes corruption cases. Corruption of top leaders is only exposed, as. Ch. engchi. Wedeman (2012) observes, when there is factional infighting going on, e.g. the Chen Xitong case, Xiamen Smuggling Ring case and Chongqing Organized Crime case.. Jakob Svensson (2005) suggests that anticorruption agencies are commonly used as an instrument to repress political enemies. Is that the reason why CCP leaders begin their reign by furious anticorruption campaigns? Few works have been done to answer this question, but Chih-Chung Chang (2014) contributes a pioneer and inspiring work herein. Chang compares the two campaigns against corruption in early years of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping and finds that both campaigns serve the same purpose despite the difference of measures taken: to centralize power in the new General Secretary. 12.

(21) Therefore, an anticorruption campaign may both serve the legitimacy of CCP as a whole and the personal interest of the paramount leader. This research intends to testify whether Xi Jinping’s tiger hunt serves Xi in this way.. 1.3. Main Argument “People’s democracy” (人民民主, renmin minzhu) is a pillar of CCP ideology, but the regime is always deemed autocratic. The general public is disenfranchised and provided with no free, fair and competitive election to determine the composition of. 政治大 degenerated and transformed into a new variant, but the ruling machines passed down 立. leadership. (Svolik, 2012) This totalitarian system, in Linz’s (2000) sense, has. by Mao Zedong (毛澤東) are still functioning in respect of social control and. ‧ 國. 學. repression. (Wu, 2007) The general public cannot vote down a government, so there is. growing cronyism and prevalent corruption in the party-state.. Nat. sit. y. ‧. no electoral procedure to buffer public discontent about increasing disparity of wealth,. n. al. er. io. In light of the very limited extent of actual political participation of ordinary citizens,. i n U. v. the general public with resentment of this massive corruption can only impose a. Ch. engchi. potential threat of revolution that would entirely overthrow the regime when their anger is above a certain threshold. This is conceptualized as the “revolutionary threats” that constrain the regime. (Bueno de Mesquita & Smith, 2009) In this sense, the alarm repeated by generations of CCP leaders, including Xi Jinping (Xi, 2012), Hu Jintao (J. Hu, 2012), and Jiang Zemin (Jiang, 2000), is very real that corruption could “doom the party and the state” (亡黨亡國, wang dang wang guo).10 As early as in the 1980s,. 10. It is worth noting that the three paramount leaders put this issue in similar yet subtly different wording, which presents a trend of increasing concern. According to Jiang Zemin, if the party’s “discipline goes limp and organization lax, it is not impossible that the party and the state are threatened to be doomed.” (Jiang, 2000) In Hu Jintao’s report, he stated: “corruption, if not dealt with properly, can cause fatal damage to the party and even doom the party and the state.” (J. Hu, 2012) When it comes to Xi Jinping, he addressed the Politburo in a most assuring tone that “substantial facts are telling us that the problem of corruption is growing ever severer and is sure to lead to the doom of the party and the state eventually!” (Xi, 2012) 13.

(22) CCP leaders recognized that corruption was an issue capable of mobilizing mass protests across social strata and unifying workers, cadres, soldiers and students together against the ruling party, the leadership, and the regime. (Wu, 2014) It compels the top leadership to respond to these revolution constraints and strive for regime survival. (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006). Therefore, it is imperative for the party to deal with corruption reasonably and ease the social resentment. One option of response is repression. (Slater & Fenner, 2011) But as public discontent rises, the cost – political and financial – of repression can. 政治大 established forces like army and police inevitably leads to huge resource input into 立 easily go unaffordable. More importantly, it creates a moral hazard: heavy reliance on. ‧ 國. 學. those forces and institutional autonomy of them. It is difficult to ensure that they will never turn against the autocrats. (Svolik, 2012) In spite of the party’s divine principle. ‧. “guns under the party command” (黨指揮槍, dang zhihui qiang), PLA generals are always a force to be reckoned in Beijing politics, particularly observable in Hu. y. Nat. sit. Jintao’s early years before he gained a firm grasp of commanding power. In the late. n. al. er. io. Hu Jintao era, “stability maintenance” (維穩, wei wen) became such an overriding. i n U. v. issue that the commanding institution of domestic security, Central Politics and Law. Ch. engchi. Commission (CPLC), obtained power so disproportionate to its legal status that the person-in-charge, Zhou Yongkang, was made a security tsar feared by everyone.. Xi is apparently taking another option: to confront corruption and cleanse it. Wang Qishan (王岐山), the Secretary of CCDI and the campaign’s person-in-charge, describes his goal as making party cadres “dare not, cannot, and do not want to” corrupt (K. Wang, 2014). He further states that “treating the symptom (治標, zhibiao) is our focus for now in order to win us time for treating the cause (治本, zhiben).” (“Wang qishan”, 2013; CCDI/Ministry of Supervision, 2014) It is a variant of regime legitimacy by results: to win the heart of people by cleansing corruption, significantly 14.

(23) in the short run and completely in the long run. Even if the anticorruption results that the party brings at the moment are not satisfactory enough, the very act of confronting corruption shows the party’s resolve and helps ease public discontent. This is why the CCP propaganda branch in these days is so vigorously publicizing the Zhou Yongkang case in order to “prove that China’s anticorruption campaign is not selective” (J. Wang, 2014) and that the tacit rule of “Standing Members of Politburo are immune to punishment” (刑不上常委, xing bu shang changwei) has been torn up (Gu, 2014).. Nevertheless, “fighting corruption” is not the only perspective to read into this. 政治大 the purpose of consolidating his personal autocracy. We learn that Xi is seeking a 立 campaign. It can also be interpreted that Xi Jinping makes all the sound and fury for. ‧ 國. 學. place in CCP history among the party greats (Zhai, 2014a). Now that all the reform issues still awaiting solution are “tough bones” (Chan, 2014), it takes nothing less. ‧. than an autocrat with supreme authority to push through the reform agenda. The problem is: unlike Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping, Xi does not possess any personal. y. Nat. n. al. Ch. engchi. er. io. equals in the Standing Committee of Politburo.. sit. authority that derives from revolutionary credentials. Xi is merely the first among. i n U. v. The political elites within selectorate are potential challengers who can take the leader’s place in accordance with rules and norms of the regime. (Bueno de Mesquita, et al., 2003) Svolik (2012) calls it “allies’ rebellion”. In order to secure support from as many selectorate members as possible, the leader in office is to credibly commit himself to sharing power with his winning coalition. (Gehlbach & Keefer, 2011) In post-Deng China, the solution for the absence of strongman is the division of labor within the Standing Committee of Politburo. The “system of collective leadership” (集體領導制, jiti lingdao zhi), as appraised by some pro-government scholars, is the institutional key to China’s remarkable development under CCP leadership. (Hu, 2014a) Angang Hu (2012; 2014b) calls it “collective presidency (集體總統制，jiti 15.

(24) zongtong zhi)”. In Svolik’s (2012) examination, the success of power-sharing arrangements in CCP is a result of the establishment of institutions that help alleviate monitoring problems.. The power-sharing arrangements, however, lead the party to another problem: lack of authority of the autocrat by which he can command regime elites and steer the party-state – and make a decisively turn if necessary. The problem looks particularly pressing in the time when Chinese reform stagnates. Xi Jinping, a first-among-equals leader who rises to power in institutionalized politics and on the consent of most. 政治大 elites. (Kou, 2006) The. selectorate members, can hardly bring about massive policy changes when they are. 立. against the interest of regime. established “reciprocal. ‧ 國. 學. accountability” (Shirk, 1993) between Central Committee and the autocrat prevents Xi from rewriting the script.. ‧. This explains why Xi Jinping needs a massive campaign, so far-reaching and. y. Nat. io. sit. forbidding, to break existing patterns of power sharing and establish his personal. n. al. er. authority. Svolik (2012) points out that power sharing frequently fails due to the. i n U. v. emergence of personal autocracy. In his analysis, when the environment external to. Ch. engchi. the selectorate allows the autocrat to repress his peers hard enough while he aggressively centralizes power in himself, his allies shall eventually lose their rebellion capacity and can no longer punish the autocrat’s opportunism. The power-sharing arrangements are thus broken and the autocrat rises from a first-among-equals to an unchallengeable leader. (Svolik, 2012). Many analysts interpret the high-profile propaganda on cases like Zhou Yongkang as either an effort to establish Xi’s supremacy in the party (Chen, 2014) or as signals intentionally released to show that Xi is already in full command (Anderlini & Hornby, 2014). Xi is taking advantage of his anticorruption campaign to rightfully 16.

(25) remove political enemies and establish his unchallengeable status. (Huang, 2014; Sternberg, 2014; Tiezz, 2014; X. Wang, 2014) But this simple theory of “fighting enemies” – that Xi Jinping purges his rival factions and replaces them with king’s men – falls short in explaining why so many high-ranking cadres outside any of the factional groups are also taken down at all the political cost for the party-state. The ongoing anticorruption campaign is far more than directly taking down enemies. It creates a climate where Xi’s colleagues dare not oppose his power centralization and all regime elites get in line with Xi’s agenda. The factional groups that are cracked down are not only presumed to be in Xi’s way but are also reminders for the audience. 政治大. of other regime elites of what shall happen to those who dare to oppose.. 立. ‧ 國. 學. To sum up, Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign is a costly yet necessary cause. The prevalent corruption in the party-state erodes legitimacy and can potentially doom the. ‧. regime, which compels Xi to take decisive measures to respond to public discontent. The scale and complexity of corruption in CCP ask Xi to make the full use of his. y. Nat. sit. institutional power, and it is impossible to push the campaign through without. n. al. er. io. consolidating his status within the party first. Further, Xi Jinping’s ambition of. i n U. v. steering the country to realize the “Chinese Dream” (中國夢, zhongguo meng) asks. Ch. engchi. him to adopt massive reform agenda. This cannot happen against the vested interest of regime elites if Xi is confined within the institutionalized power-sharing arrangements in the post-Deng era. Therefore, he needs the unprecedented anticorruption campaign to create a climate in favor of his establishing personal authority so that he can push through his ambitious reform agenda.. 1.4. Research Design This thesis applies quantitative and network strategies to study the early stage of Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign. It examines temporal and geographical/functional 17.

(26) distribution of tigers, analyzes the tiger succession by finding out what type of successors fill the vacant positions, and draws a colleague network of tigers in order to discuss factional dynamics, if any, in Xi Jinping’s combat against corruption.. 1.4.1. Unit of Analysis The unit of analysis of this thesis is individual cadre defined as “tiger”: the corrupt cadres at or above vice-provincial level in the administrative ranking system of CCP11. Starting from December 2012, CCDI puts online the corruption case announcements of the cadres under central management (中管幹部, zhong guan ganbu) and some. 政治大 for the military tigers, PLA makes official announcements of corruption cases on its 立. lower-ranking cadres.12 We compile the list of civilian tigers according to CCDI. As. ‧ 國. 學. website from time to time13, from which we compile the list of military tigers.. -. ‧. A typical vice-provincial-level position includes but is not limited to:. Standing member of provincial party committee, provincial vice-governor,. y. Nat. sit. vice-chairman of provincial Standing Committee of People’s Congress and. n. al. er. io. CPPCC of the 31 provinces14; -. i n U. v. Party chief, mayor, chairman of municipal Standing Committee of People’s. Ch. engchi. Congress and CPPCC of the 15 vice-provincial-level municipalities; -. Vice-minister, deputy director and deputy head of full-ministerial-level units directly under the State Council and Central Committee;. -. Director of vice-ministerial-level units directly under the State Council and Central Committee;. 11. For an explanation of relevant administrative rank levels in CCP, see Appendix 4. The announcements are in the section of “Jilv shencha (紀律審查, Disciplinary Inspection)” on the Zhongyang jiwei jianchabu wangzhan ( 中央紀委監察部網站 , the website of CCDI/Ministry of Supervision), at http://www.ccdi.gov.cn/jlsc/ 13 See Zhongguo junwang (中國軍網, 81.cn), at http://www.81.cn/ 14 A “province” in this thesis, unless specified otherwise, refers to a provincial-level local unit that can either be a province, an autonomous region or a municipality directly under the State Council. The People’s Republic of China claims 34 provincial units, but 3 of them are not included in this thesis. The two Special Administrative Regions, Hong Kong and Macau, are outside the direct governance of CCP. The alleged province of Taiwan is not included either for similar reasons. 12. 18.

(27) -. Deputy director of full-ministerial-level offices of leading or coordination groups directly under the State Council and Central Committee;. -. Deputy person-in-charge of full-ministerial-level mass organizations; and. -. Deputy commander and commissar of field armies and provincial military districts; etc.15. Cadres of these positions and even higher-ranking cadres shall be counted as tigers if they are put under disciplinary inspection.. 1.4.2. Time Scope. 政治大 Jinping. The study covers the period from November 2012 to March 2015. November 立 This thesis studies the early stage of the anticorruption campaign launched by Xi. ‧ 國. 學. 2012 is the beginning of Xi’s rule when he was elected General Secretary of the party and Chairman of CMC. It is self-explanatory to choose this month to be the starting. discussion.. ‧. point. The selection of March 2015 as the cutting point, however, deserves a brief. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. As this thesis is to study the early stage of Xi Jinping’s rule when new patterns of. i n U. v. power dynamics are being set for the entire 10-year tenure, we need to find a cutting. Ch. engchi. point that marks the end of the initial power-consolidating stage. There are two possible ways to identify an appropriate cutting point. First, we list all the significant positions that Xi Jinping occupies that grant him outstanding institutional powers and make him the paramount leader he is. The cutting point of the early stage of his tenure should be no earlier than the moment when he takes the last significant position. Second, the proclamation of his pivotal programs can be seen as the end of his early tenure. It takes time for a new autocrat to get accustomed of ruling the country and explore the direction where he would like to lead the people. When he comes up with a blueprint of fundamental programs, he ends the period of uncertainties and 15. See Appendix 2 for the provincial-level institutions relevant to the tigers in this thesis. 19.

(28) proclaims himself in full command of the governance apparatus.. It turns out that March 2015 is a significant juncture that appropriately marks the end of Xi’s early tenure. First, by this time Xi had assumed offices of all the major positions that grant him autocratic powers. He was elected General Secretary of CCP and Chairman of CMC in November 2012, became the President of the People’s Republic of China in March 2013, found and chaired the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform and the National Security Commission in January 2014, and found and chaired the CMC Leading Group for Deepening. 政治大 Secretary of the party, chairmanship of CMC and presidency of the state compose the 立. National Defense and Military Reform in March 2014. The position of General. ‧ 國. 學. trinity of supreme power in post-Deng China, and the three newly founded coordinating institutions are critical to Xi’s furthering his autocracy beyond Jiang. ‧. Zemin and Hu Jintao.. y. Nat. sit. Second, the blueprint of Xi’s governance, summarized as the “Four Comprehensives”. n. al. er. io. (“Renmin ribao”, 2015), was proclaimed in February 2015. The “Four. i n U. v. Comprehensives” are 1) to comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society. Ch. engchi. (全面建成小康社會); 2) to comprehensively deepen reform (全面深化改革); 3) to comprehensively govern the nation according to law (全面推進依法治國); and 4) to comprehensively strictly govern the Party ( 全面從嚴治黨 ). Each of the four programs had been propagandized in previous campaigns separately, but in early 2015 people were told for the first time that these four programs together formed an organic whole and pointed to the direction of the “Chinese Dream”. The “Four Comprehensives” unsurprisingly set the tone for the national Two Sessions16 in the following March. 16. The “Two Sessions” refer to the annual meetings of People’s Congress and CPPCC. These two bodies are the institutions of legislation and political consultation in China and serve functions similar to those of the two houses of parliament in other countries. 20.

(29) Therefore, the national Two Sessions in March 2015 are the first ones after Xi assumed all his significant institutional powers and proclaimed his pivotal programs. It is a time when uncertainties ended and equilibrium under the new autocrat emerged. Xi had consolidated his power and set the new normal for intra-party power dynamics by that time. We find it a theoretically significant cutting point to close the time scope of this study.. 1.4.3. Tiger Distribution and Succession. 政治大 distribution, and succession of tigers. The discussion of these frequencies clarifies the 立 This thesis illustrates and analyzes temporal distribution, geographical/functional. ‧ 國. 學. correlation between tiger hunt and Xi’s power consolidation. Temporal distribution studies how many tigers are hunted in each month during the time scope. In this. ‧. section, we shall mark down the key events of Xi’s power consolidation in the timeline and compare the trend of tiger frequency with the distribution of these events.. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. his pivotal programs.. sit. The key events include Xi’s taking on significant positions and proclaiming each of. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Geographical/functional distribution sees the career tracks of the fallen tigers, i.e. in what provinces, central ministries, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), etc. a corrupt senior cadre has served. The fighting corruption interpretation of Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign leads us to expect that the tigers hunted down should be scattered widely across geographical and functional units of the governing system. That said, some provinces and institutions may have disproportionately more tigers than others because they are the so-called “nest cases”, i.e. the majority of its governing members are compromised (“Jinnian fubai”, n.d.).17 A simple version of fighting enemies interpretation, on the contrary, should predict that the tiger hunt does 17. For analyses of nest cases, see Sun (2004), Tu (2012) and Yang (2013). 21.

(30) not cover many provinces and institutions because Xi would seek to minimize the cost of anticorruption and lock down his rival factions only. The thesis pays special attention to the position a tiger holds when he is brought down for disciplinary inspection, the last position he serves before his retirement, or the province/institution where he most significantly builds up his career.. The succession of tigers refers to who fill in the vacancies, especially whether the successor is promoted or transferred from within the given province/institution or as an outsider – cadres who do not work in the given province/institution before he is. 政治大 enemies and replace them with his own men, we would expect to see that outsider 立. moved there. If the anticorruption campaign is designed to directly strike down Xi’s. ‧ 國. 學. successors are significantly more than insiders. Xi would make sure that his loyalists fill in the vacancies left by tigers, so loyalty to Xi prevails working experience in the. ‧. given province/institution. Xi is a new autocrat who has just risen to supremacy lately and cannot easily find successors he trusts within all given provinces/institutions. He. y. Nat. n. er. io. a. sit. would find someone from outside.. 1.4.4. Colleague Networkl of Tigers. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. This thesis draws a network of tigers in order to identify if there are any factional groups among the senior corrupt cadres. We use colleague relations between cadres to establish ties in the sociogram, following a pioneer research of network analysis that studies CCP elites by Shilin Jia (2014). A tie between two tigers is coded only if they have worked or are working in the same province/institution at the same time. During their colleagueship, there can be no more than two administrative rank levels between their positions. Detailed coding methods are presented in Chapter 3.. There are two reasons why we use colleague relations. The first is theoretical. Faction is classically defined on clientelist ties that should be dyadic and unequal. (Nathan, 22.

(31) 1973) Colleague relations with identifiable rank levels fit this requirement. It is to be noted, though, that Andrew Nathan (1973) describes clientelist ties as “trellis” on formal bureaucracy but he does not equate colleague relations with clientelist ties. If the alleged factional follower is also a bureaucratic subordinate, we cannot observably tell the difference between a client following his patron’s directives and a bureaucratic subordinate following his superordinate’s orders.. Tang Tsou (1976) criticizes Nathan for underestimating the role of formal bureaucracy. Tsou argues that colleagueship itself often constitutes factional ties. We follow this. 政治大 Dittmer (1995) and Lucian Pye (1995), and define factional ties on colleagueship. If 立. thread of discussion initiated by Nathan and Tsou and continued by many, e.g. Lowell. ‧ 國. 學. two cadres have an unequal colleague relation in the past, the tie is no longer bureaucratically directive for the subordinate but this past relation can be the basis of. ‧. a clientelist tie. If two cadres were working together in the same province/institution when put under inspection, they are legitimate colleagues who fit in Tsou’s (1976). y. Nat. io. sit. conception of “informal group”. If two cadres are equal colleagues in a. n. al. er. province/institution, they can be factional allies and thus be coded with a potential. i n U. v. factional tie. Many scholars simply adopt various types of shared identity as factional. Ch. engchi. relationship. (See, for example, Shih, 2004; Li, 1994; 2004; 2013; Bo, 2006; Kou, 2001; 2007; Li & Pye, 1992; Tsai & Dean, 2015) This thesis does not take this approach for the theoretical reasons laid above and the operational reason as follows.. The second reason is operational. Factional ties, if loosely defined, can be messy. The types of guanxi (關係, relationship) are beyond counting, but most of them do not have accessible and reliable data. Colleague relations, however, are reliably recorded in the resumes of cadres that are readily accessible from CCP official sources.. It is to be noted, of course, that colleague relations do not necessarily make factional 23.

(32) ties. In a strict sense, they only provide cadres with the chance of frequent and meaningful contact. Colleagues may as well develop a relationship of rivalry and confrontation as one of exchange and alliance. Whether a circle of cadres tied by their working experience is an actual faction, as a functional action group, begs further examination with caution.. After we code colleague relations, centrality measurement assists us with the identification of factional groups in the network. The classical definition of faction requires the patron to be linked with all other members and the subordinates are. 政治大 difficult to be fulfilled in reality, but statistics that derive from network analysis can 立. barely linked with each other. (Nathan, 1973) Such a theoretical requirement is. ‧ 國. 學. help us determine whether a cadre is truly a patron, and thus whether a group of cadres makes a faction. The centrality indices (de Nooy, Mrvar & Batagelj, 2005) of. ‧. the presumed patron, the highest-ranking tiger in a circle, should be higher than those of other circle members. The index at use in this thesis is PageRank, a powerful. y. Nat. io. sit. algorithm developed by Google engineers to calculate relative importance of web. n. al. er. pages (Brin & Page, 1998). The theoretical implications of centrality and the. i n U. algorithm of PageRank are discussed in detail in Chapter 3.. Ch. engchi. v. 1.4.5. Source of Data The data of this thesis are collected from a variety of public sources of CCP, the Chinese government, official news agencies, leading newspapers and a number of new media both in China and abroad. For personal backgrounds and career tracks of corrupt officials, this thesis relies on the “Chinese Political Elites Database” run by Chien-wen Kou at the National Chengchi University18 and the “Leading Cadres of CPC and Chinese Government Database” maintained by the official website of CCP19. 18. See “Zhonggong zhengzhi jingying ziliao ku (中共政治菁英資料庫, Chinese Political Elites Database)”, at http://cped.nccu.edu.tw 19 See “Zhongguo dangzheng lingdao ganbu ziliao ku (中國黨政領導幹部資料庫, Leading Cadres of CPC and 24.

(33) The database created by Victor Shih, Wei Shan, and Mingxing Liu20 is for reference as well as others.. 1.5. Summary All the three paramount leaders in post-Deng China, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, carried out a well-advertised campaign against corruption in the early stage of their tenures. The ongoing tiger hunt, however, is exceptionally massive in scale. In regard to putting senior cadres under disciplinary inspection, Xi does as much as all. 政治大 China that a new autocrat has to respond to social resentment in that regard. It is also 立. his predecessors in CCP history combined. Corruption is growing so devastating in. a common practice in the party to strike down political enemies in the name of. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. anticorruption.. The campaign is serious about cleansing corruption in a large part. The prevalence of. y. Nat. sit. corruption takes nothing less than a solidly positioned autocrat to launch a campaign. n. al. er. io. that can really make a difference, which is why Xi has to consolidate his institutional. i n U. v. powers before he pushes anticorruption through. More importantly, this thesis. Ch. engchi. explains anticorruption in a framework of the interaction between a new autocrat and his fellow regime elites. The authoritarian regime in China has come to a point of severe challenges both at home and abroad. The party’s power-sharing arrangements after Deng Xiaoping may have helped sustain the economic miracle after Tiananmen movement, but now they are blocking the way of any ambitious leader with a vision to fix the regime. Therefore, Xi Jinping seeks to break these arrangements of power sharing and his tiger hunt helps transcend his autocracy by creating a climate that disables the regime elites from rebellion. Chinese Government Database)” maintained by Zhongguo gongchandang xinwen wang (中國共產黨新聞網, CPC News.cn), at http://cpc.people.com.cn/gbzl/index.html 20 See Victor Shih, Wei Shan, and Mingxing Liu, “Biographical Data of Central Committee Members: First to Sixteenth Party Congress,” at http://faculty.washington.edu/cadolph/index.php?page=61#ssl08 25.

(34) This thesis examines its argument by looking into the senior cadres who had been put under corruption inspection by the end of Xi Jinping’s early tenure. We examine the temporal distribution of tigers in comparison with the key events of Xi’s power consolidation, the provinces/institutions where these tigers are brought down, who succeed these fallen tigers, and the factional structures – if any – in the tigers’ colleague network.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 26. i n U. v.

(35) Chapter 2: Tiger Distribution and Succession In this chapter, we discuss the distribution and succession of tigers. In the first section, we compare the monthly tiger frequency from November 2012 to March 2015 with the occurrence of key events of Xi Jinping’s power consolidation. In the second section, we categorize the tigers into three groups – central civilians, local civilians,. 政治大 third section, we analyze the succession of senior corrupt cadres. We compile the 立 information of who fill in the vacancies left by tigers and whether the successors are and military officers – and then study their geographical/functional distribution. In the. ‧ 國. 學. from within or outside the given province/institution. The empirics of temporal. ‧. distribution, geographical/functional distribution and succession allow us to examine if the campaign is genuinely about cleansing corruption or/and to what extent to strike. Nat. er. io. sit. y. down Xi Jinping’s enemies.. al. n. v i n Ch 2.1. Temporal e n gDistribution chi U. In the first 29 months of Xi Jinping’s rule, he hunted down almost as many tigers as all his predecessors did in total in the first 90 years of CCP history. Xi put three times more senior cadres under disciplinary inspection in the first two years than Hu Jintao, the last General Secretary of CCP, did in the comparable period.. As many tigers as there are, the hunt unfolds itself gradually. Figure 2-1 is a line chart to show the monthly frequency of senior corrupt cadres between November 2012, when Xi Jinping was elected General Secretary of CCP and Chairman of CMC, and March 2015, when the first Two Sessions after the proclamation of “Four 27.

(36) Comprehensives” were held. Moreover, key events in this 29-month period that signify Xi Jinping’s power consolidation are marked down in the timeline. These events include three plenary sessions of the 18th Central Committee21, the 2013 national Two Sessions where Xi Jinping assumed the presidential office as the head of state, the founding of the three significant coordinating institutions that Xi personally chairs, and the proclamation of pivotal programs that later compose the “Four Comprehensives”22. 12. * Xi chaired Leading Group for Deepening National Defense and Military Reform. 10. * Xi chaired the Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform and National Security Commission. 立. ‧ 國. 6. 學. * Second Plenary Session. 8. 政治大. * Third Plenary Session: to “comprehensively deepen reform”. ‧. * Xi began presidency. sit. io. al. n. 2. 0 Nov 12. Feb 13. May 13. “Four Comprehensives”. er. 4. y. Nat. Number of Fallen Tigers. * Fourth Plenary Session: to “comprehensively govern the nation according to law”. Ch Aug 13. engchi Nov 13. Feb 14. i n U May 14. v. To “comprehensively strictly govern the Party” Aug 14. Nov 14. Feb 15. Month/Year. Figure 2-1: Temporal Distribution of Tigers. Three observations can be made. First, Xi Jinping takes on the anticorruption cause right after his coronation. The first senior corrupt cadre, Li Chuncheng (李春城), was put under disciplinary inspection in December 2012 right after the 18th Party Congress. It is contrasted with the prolonged warming-up period of Hu Jintao’s anticorruption 21. The First Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee was held in November 2012 immediately after the 18th Party Congress, so we do not mark it down in Figure 2-1. 22 The first program of the “Four Comprehensives” – to “comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society” – was first proclaimed in the 18th Party Congress in November 2012, so we do not tab it in Figure 2-1. 28.

(37) campaign, as the first tiger after the 16th Party Congress was hunted in August 2003, the 10th month of Hu’s tenure. The different scenarios of the two power transitions, from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2002 and from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping in 2012, explain this contrast. The 2002 succession was an incomplete one. Jiang Zemin as the retiring General Secretary packed the new Standing Committee of Politburo with his loyalists. He refused to hand over the military command and retained the CMC chairmanship until 2004. Joseph Fewsmith (2003) calls the 2002 power transition “the succession that didn’t happen”. With his hands tied, Hu Jintao as the new leader could not swiftly execute the anticorruption program even if he intended to. Xi Jinping, on. 政治大 leadership in a “naked retirement” (裸退, luo tui) by relieving his positions all at 立. the contrary, took power in a much more favorable scenario. Hu Jintao left the. ‧ 國. 學. once.23 Xi Jinping, in return, spoke highly of Hu Jintao’s decision as embodying “his. exemplary conduct and nobility of character” (高風亮節, gaofeng liangjie) (Yao,. ‧. 2012). The position of General Secretary of the party, chairmanship of CMC and presidency of the state compose the trinity of the party’s supreme power in post-Deng. y. Nat. sit. China and a leader is not in full command until he assumes all three of them. Hu. n. al. er. io. Jintao’s “naked retirement” and Xi Jinping’s full coronation allows Xi to immediately take on the anticorruption cause.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Second, there is a clear upward trend in the monthly frequency of tigers. The temporal distribution is far from a flat one. Although Xi Jinping began his tiger hunt immediately after the 18th Party Congress, he restrained it in a limited scale in the first year of his rule. Only 12 senior cadres were inspected for corruption from November 2012 to October 2013, and none of them are military officers. The peak in these 12 months is June 2013 when 3 tigers are hunted. There are 4 months without any tiger in this year. In the second year, however, the monthly frequency significantly goes up.. 23. Except for the time lag of the national presidency transition. National People’s Congress, annually held in March, elects president. 29.