Chapter 3 examines howaccess money came to dominate China’s structure of corruption. Contrary to popular claims of “rising” corruption, I show that, since the 2000s, only bribery has exploded, both in frequency and in scale, while embezzlement, misappropriation of public funds, and bureaucratic extortion have declined. Two forces drove this evolution: the expansion of markets after 1993 and the central government’s rollout of capacity-building measures in 1998.

Chapter 4 explains the little-understood mechanisms of profit-sharing within China’s vast bureaucracy, which are frequently dismissed as “organizational corruption.” Drawing on extensive interviews and an original dataset, I show that in the Chinese bureaucracy, fringe compensation is pegged to financial performance, making it an unusual variant of profit-sharing in the public sector. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the golden goose maxim – restraint today yields long-term benefits – is not just a parable but a reality, thus distinguishing China’s bureaucracy from myopic, predatory states elsewhere. For the global development community, this chapter sheds light on how poor-and-weak countries can escape the vicious cycle of poverty and corruption through what I term “transitional administrative institutions.”

Chapter 2 critiques conventional bundled measures of corruption and presents an alternative – the Unbundled Corruption Index (UCI). This is an original expert survey that measures the prevalence of the four categories of corruption in my framework: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, access money. It provides systematic evidence that China’s corruption is indeed distinct from other typically predatory states.

How will this crackdown affect China’s economic and political prospects? Chapter 6, “All the King’s Men,” examines the determinants of downfall among city-level leaders during Xi’s campaign. My analysis finds a remarkably high turnover rate, indicating extraordinarily stressful conditions and heightened political risks for local leaders. In addition, I find that patronage, not performance, predicts the likelihood of downfall. Facing harsh scrutiny, volatility, and mounting demands, bureaucrats feel paralyzed, precipitating a new problem in Chinese politics – inaction.

Chapter 5 turns to national and local leaders. Profit-sharing among leaders follows a different logic: the more economically prosperous the locality, the more personal rents they can collect as massive graft. By unpacking the career paths of two infamously fallen officials – Bo Xilai (provincial Party secretary of Chongqing) and Ji Jianye (city mayor of Nanjing) – this chapter reveals why deal-making corruption was compatible with aggressive growth promotion. It also fleshes out the structural distortions and risks brought about by access money.