How Not to Fight Corruption: Lessons from China

<jats:p> The most effective anticorruption strategies combine prevention and enforcement. Yet the political payoffs are greater for enforcement-centered strategies, even though they often fail to achieve durable objectives. Autocratic regimes with endemic corruption thus tend to prefer enforcement-centered anticorruption strategies: they are easier to contain, while prevention-centered strategies risk undermining the rulers’ bases of power. This explains why the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has consistently favored an enforcement-centered anticorruption strategy. However, an overemphasis on enforcement, in the Chinese political context at least, has resulted in the politicization of anticorruption efforts and a lack of sustainability of such efforts. </jats:p>