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This story is based on the premise that perceived corruption in China actually got worse between 2013 and 2014. But that premise may well be incorrect. Although there was indeed a four-point drop in Transparency International's Corruption Perception index score, that drop was not statistically significant (that is, it was within the standard margin of error). So, there's a good chance that the change was due to random noise in the data sources rather than a genuine change in perceived corruption.
Indeed, upon closer inspection it appears that the decline in China's score was due entirely to two factors: (1) In 2014, Transparency International dropped one of the sources it had been using to construct the index, and China happened to do unusually well in that source. (2) Of the eight other sources used to generate China's index score, seven showed either no change or a very small change (including two that showed a slight improvement)--but for a single source, China's score dropped precipitously.. If one excludes those two sources, and looks only at the other seven, China's 2013 and 2014 scores are almost exactly the same. For a more extensive discussion of this issue, see the following post on the Global Anticorruption Blog:
http://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2014/12/04/transparency-international-makes-its-data-less-transparent-why-ti-should-be-ashamed-of-its-2014-cpi-report/
Dec 04, 2014 11:25 AM
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Does anyone think the Party is not corrupt? Is there any evidence that the one-party system itself is not the cause of the problem? Even the Party admits corruption can bring it down & that tens of thousands of CCP officials are corrupt & stolen billions of yuan. Corruption costs China at least 10% of its GDP. But corruption will remain as long as one party rules the entire country.
Dec 11, 2014 10:13 AM
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