The missing watchdog: corruption, governance,and supervisory role for Chinese civil society?

Abstract

This study sought to examine whether pressure from China’s dynamic, yet repressed,

civil society had any impact on the Chinese state’s anti-corruption strategies. It was discovered

that online activism in China has been on the rise in recent years, and this activism has been

working in tandem with the government to monitor public and private corruption, exposing

numerous cases online. Increasing trends of online activism seem to be leading to an augmented

government anti-corruption strategy that is sensitive to issues exposed on the Internet and to

public opinion. As the government sought to shore up its credibility, it was able to harness this

wave of public participation to work towards its own ends.

Recent reforms in China have attempted to institute public surveillance and monitoring as

a central part of the government’s anti-corruption efforts. By illuminating the changing

institutional design of the anti-corruption agencies within the Party and the government since the

1990s, this study found that the most recent campaign to rally pubic participation was sincere as

the goal of clean government and limited corruption benefit both the government and Chinese

society. However, the current anti-corruption regime still has engrained problems and conflicts

of interest. Until public surveillance is fully developed and there are more democratic checks

and balances, this study does not predict that corruption will be eliminated in China in the near

future.