Minxin Pei is the author of several books on Chinese domestic politics, including China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. He is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College.
Pei makes a powerful and convincing assertion that China’s
party-state is both predatory and decaying as he analyzes the
nature of destructive collusive behavior. An important book by one
of our leading analysts of Chinese politics.
*Joseph Fewsmith, author of China since Tiananmen*
While many debate about how capitalist and market-driven China is,
Pei shows in this sobering book that the real issue is the quality
of Chinese capitalism. No one has detailed the evolution of
corruption in China as ably and as comprehensively. An excellent
work, whose timing could not be better.
*Yasheng Huang, author of Capitalism with Chinese
Characteristics*
Pei’s penetrating account of what he terms the ‘rapacious crony
capitalism’ spawned by China’s economic rise is lucid, provocative,
and deeply disturbing. This is a distinctive contribution to
debates about the staying power of China’s political system and the
limits of its model of economic development.
*Andrew G. Walder, author of China Under Mao*
Pei’s book is quietly devastating. In sober, restrained language,
he exposes the full gravity of corruption in China. Presenting a
wealth of evidence, he shows that this is not the unfortunate
by-product of rapid economic growth but the result of strategic
choices by the party. With clinical precision, Mr Pei explains how
corruption operates at every level, perverting each branch of the
party-state and subverting the political authority of the
regime…This book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to
understand China today, or engage with it at any level, in any
field.
*The Economist*
This is an unparalleled and meticulous analysis of the deeply
embedded and widespread corruption engulfing the world’s
second-biggest economy… Pei has pulled apart the spiderwebs of
Chinese corruption by scrutinizing the published accounts of more
than 250 of those penalized for bribery. The details, down to their
single or multiple mistresses, orgies and the involvement of their
families, make the narrative and conclusions vivid and convincing…
In his path-breaking analysis, Pei reveals the vast scale in
post-Tiananmen China of ‘collusive corruption’… [An] overwhelmingly
convincing and dispiriting book.
*Times Higher Education*
Xi Jinping claims to be eliminating corruption from China’s
economic and political systems. Pei, one of the world’s most
knowledgeable scholars, argues that this is impossible because
corruption is the system. The liberalization of markets has
combined with the absence of clear property rights to allow the
well-connected to accumulate vast fortunes through looting state
property.
*Financial Times*
As Minxin Pei notes in a brilliant book, China’s Crony Capitalism,
it is all too easy for a would-be strongman to use the charge of
corruption as a cudgel against rivals. Yet it is so effective
precisely because it is plausible. Using evidence published by the
Chinese authorities, Pei shows that collusive corruption is
pervasive. It distorts the economy,
degrades administration and robs the party of its social
legitimacy.
*Financial Times*
Minxin Pei vividly demonstrates how corruption in China is not
merely a governance challenge: it is a fact of life. Corruption
permeates business, politics, and even personal relationships to a
startling degree…It is a damning portrait, in which China resembles
the United States during the Gilded Age, complete with robber
barons, crime bosses, and dirty politicians—and with all the
excesses intensified by authoritarian one-party rule…Pei’s bleak
view is sobering, especially because his conclusions are based on
careful analysis of a rich data set.
*Foreign Affairs*
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