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China Regulations and Favors
Increased commercial activity produced a high degree of
normative ambiguity, especially in areas like central Guangdong and
Jiangsu provinces, where rural economic growth was fastest. Neither
the proper role of local officials nor the rights and obligations
of new entrepreneurs or traders were clear. The line between the
normal use of personal contacts and hospitality and extraordinary
and criminal favoritism and corruption was ambiguous. There were
hints of the development of a system of patron-client ties, in
which administrative cadres granted favors to ordinary farmers in
return for support, esteem, and an occasional gift. The increased
number of corruption cases reported in the Chinese press and the
widespread assumption that the decollectivization and rural
economic reforms had led to growing corruption probably reflected
both the increased opportunities for deals and favors of all sorts
and the ambiguous nature of many of the transactions and
relationships. The party's repeated calls for improved "socialist
spiritual civilization" and the attempts of the central authorities
both to create a system of civil law and to foster respect for it
can be interpreted as responses to the problem
(see The First Wave of Reform, 1979-84
, ch. 11;
Return to Socialist Legality
, ch. 13).
On the local level, where cadres and entrepreneurs were engaged in
constant negotiation on the rules of their game, the problem was
presumably being addressed in a more straightforward fashion.
Data as of July 1987
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