| When it comes to the twenty-first century, the Chinese corruption has unprecedentedly underminded the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy. Although the central government has paid more attention to this issue, in some regions, the financial resources for anti-corruption began to shrink rather than expand. Interestingly, with the political arrangement and bureaucratic structure relatively consistent throughout mainland China, why dose the regional diversity of financial inputs for anti-corruption turn out to be increasingly obviously? What are the determinants of local financial resources for anti-corruption in mainland China? And what is the political consequence of the gradually diversified local expenditures in anti-corruption? Using a panel data from 1997 to 2009, as well as the data of China Survey in 2008, this thesis explains the determinants and consequences of local financial input for anti-corruption in mainland China. It finds that, the developmental rationale, decentralization, power fragmentation of local authorities, and lack of social accountability, are the key reasons for the shrinking of local financial expenditures in anti-corruption. Frist of all, anti-corruption has been used by the regime as a supplementary tool to serve the market-oriented reform and any anti-corruption activities that might pose threat to local economic growth has been suppressed; as a result, the state-dominated marketization doesn't facilitate anti-corruption, but decrease local expenditure on anti-corruption. Secondly, since the financial responsibility of anti-corruption has been shifted to separate level of local authorities, decentralization has led to the shrinking of local expenditure in anti-corruption. Thirdly, as local authorities gradually lose control on local bureaucrats, expecially on the expanding informal bureaucrats, the bottom-up resistance to anti-corruption increases and correspondingly, the financial spending on local anti-corruption get suppressed. Lastly, as the development of civil society has been long term depressed, civil organization and public media fail to promote local expenditure on anti-corruption. As a result, the substantial expenditures in local anti-corruption have been highly insufficient. To handle this problem, the central has periodical mobilized a series of anti-corruption campainges and punished some corrupted local cadres by heavy-handed measures, with the purpose of showing the regime's commitment to building a clean government. The top-down involvement has signicantly regained the public's support in the central and enhance the regime's legitimacy. |
