Public Perception Of Corruption And Its Influencing Factors

It’s believed that China’s anti-corruption combat has achieved an overwhelming victory due to great anti-corruption efforts since the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.As is observed,the inflection point of corruption governance will be emerging while the increase of corruption has been curbed and the stock of corruption has been greatly reduced.On the other hand,the public’s perception of corruption in China remained relatively high albeit it has decreased a lot according to some poll survey data such as CPI index founded by Transparency International,which illustrates implicitly that China’s corruption situation is still severe.It becomes a gap between the public subjective perception and the actual situation of corruption in China.Considering the great significance of public opinion of corruption perception on consolidating anti-corruption fight and forming an honest society,it is necessary for the party and government to reduce public’s perception of corruption while fighting against corruption.The essay makes an empirical analysis of the public’s perception towards government corruption based on a questionnaire survey including 1,505 cases in a city named S.It explores the factors that affect government corruption perception mainly from two perspectives,anti-corruption performance and government governance.It can be concluded as bellowed.Firstly,the public’s perception of government corruption in China is generally low.Secondly,there is a clear “different order pattern”,that is,the central government has low perception of corruption and local government has high perception of corruption,which poses a greater challenge to the integrity of local governments.Thirdly,for anti-corruption performance,increasing anti-corruption efforts can significantly reduce government corruption perceptions,especially the central government’s corruption perceptions.It can be seen that this kind of anti-corruptiondriven by the political determination of the central leaders from top to bottom makes it easier for the public to attribute the anti-corruption results to the central government rather than the local government.In contrast,increasing power supervision is more conducive to reducing the perception of corruption in local governments.Fourthly,for government governance effectiveness,increasing government transparency will significantly increase the public’s perception of government corruption,this may be related to the lack of initiative in information disclosure,the lack of information disclosure in key areas and key links.Improving government responsiveness,government administration according to law,and economic development are all beneficial to reducing public perception of government corruption.Improving official administrative efficiency will significantly reduce central government corruption perceptions,but the impact on local government corruption perceptions is unstable.In general,the effectiveness of anti-corruption can better explain the public’s perception of government corruption than the effectiveness of government governance,but the effectiveness of government governance is more conducive to curbing the perception of corruption by local governments.Therefore,reducing the public’s perception of government corruption not only requires the government to continue to maintain the high-pressure trend of anti-corruption,but also pay attention to the construction of public service capacity and improve the public’s sense of anti-corruption.