Corruption continued

1
Corruption (continued)
2
Corruption in Ming and Qing (Ni and Van, 2005)

• It is estimated that the corrupt income is about
  20 times official income in Ming and Qing.

3
Why government officials are so corrupted in Ming
and Qing?

• Ming
• Low salary of government officials
• Concentrated power of office
• Insufficient monitoring of government officials
• Qing
• Corruption was so widespread and the gain from
  corruption is so big that anti-corruption
  measures (e.g. raising nominal pay to officials)
  failed.

4
Low Salary for Officials

• Tax revenue plummeted in Ming
• Nominal wage decrease over time in Ming
• Premium of high-rank is much smaller in Ming than
  in Sung
• In 1012 (Sung), low-level civil servants get 96
  kuan and high-level ones got 4800 kuan.
• In 1392 (Ming), low-level officers get 60 piculs
  of grain and high-rank ones get 1044 piculs.
• In 1773, most English government officials are
  paid sevearl hundred pounds a year compared to 20
  pounds for watchmen and gardeners on the
  government payroll.

5
Concentrated Power of Office

• Ample opportunities to collect rents in Ming and
  Qing
• Government officials are not only administrators
  of public affairs but also tax collectors and
  judges of local courts.
• In Sung
• Numerous checks and balances regulated the
  government operations.
• Officials were rotated often (3 or 4 years per
  post)
• A sponsorship scheme

6
Insufficient Monitoring

• Strict law with harsh punishment
• Loose enforcement
• Probability of being caught is very low
• Probability of being caught may not be related to
  the degree of corruption.

7
Why Ming is so different from Sung?

• Elimination of outside threats might have reduce
  the demand for checks on the power of officials,
  making wholesale corruption possible.
• The founding Ming emperor came from humble roots.
  Upon gaining power, he reduced tax collection to
  grant relief to farmers and reduced the size of
  the central government.

8
Tenure Insecurity and Investment (Jacoby and
Rozelle, 2002)

• Does land expropriation risk reduce investment of
  peasants on land?
• Data
• Household level data from Hebei and Liaoning
  provinces
• Land tenure as a proxy for land expropriation
• The use of organic fertilizer as a proxy for
  investment (investment of time).

9
Land Rights in China

• Two types of land
• Private plots (ziliu di) They are not really
  privately owned, but peasants land right on them
  are more secure.
• Collectively controlled land (jiti di) These
  plots are more easily affected by the
  intervention of local governments.
• On average private plots are held 12 years longer
  than collective plots.

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