This book contrasts experiences of mainland China and Hong Kong to explore the pressing question of how governments can transform a culture of widespread corruption to one of clean government. Melanie Manion examines Hong Kong as the best example of the possibility of reform. Within a few years it achieved a spectacularly successful conversion to clean government. Mainland China illustrates the difficulty of reform. Despite more than two decades of anticorruption reform, corruption in China continues to spread essentially unabated.

The book argues that where corruption is already...

In this book Melanie Manion analyzes the largest bloodless circulation of elites in history--the massive retirement of officials in the People's Republic of China. Beginning in 1978 and continuing through the 1980s, Chinese leaders in Beijing replaced millions of old cadres, including veterans of the communist revolution, with younger generations of better educated and less generalist officials. How were the elders persuaded to retire? Manion shows how a norm of age-based exit from office, historically novel in the Chinese communist setting, was engineered by top policymakers and aided by...

In this book Melanie Manion analyzes the largest bloodless circulation of elites in history--the massive retirement of officials in the People's Republic of China. Beginning in 1978 and continuing through the 1980s, Chinese leaders in Beijing replaced millions of old cadres, including veterans of the communist revolution, with younger generations of better educated and less generalist officials. How were the elders persuaded to retire? Manion shows how a norm of age-based exit from office, historically novel in the Chinese communist setting, was engineered by top policymakers and aided by...