Crime, Law and Social Change : Editors' introduction

A perplexing and perpetuating pathology, corruption has incessantly haunted uman society. Despite intensified governmental and public efforts at controlling corruption in recent decades, official transgression continues to surface in various ways of abusing the unique power and trust that a government holds. While much has been said about causes, conventions and consequences of official corruption in general terms [e.g., 5; 14; 9; 1], there have also been attempts to look into specific political, economic and cultural environments to see how corruption varies spatially and temporally [e.g., 6, 15; 7; 3; 2]. In recent years, scholarly attention has inevitably riveted on China, a deeply embattled country where corruption has surged to unprecedented levels since the onset of market-driven reform more than two decades ago [16; 12; 11; 10; 4]. However, research on Chinese corruption has yet to be integrated with the established literature on corruption and anticorruption reform. While many readers in the West are still unaware of China's recent efforts to curb corruption, despite being informed by the media of its prevalence, less clear are the cross-national impact and implications of China's corruption, as most analyses of Chinese corruption have appeared as works of area studies. Less still is known whether and to what extent China's experience is comparable to other countries. Although there is a growing number of comparative studies of corruption in Asia in recent years [e.g., 17; 13; 8], China has been insufficiently engaged. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.