• International Area Studies Review
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.351-377
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• 2008

Corruption in China became increasingly serious during the early period of its social transition, resulting in severe economic losses and huge challenges to China's government institution, as well as gradually becoming socially widespread. Recently. China's political corruption is an outcome of the attenuated political control, which has been caused by a systemic change from planned economy to market economy since 1978, and the lack of institutionalization to relieve such transition. Besides, the immature market system and state's intervention in the economy are other factors for the corruption. In short, current China's corruption can be regarded as a structuralized phenomenon. This article identified such circumstance by analyzing the scope, degree, and scale of the corruption. Overall assessment of the some factors suggests that present economic modernization is a principal cause for Chinese corruption while the other factors-monopoly power system in the Chinese Communist Party and the transformation of connection-are important but secondary.