China's Gilded Age: A book talk with Yuen Yuen Ang

Why has China's economy grown so fast for so long despite vast corruption? In her new book, China’s Gilded Age (2020), Yuen Yuen Ang traces the answer in the type of corruption that prevailed. Over the past four decades, corruption in China has evolved away from thuggery and theft toward access money - elite exchanges of power and wealth. Such transactional corruption spurred feverish investment, but it also bred systemic risks and inequality. Contemporary China is a newcomer on an evolutionary path taken by the United States during its Gilded Age in the late nineteenth century. Ang unbundles corruption into four varieties: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, and access money. While the first three types impede growth, access money, or elite exchange of power and profit, cuts both ways. Access money both stimulates investment and growth and produces serious risks for the economy and political system. Since China opened its markets, corruption has evolved toward access money. Drawing on a range of data sources, Ang explains the evolution of Chinese corruption, how it differs from the West and other developing countries, and how Xi's anti-corruption campaign could affect growth and governance. In this formidable yet accessible book, Ang challenges one-dimensional measures of corruption. By unbundling the problem and adopting a comparative-historical lens, she reveals that the rise of capitalism was not accompanied by the eradication of corruption, but rather by its evolution from thuggery and theft to access money. In doing so, she changes the way we think about corruption and capitalism, not only in China but around the world.

Yuen Yuen Ang is a political scientist and China scholar at the University of Michigan. Her work examines the interaction between economics and politics from an adaptive perspective—with a focus on China’s rise as one of the greatest disruptions of our times.

[martinhartecfc]

This lady makes the most sense on western-China relations. I had to laugh at the earlier graphic (that she rightly discusses the limitations of) showing my country (the UK) as having very low corruption. We've had a veritable tsunami of corruption problems in recent years- all of them falling into the category Dr Ang calls "access money". I quite like Kevin Rudd's work, but I'd really love someone to put Dr Ang's arguments to him, as they undermine some of his ideas and I'm not sure he'd have any answer.

[naderhabibi]

Another excellent analysis on Political Economy of China by Professor Yuen Yuen Ang. Congratulations on publication of this well written book!

[kamamuzik]

Thanks for sharing, Will the Q/A be made available ?

[Buckzoo]

Incredible low viewership for such an excellent talk. Is economically a fundamental difference in transfer of wealth legally or illegally (via corruption) that result in high inequality index?