Prof. TANG Wenfang, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science, has published an paper named “Detecting Grassroots Bribery and Its Sources in China: A Survey Experimental Approach” in the Journal of Contemporary China, a world-class journal on contemporary Chinese affairs.

01 About the Journal

Journal of Contemporary China《当代中国》is an influential academic journal under the Taylor & Francis and Routledge imprints. It is the only English language journal edited in North America that provides exclusive information about contemporary Chinese affairs for scholars, business people and government policy-makers. The journal's fields of interest include economics, political science, law, culture, literature, business, history, international relations, sociology and other social sciences and humanities. The journal leads regional research across the world, with an impact factor of 3.126 in 2021, ranking the first among English journals on Chinese affairs.

02 About the paper

Drawing data from a national survey, this study relies on several embedded list experiments to examine the grassroots bribery that the survey respondents tried to hide due to social desirability. The findings from the list experiments are extracted to develop an innovative weighting technique to provide accurate estimations of bribery behavior. It finds that the level of grassroots bribery in public sectors is significantly higher than what people would admit; that the reasons for bribery can be traced to the country’s public service distribution, the low risk of practicing bribery, and the rapid increase in disposable income. These findings suggest that grassroots bribery is still a serious issue in Chinese society, and it creates new challenges for effective governance during the country’s anti-corruption campaign.

Link of the paper：

https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2022.2071883

Wenfang Tang & Yue Hu (2022) Detecting Grassroots Bribery and Its Sources in China: A Survey Experimental Approach, Journal of Contemporary China, DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2022.2071883

03 About the Author

Professor TANG Wenfang is the Presidential Chair Professor, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

Receiving his BA in Law from Peking University and PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago, Professor TANG served as the former Head and Chair Professor of the Division of Social Science at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2019-2022), C. Maxwell and Elisabeth M. Stanley and Hua-Hsia Chair Professor of Chinese Culture and Institutions, and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa (2009 – 2019), Assistant, Associate and Full Professor of Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh (1990 – 2009). He was a Visiting Professor to Peking University, Tsinghua University, Southwest Jiaotong University, Visiting Research Professor at East Asian Institute, National Singapore University, and National Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Professor Tang’s research focuses on public opinion, political culture and mass politics. He has authored and co-authored several books published by academic presses, including Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press,  Stanford University Press, and University of Pittsburgh Press. He also published many articles in academic journals, including American Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Political Communication, Journal of Public Policy, China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, among others. His book Populist Authoritarianism: Chinese Political Culture and Regime Sustainability (Oxford University Press, 2016) won the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award.

Professor Tang played a leading role in the 6^th and 7^th World Values Surveys. He also served as an Academic Advisory Committee member of Chinese Family Panel Survey (CFPS) at Peking University, Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) at Renmin University, and Chinese Labor Dynamics Survey (CLDS) at Sun Yat-Sen University. He is Co-editor-in-Chief of Frontiers in Political Science, Comparative Governance Section, editorial board member of Political Psychology and Advances in Political Psychology, Executive Committee member of International Political Science Association’s Comparative Public Opinion Section.