Corruption

After a month of rumors and speculation, former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai has been ousted—or more accurately suspended—from all his formal political positions, including as member of the Politburo. Behind the scenes of Bo’s political downfall are apparently numerous issues regarding “violations of Party discipline,” the most dramatic and terrible of which appears to be a link between his wife and the death of British citizen Neil Heywood. The death of Heywood—who had personal and professional ties to Bo’s family—in mid-November 2011, was originally ascribed to natural causes. In the aftermath of Chongqing Vice-Mayor and Police Chief Wang Lijun’s flight to the U.S. consulate in nearby Chengdu, however, it became apparent that there was more to the story, and now Bo’s wife Gu Kailai is being investigated for her potential role in the murder. While these events are political theater of the highest order, there are a number of larger issues at stake concerning China’s political future: The need to reassess Mao Zedong: There has never been a thorough accounting by the Chinese Communist Party of the trauma inflicted on the Chinese people by Mao Zedong, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Bo Xilai brought back memories of Mao not only in his campaign-style leadership and red songs but also in his political certitude and defiance of established norms of governance. Bo’s anti-corruption campaign was wildly popular but ignored any procedures for detention and trial. The political death of Bo is a serious political blow for the neo-leftists, who raise the banner of Mao and wreak havoc for any real political reform agenda. However, the Party needs a full accounting of the Maoist period, charismatic leadership, and the cult of personality to truly move forward.  The need for transparency, official accountability, and the rule of law: We still don’t know whether any of this political scandal would have come to light had Wang Lijun not spilled his guts to officials in the U.S. consulate or retired senior leaders such as Qiao Shi (reportedly)not played puppet master. Nonetheless, the case of Bo represents a marked improvement from traditional Chinese politics by bringing transparency, accountability, and perhaps even the rule of law into the political process. Of course the Party is already trying to use its handling of the scandal as an example of its respect for the “sanctity and authority of law.” In doing so, however, the Party raises the expectations of the Chinese people that such transparency and accountability will continue, not only for the duration of the Bo Xilai case but also more broadly through the political system. Let’s hope that the remaining Chinese leaders see the advantage of good governance for their own legitimacy. The need for a more open Internet: In what may be a political first, as the Bo story exploded, China’s Internet guardians were equal opportunity censors. Their main goal appears to have been to tamp down rumor-mongering and speculation—particularly when those rumors centered on a coup attempt by supporters of Bo Xilai. Sina and Tencent both followed orders by Beijing to block users from commenting on others’ posts and at the same time, Beijing shut down neo-leftist websites such as Utopia. Yet such restrictions are unlikely to work over the long term. Chinese citizens reacted vociferously to the clamp down on their political voice, and their ability to comment was reinstated only four days after being restricted. Beijing should realize that it will never get the Internet genie back in the bottle and let 1.3 billion flowers bloom. Global Times editor Hu Xijin and others stress that the Party has “full control” of the situation and the “18th People’s Congress will take place calmly and in an orderly fashion.” That may be. However, unless Wen Jiabao and the other reformers within the Chinese leadership push hard and fast for real political advances, the specter of Bo Xilai and everything he represented—the absolute corruption of one of the Party’s beacons of political rectitude, the uncertainty concerning the future political direction of the country, and the questionable legitimacy of the Chinese leadership writ large—will continue to haunt the next generation of Chinese leaders.  

As details leak out, it appears that corruption will play a central role in the saga of former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai. Bo, who was summarily ousted from his position on March 15, apparently attempted to derail the investigation of his police chief, Wang Lijun, into corrupt practices by Bo’s family members. Yet corruption is hardly enough of a reason to scrap one of the country’s most senior and well-known leaders. Scratch the surface of almost any senior official in China and a family member or two will likely have crossed a law or two. Bo’s sins ran much deeper. The dramatic and charismatic Bo was simply too big a personality in a leadership that prides itself on facelessness and colorlessness. And his politics were too disruptive and, in the end, corrosive for a political system that prizes least common denominator consensus. Between Vice President Xi Jinping and Premier Wen Jiabao, the Chinese leadership signaled Bo’s demise well before his formal ouster. Xi attacked Bo’s political character in a March 1 speech before the Party School, and then in an essay published two weeks later. In his speech, Xi noted that leading officials should “fairly use their power, keep incorrupt [sic] in their work, and resolutely oppose the tendencies of . . . hedonism, and extreme individualism.” The article made things even more explicit, raising the dangers of self-promotion and seeking personal fame through the Party. Bo’s political proclivities also ran afoul of China’s top leaders. Bo brought Mao Zedong back to life with grand-scale mobilization campaigns to root out corruption and plant trees, as well as singing “red” songs. While popular among some segments of Chongqing’s population, for others—including some within China’s most senior leadership—Bo Xilai’s red reminiscing put a positive spin on one of the darkest chapters in the country’s history. Premier Wen Jiabao took center stage on the last day of last week’s National People’s Congress in rejecting Bo’s revisionist tendencies: “Without successful political structural reform, it is impossible for us to fully institute economic structural reform…China risks another historical tragedy like the Cultural Revolution unless it enacts political reforms.” Where does this leave politics in China? Certainly Chongqing is getting the short end of the stick. Bo led Chongqing to 16 percent growth in 2011. Little about his replacement, Zhang Dejiang, suggests that such a performance will be repeated. Zhang, one of the most faceless, colorless members of the Politburo, received his university economics training in North Korea. He served an embarrassing stint as Guangdong Party Secretary during the SARS outbreak and, most recently, held oversight responsibility for China’s high speed rail, a story of mixed success at best. The broader Chinese public is divided on the merits of Bo’s ouster. Despite Weibo’s blocking of Bo Xilai’s name, Chinese voices on the Internet have gone wild. Some decry Bo’s departure: “Bo Xilai leaves, the masses cry. The dream of common prosperity is shattered! Corrupt officials laugh, they can keep squeezing the masses and extorting their money.” Others have taken up Wen Jiabao’s call: “Now it is the 21st century. 1.3 billion Chinese people have entered the modern era . . . yet unexpectedly people are still crying out for a Savior, for a good emperor. What we need is exactly as premier Wen said. We need to wake up! We need a good system not a good man. We need rule of law not rule of man. We need openness and transparency! Do you agree?” In Beijing, itself, political life is in flux. Bo is in limbo—deprived of his position in Chongqing but not of his seat on the Politburo. It appears to be a real victory for the more reform-oriented officials within China’s senior leadership, but whether they can capitalize on it over the next six months by ensuring that the next Standing Committee looks more like Wen Jiabao and less like Wu Bangguo remains to be seen. In the near term, however, they must be busy struggling to develop a politically viable narrative to explain Bo’s downfall. Based on the voices of the people, the truth would be a good place to start.

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers. Nigeria’s struggle against corruption is moving slowly, at least in terms of results. Transparency International’s "Corruption Perception Index 2011", which evaluates 183 countries, put Nigeria at 143. The country ranked 134 out of 178 countries in 2010. Still, anti-corruption efforts proceed. Audits undertaken by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) have revealed "startling gaps" in the conduct of business by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), during the 2006-2008 period. According to the NEITI audits seen by Reuters, $540 million is missing from $1.675 billion in signature bonuses, 3.1 million barrels of oil are missing from NNPC declarations about its joint ventures, and $3.789 billion in dividends from Nigeria LNG do not appear to have been paid into federal accounts. The inauguration of a Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force with former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chairman Nuhu Ribadu as its head promises more transparency and accountability in the oil sector. Similarly, prosecutions of alleged corrupt officials took a step forward with former governor James Ibori’s recent conviction in London on charges of money-laundering, the subject of a tough Guardian editorial noting that the verdict on Ibori also "convicts" Nigeria’s political system, the party structure, and the screening process for public officials. However, former governor of Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel, who had been charged with financial misappropriation and abuse of office, was freed when the court ruled that the EFCC had not followed due process in the amendment of the initial charges against the former governor. Despite ongoing progress, corruption appears to remain firmly entrenched in the country. Five years ago, Daniel Smith wrote in the Financial Times that an aspect of Nigeria’s political culture had changed in that, "accusations of corruption...have become the currency of political competition in an unprecedented fashion." As a result, expectations had been created that politicians, and officials, should be held accountable. Smith judged that "because anti-corruption rhetoric has become the currency of political legitimacy, the next cohort of leaders may feel compelled to prove their credentials by probing and prosecuting their patrons." To some extent, Smith was right. Probes and prosecutions are going forward. Yet corruption persists. Its durability, whether in Nigeria or elsewhere, is an attribute early twentieth-century American muckrakers knew well. Lincoln Steffens, whose articles on corruption in American cities in McClure’s Magazine helped establish the field of muckraking journalism, discovered some of the reasons for corruption’s staying power. They may still apply. Peter Hartshorn writes in his biography of Steffens, I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens, that political corruption, in Steffens’ view, "was not a matter of individual character but of pressure, and most people would succumb if money, even modest amounts, appeared in their pockets." Steffens concluded that "reform begins at home--with all of us." Reformers themselves were also a problem. "I saw enough of it to realize that reform politics was still politics, only worse; reformers were not so smooth as professional politicians, and it seemed to me they were not so honest," Steffens said. As well, he eventually came to regard as absurd, his own assumption that just "showing people facts and conditions would persuade them to alter them or their own conduct." Part of Steffens’ lifelong process of "unlearning," according to Hartshorn, included his realization that "pure honesty, particularly the righteous kind that he would find in many shrill reformers, was useless in pushing society forward." As a muckraker, Steffens learned that the social problem of corruption "will not be solved by good men and intellectuals, but by intellectuals, practical men, and many, many rascals..." Smith is no doubt right that the culture shift in Nigeria aids anti-corruption efforts, but Steffens’ insights may suggest why that progress is in slowmo.

From the outside looking in—and maybe from the inside as well—China’s legislative gatherings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference are largely tedious affairs, dominated by long-winded prepared speeches and commentary. Yet behind the scenes there is always some high-level politicking, some real ideas floating about, and generally a few moments worth waiting for. Politicking probably takes the top spot this year given that China is in the homestretch of its leadership transition. The hottest issue has certainly been whether Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai—whose political future may have been torpedoed by the apparent attempted defection of one of his underlings Wang Lijun—would show up for the meetings. And if he did show, what would he do? Well Bo did show, and he tried to put the best face on his unhappy predicament, selling the economic success of the Chongqing model hard in a bid to keep his Politburo Standing Committee hopes alive. One thing missing this year—Bo’s relentless hyping of the Maoist revival he launched back home in Chongqing, which included singing “red” songs and pushing a number of city-wide campaigns, all of which in better times earned him national acclaim. In  better days, Bo Xilai waves a Chinese national flag during the opening ceremony of a revolutionary song singing concert at Chongqing Olympic Sports Centre in Chongqing municipality on June 29, 2011. (Jason Lee / Courtesy of Reuters) Journalists at this year’s congress did Bo Xilai no favors, reporting that he appeared “tired” and “languished.” On the ideas front, Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Yang—another contender for a seat on the Standing Committee of the Politburo—has come out swinging. Fresh from his successful management of the Wukan village protests, Wang is claiming the reform mantle.  In a discussion on political reform, he proposed a number of ideas sure to appeal to the vast majority of Chinese citizens including everything from “scrapping lengthy introductions and applause for officials at government meetings,” to more meaningful reforms, such as cutting back on ministries’ powers to veto projects and strengthening intellectual property rights. Some additional substance from the meetings can be captured quickly by a look at Caixin’s daily roundup of interesting quotations from various delegates. The Global Times also is staying on top of the legislative debates with some thoughtful commentary—not necessarily the highlights report from Premier Wen Jiabao’s work report, which gets down to details such as “The government will enhance school bus safety to ensure children’s safety,” but rather a couple of editorials the paper has published over the course of the meetings. One, which is entitled “Two sessions reflect clamor for reform,” argues “China is in need of ideological liberation and needs a great number of reformers. They should dare to break with convention and to make breakthroughs that were deemed forbidden.” A second, “Path to national revival must stay on target,” published five days later cautions that China needs new bold reforms, but it also needs to firmly uphold some of the fundamentals.” One of the fundamentals, according to the article, is the political system.  (It should be noted that the Global Times is often very interesting, but consistency is not always its strong point.) And thus far the moment worth waiting for takes us back to Bo Xilai. On Thursday, March 8th, Bo reportedly missed a significant meeting and photo op with the rest of the Politburo. In China, such a picture is easily worth a thousand characters. Usually everyone focuses on who is standing where as a sign of the relative power of each person—if you’re not standing anywhere, nothing more need be said.

This is a guest post by Asch Harwood, the Council on Foreign Relations Africa program research associate. Follow him on Twitter at @aschlfod. My attention was recently called to a neat online anti-corruption tool—Ipaidabribe.com (h/t Debbie McCoy). As the name implies, the original founders set up a crowdsourcing website to report and track corruption in India. It is probably too soon to judge whether the site has had an impact on corruption (an oft cited success is an invitation to the founders from the Indian transport commissioner to brief her staff on corruption in the transportation department). However, despite the difficulties of actually measuring corruption due to its illicit nature, Ipaidabride has successfully gathered a wealth of data, including fairly concrete numbers of how much money is going towards bribes. Most striking is that the police demand bribes almost three to one over other public agencies. What does this have to do with Africa? A group in Kenya has also set up an Ipaidabride.or.ke website. It has received far fewer reports than its Indian predecessor, although it was only established just over a year ago. Nevertheless, of the 252 reports of paid bribes, 56 percent went to the police. This figure corroborates a Transparency International study from 2009 that asserts that the Kenyan police is not only the most corrupt agency in Kenya, but also in East Africa. I really hope this catches on, in Kenya as well as other parts of continent. The challenge will not only be getting the word out that this resource exists but showing people that reporting their experiences is worth the time. This means addressing a culture of impunity by holding perpetrators accountable. Without it, people likely will become more apathetic, akin to recent findings that knowledge of a politician’s corruption leads voters to withdraw from participating. Or even worse, they will lash out, as has been the case in Nigeria. That the police, supposedly there to “protect and serve,” are so deeply involved, in both India and Kenya (not to mention Nigeria), highlights the challenges of overcoming such impunity.

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers. Reportedly, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has invited World Bank officials to vet all federal government contracts. "Very soon we will get people from the World Bank to be at my office. For every contract we want to award, irrespective of the structures we have on the ground, they will assess it so that if a job is supposed to cost N10,000 and it’s awarded for N10,000, the likelihood that the contractor bribing anybody will be reduced," Jonathan was quoted as saying. World Bank Senior Communications Specialist Obadiah Tohomdet has said, however, that Nigeria has not formally contacted the World Bank over the vetting of procurement contracts. Tohomdet termed the scheme "an idea in the making by the President." Critics argue that setting up a World Bank contract review desk in the president’s office is "a vote of no confidence in the government." They point to Jonathan’s failure to inaugurate the National Council on Public Procurement, as authorized by the Public Procurement Act of 2007, and his use of the Federal Executive Council to approve contracts.  Osita Okechuckwu of the Conference for Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) stated that Nigerians "don’t need any foreign body to do the work we can successfully do." Zakari Mohammed, speaking for the House of Representatives, noted that the World Bank experts may be paid in hard currency, which would be "another burden on government." Jonathan’s initiative is, in some ways, reminiscent of Liberian president Samuel Doe’s use of American financial experts in 1988-89 to help manage Liberia’s finances. The Opex (Operational Experts) project (pdf) consisted of seventeen experts who were given control over accounts in Liberia’s Ministry of Finance and the National Bank of Liberia. Their mission focused on improving revenue collection, expenditure control, and information processing systems. The project experienced some success in bringing civil service, military, and pension salaries up to date and increasing revenue. However, after a year, the U.S. and Liberian governments mutually agreed to terminate Opex. Controls were circumvented and policy reform measures were not implemented. President Doe’s lack of commitment to the project proved especially damaging. Doe and his advisers retained control of some public funds outside the Ministry of Finance and would not give Opex access to them, as the funds formed the basis for patronage, power, and wealth. Jonathan’s proposal appears to limit the World Bank experts’ role to an advisory one, rather than granting them control, yet a domestic backlash may be brewing among Nigerians who view the initiative as impinging on the country’s capabilities and sovereignty. Removing corruption from procurement contracts also carries the potential to damage officials’ ability to dispense patronage, and is likely to be resisted as much in Nigeria today, as it was in Liberia in the late 1980s. Political systems in which patronage is deeply rooted are difficult to reform in part because of both ’top-down’ and ’bottom-up’ pressures, according to University of Oxford (Jesus College) Professor Nicholas Cheeseman. Successful politicians’ ability to push reform is limited by their indebtedness to those who have supported them, while at lower levels, people worry that if they stop acting on a patron-client basis, while everyone else continues to do so, they will lose out. "To my mind," Cheeseman argues, "it is precisely the combination of pressure from above and below [that] is what ensures that patron-client relations are so durable." While Jonathan’s proposal--reportedly still ideational--to reduce corruption in procurement contracts is commendable, it is likely to be governed by patronage networks’ ’invisible hand.’

Chinese politics is fun again. The Palace—or Zhongnanhai in this case—hasn’t been rife with this much intrigue since Mao Zedong’s time. The apparent attempted defection and subsequent flight to Beijing of Chongqing deputy mayor Wang Lijun has China historians reminiscing about one-time Mao successor Lin Biao. The analogy isn’t really that precise of course. Lin reportedly died in 1971 in a mysterious plane crash over Mongolia after purportedly leading a failed coup attempt against Mao. At most the mystery surrounding Wang has to do with whether he will be the downfall of his boss Bo Xilai, the powerful Chongqing Party Secretary and Politburo Standing Committee wannabe. But like the Lin Biao drama, the Wang saga is unfolding in a dark and secretive manner that has all the makings of a le Carré novel. Politics is perhaps not as much fun, but is ever more potent at the grassroots level. There are almost 500 protests every day, and courtesy of the Internet, many of them now are visible to Chinese throughout the rest of the county as well as to the rest of the world. There is no single issue that unites these protests except perhaps poor governance. But everyone—farmers, workers, the middle class, Tibetans, and Uighurs—has something he or she wants changed, and their faces say it all. While intrigue and unrest claim the headlines, politics is perhaps most interesting where it is least visible. As scholars and thinkers anticipate this year’s leadership transition, they are churning out ideas for the fifth generation in the hopes that real change may be just a leader away. In January, Tsinghua University professor Sun Liping released a report claiming that gradual reform was encouraging institutions to harden and powerful vested interests to take hold. He called for China to take four steps, including “moving in the direction of the mainstream world civilization, which has as its core values: freedom, rationality, individual rights, market economics, democratic politics and rule of law.” A commentary in People’s Daily that followed in late February, appeared to pick up on Sun’s points, arguing, “Reform is risk, but not reforming is risky for the Party… A party that has governed for a long time will be very cautious of anything that might hurt its political base in the short term and so resist change that could affect the development of some special interests.” Quoting Hu Jintao, the article stated: “Don’t miss the opportunity to make reforms in key areas and key links, continue to pursue reforms and innovations in the economic system, the political system, the cultural system, and the social system.” Meanwhile, on the economic front, the State Council’s Development Research Center joined forces with the World Bank to push for reform of the country’s massive system of state-owned enterprises in order to open the economy to real competition and entrepreneurship. Now all Beijing needs is a twenty-first century Zhu Rongji to ram such a reform through. The fifth generation of Chinese leaders has offered little indication of its policy preferences, and for the first year, the new leaders will likely be consumed simply with consolidating power and ensuring that all the high-speed trains run on time and without mishap. Still, few Chinese appear to believe that their country can thrive or even survive if it remains as Pei Minxin described in 2006, “trapped in transition.” The drumbeat for change is loud and only going to get louder as China’s next generation of leaders take their place behind the walls of Zhongnanhai.

This is a guest post by Asch Harwood, the Council on Foreign Relations Africa program research associate. Follow him on Twitter at @aschlfod. John Campbell has regularly made the point that from 1999 to 2007  increasingly bad elections led Nigerians to withdraw from the political process. Despite official proclamations, the 2007 elections were thought to have had an extremely low turnout. A recent paper (PDF) by the National Bureau of Economic Research (h/t to Chris Blattman), “Looking Beyond the Incumbent: The Effects of Exposing Corruption on Electoral Outcomes,” provides what could be some empirical evidence from their randomized experiment in Mexico to support this observation. To conduct their experiment, researchers deployed varying levels of information on candidates’ corruption to different groups of voters in municipal elections in Mexico--and then measured voter behavior. Specifically, the researchers were interested in whether knowing more about corruption would cause voters to cast their ballot for the opposition candidate or not to vote at all. They found that “exposing rampant corruption leads to incumbents’ vote loses, but it also leads to a decrease in electoral turnout, and a decrease in challengers’ votes… Thus, under some circumstances, information about corruption disengages voters from the political process.” Underlying their findings is the idea that “flows of such information about corruption are necessary but not sufficient to improve the governance and responsiveness because voters may respond to information by withdrawing from the political process rather than engaging to demand accountability.” While clearly Mexico and Nigeria have distinct political, economic, and social contexts, I think the authors’ findings fit the pattern in Nigeria. The Giant of Africa’s well-known culture of impunity, coupled with an increasingly disenchanted (and even alientated) electorate, culminated in what came to be known as Nigeria’s 2007 “election-like” event. (It would be interesting to replicate their experiment in Nigeria. Among other difficulties, we don’t have much information on how much money local government areas receive or spend, which researchers did have through Mexico’s Federal Auditor’s Office.) While Nigeria’s 2011’s electoral turnouts were considered better (and in some cases, too high to be credible), this can be at least partially explained by a newfound credibility bestowed by Attahiru Jega’s INEC leadership as well as the end of “zoning,” (power alternation between North and South) and overt appeals to ethnic and religious identity. Read the paper here (PDF).

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers. Some business persons and economists tend to portray Nigeria sunny-side up. One example is Dambisa Moyo’s Financial Times article, "Africa Can Remind the World of the Capitalist Way." She asserts that "today’s Nigeria is strong enough to avoid a protracted crisis," and cites an increase in global brands such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and Walmart in Lagos to argue that the "growing power of the African consumer" explains why the crisis over President Jonathan’s attempt to remove the fuel subsidy failed to spur a political meltdown. "Nigerian consumers want to buy their groceries and get back to work; they have too much vested in the economy." Another example is Franklin Templeton’s Emerging Markets Group chairman Mark Mobius. He believes Nigeria represents "Africa’s biggest growth potential," that the banking sector, in particular, is especially attractive, and that Boko Haram attacks in Abuja and Kano are "isolated incidents." "You can still do business, even when you have a lot of turmoil," Mobius said. In a similar vein, an article by Maram Mazen and Chris Kay, makes reference to a June Morgan Stanley report forecasting that Nigeria would overtake South Africa, "the region’s biggest economy," by 2025, suggesting that the country is a lucrative investment target. But these views mask the reality of a country in deep crisis. In fact, President Jonathan’s abrupt subsidy removal initiative started to provoke a "political meltdown," and that is why he was forced to backtrack on it. It did something else, too: namely, awaken the sleeping giant that is Nigeria’s impoverished millions. The massive demonstrations in major cities marked a watershed in the country’s history. Political and economic elites are no longer in full control and this will have unpredictable consequences going forward. At a minimum, the government will have to exercise caution in its policies for fear of provoking further popular eruptions. Anti-fuel-subsidy-removal demonstrations were largely peaceful. However, on the other end of the continuum of opposition to the government is Boko Haram’s insurgency, which views the government as corrupt, incapable of reform, and therefore wishes to sweep it away . The sect’s attacks are hardly "isolated incidents," but rather form a continuous thread of violent opposition, which is spreading within the North. "[S]uicide attacks in recent weeks on two of the north’s largest cities, Kano and Kaduna, suggest the militants’ reach is spreading, with intelligence agencies unable to keep up," the Financial Times reports. While some observers seem to take comfort in the fact that the "violence in the north hasn’t hurt oil production or touched Lagos," the sect appears to understand that it does not have to wage attacks in Lagos to undermine the government by demonstrating that it is incompetent, unable to provide security or address the root socio-economic causes of violent opposition. Even a steady stream of daily low-grade attacks reveals government impotence. The ongoing attacks, which the military and police have been unable to stop, are also straining Nigeria’s finances. "Nigeria’s security bill has risen to 20 percent of spending in the 2012 budget from 16 percent in 2010, leaving less money for much needed infrastructure projects and for work on reforms to the power and other social and industrial sectors," according to Chijioke Ohuocha, "Nigeria insurgency beginning to take toll on economy." Nigeria’s economic potential is enormous--a sunny prospect given stagnation in the developed world--but at the moment the country’s stability is deteriorating and the near-term future looks stormy.

A few days ago, the Global Times posted a brief opinion piece that questioned the West’s preoccupation with the Wukan village uprising last year and concluded: “China cannot be understood by focusing on the small details, something Western media would do well to appreciate.” Despite this sage advice, I’ve always liked details and found myself captivated by a just-released survey of 1,791 Chinese farming households across 17 provinces. Conducted by Landesa Rural Development Institute, Renmin University, and Michigan State University, the survey explored issues surrounding rural land use and retention. The survey is especially valuable because it has been conducted five times since 1999, thereby providing a sense for whether conditions have been improving or worsening over time. Some of the most striking findings: There has been a steady increase since 2005 in the number of “land takings” or compulsory state acquisitions, and about 43 percent of the villages surveyed have been subjected to such land takings over the past decade. The mean compensation that the local government paid to the farmers was approximately $17, 850 per acre. When it was resold by local authorities, mostly to commercial property developers, the mean price was $740,000 per acre. When farmers are relocated or “urbanized,” only a bit more than twenty percent gained an urban hukou or registration; 13.9 percent received urban social security coverage; 9.4 percent received medical insurance; and only 21.4 percent had access to schools for their children. Every year, local governments appropriate land from 4 million rural Chinese. None of this is a good deal for the farmers, and the result, according to Chinese researchers, is that land conflicts are the source of 65 percent of the more than 180,000 protests China experiences annually. Premier Wen Jiabao, who never misses an opportunity these days to push for a bit more political reform, made the issue of farmers’ rights a central point in his early February 2012 visit to Guangdong. He noted, “The root of the problem is that the land is the property of the farmers, but this right has not been protected in the way it should be.” Wen also noted, “We must certainly protect the voting rights of farmers, and be unwavering in properly carrying out village self-governance and direct election of village committees.” Despite Wen’s best efforts, without a real system of official accountability or the rule of law, there seems little likelihood that farmers will gain the upper hand any time soon. The Global Times notwithstanding, the details of the survey data say it all: more Wukans are on China’s horizon.

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders. In Ben Simon’s February 3rd AFP article, "As protests fade, Nigerians left to cope with fuel hike," the plight of ordinary Nigerians coping with the increased price of fuel is noted. "Jonathan partly capitulated [on his fuel subsidy removal initiative], agreeing to a compromise price of 97 naira, or $0.60 per litre, 20 cents more expensive than the fully subsidized price, but less painful than the $0.87 charged immediately after the program was annulled," Simon writes. Even so, Nigerian workers are hurting. "There is no way an average worker can sustain itself [sic] at 97 naira," Simon quotes the secretary general of Nigeria’s Joint Action Front, as saying. But, "the price won’t go down," a worker in Lagos complains, "we’ll just have to manage it." ’Just have to manage it...’ Some believe, as Simon reports, that this means "the current situation can’t hold and that the country will erupt amid rises in the cost of living...." Another massive uprising is possible, one of his sources says. Time will tell, if such expectations are well founded. But in the meantime, the irony may be that the corruption which arguably has spawned unprecedented protests in the country could become more entrenched because the stress of survival for ordinary people has increased. In his review of Katherine Boo’s new book on India, "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity," Patrick French explains that "gaming the system is the only means of survival in Annawadi," and he quotes Boo’s point that, "for the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained." That Nigeria’s non-elites are, mostly by necessity, active participants in the corruption that plagues the country is a key theme in Daniel Jordan Smith’s 2007 book, "A Culture of Corruption, Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria." Smith explains that ordinary Nigerians are "well aware of their own complicity in perpetuating corruption." In their "struggle to survive," he writes that, "the immediate interests of assisting family, friends, and other allies usually trump a more abstract awareness of what might be in the best interests of the larger society." Simon acknowledges that Nigerian activists are now watching the government more closely to see how the money saved from the rise in fuel prices is spent. However, in the streets, people still have to get by and that struggle has been made harder. Whether by ’gaming the system’, or some other means, how ordinary people cope is key, now that the driving dynamics in Nigeria appear to be shifting from elites to the grassroots.

Relations between South Africa’s governing coalition led by the African National Congress (ANC) and the mostly white-owned press have been edgy from the beginning of post-apartheid South Africa. They worsened under President Thabo Mbeki and current president Jacob Zuma. The tension is the result of a fundamental disconnect. The press argues that it has the responsibility to print the unfettered truth, no matter how embarrassing it might be to personalities in power. The ANC leadership believes that the press should mute its criticism and promote a socially transformative agenda. Though the Democratic Alliance is a credible, formal opposition in South Africa’s parliament, the ANC majority is so huge the press, in effect, often functions as an opposition. (There is media sympathetic to the ANC, but it is smaller.) To curb what it sees as press irresponsibility, the ANC government has sponsored a “Protection of Information” bill. The ANC sees the legislation as necessary to protect the state and guard “national interests,” which it does not define. Opponents – who include much of the traditional Great and Good, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela’s office – fear that the press will be effectively muzzled. The legislation passed the lower house in late 2011. It still must be passed by the upper house and signed by the president. Hence, there is still time for significant amendments. There may be a new wrinkle. Public awareness of corruption, especially in the public sector, appears to be growing. The Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, junior partners to the ANC in the government, have launched an anti-corruption initiative called Corruption Watch. Transparency International’s 2011 corruption index ranked South Africa sixty-four out of 183 countries, not so bad, except that it also showed that a majority of public perceive the public sector as corrupt. The press has been the most successful corruption watch dog. There is concern that the Protection of Information bill, by muzzling the press, could reduce its role. At public hearings on the bill in the huge township of Gugulethu and Thembalethu outside Cape Town, speakers linked the proposed legislation to the press and its increasing exposure of corruption. The Democratic Alliance, firmly opposed to that legislation, is seeking to capitalize on heightened unease about corruption. There is nothing new about corruption in South Africa, though it is perhaps less open than in other countries. But, under the apartheid National government, there were kickbacks and other contracting irregularities. Most South Africans appear to believe that corruption has become worse over the past decade. The disunity of the ANC and the personal factions that increasingly dominate its internal politics may mean that more evidence of corruption seeps out than earlier. Rising popular concern about corruption could become an important wild card in South African politics.

It was easy to get swept up in the Wukan moment. A committed band of protestors stands up to corrupt officials and seizes control of the village. They demand that the officials return ill-gotten land, call for free and fair elections, and seek the body of one of their leaders they believe has been beaten to death while in official custody. After a several-day standoff, senior provincial officials swoop in and hand the villagers an unequivocal victory: Land, elections, and their leader’s body. Only not quite. Now that the focus of world attention has moved elsewhere, so too, apparently, has the need for Chinese officials to do the right thing. According to a recent report from the Straits Times (paywall), the body of the protest leader Xue Jinbo has yet to be returned to his family; authorities reportedly want to send the body directly to a cemetery. No elections have been scheduled, and the discussions over the land issues have stalled. Perhaps of greater concern, one villager has committed suicide, reportedly after having been harassed relentlessly by authorities who believed he had been part of the protests. More bad news comes from outside Wukan. Zheng Yanxiong, the uncompromising top party official in Shanwei county (which oversees Wukan) who said pigs would fly before the foreign media could be trusted, has amassed more power after being named the head of the local legislature. Still, the cloud over Wukan may have a silver lining. The village has become lodged in the political consciousness of the Chinese people. The director of the Political Science Department at the Central Institute of Socialism Wang Zhanyang has used Wukan to call publicly for democratic reform, including the separation of government and party, not only at the village but also at the county level. Cloaking part of his long discourse in Deng Xiaoping-speak, Wang has brought Wukan into the mainstream of Chinese political debate. Wang’s argument would no doubt resonate as well with many in the broader Chinese public. Earlier this week, tens of thousands of netizens rallied against a local People’s Congress deputy from Foshan, a large city not too far from Wukan, who said—in apparent reference to Wukan—that the public can be unruly when it was spoiled and that just as it was difficult to make a spoiled child obedient, ordinary civilians should be disciplined, not given preferential treatment. It is too easy to assume that the initial resolution of a problem in China represents the last word. That’s almost never the case. Now we know that we should continue to pay attention to what happens in Wukan.  It matters a lot—not only for the people of Wukan but also for our understanding of the evolving debate and real potential for wide scale political change in China.