China's Corruption Ranking Is Middle Of The Pack. Again.
Transparency International just came out with its 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index. I love these things and I think this one, in particular, tends to be quite accurate. Now I am not saying any of these surveys are completely accurate, because there really is no one great measuring stick for corruption and, even if there were, there is no way to assure accuracy within that measure. What transparency international does is to meld together various existing surveys on corruption and compile those into one meta-list. This year, TI used 13 independent surveys (note that many of the surveys do not cover all of countries) to compile its list of the perceived level of public-sector corruption in each country.
As it typically does in these rankings, China placed in the high-middle.
So without further ado, here are some of the countries that made the list (somewhat randomly selected), from the least corrupt to the most corrupt, with my own comments added to some of them.
1.New Zealand
2.Denmark
3.Singapore
3.Sweden
5.Switzerland
6.Finland
7.Netherlands
8.Australia
8.Canada
8.Iceland
11.Norway
12.Hong Kong
12.Luxembourg
14.Germany
14.Ireland
16.Austria
17.Japan
17.United Kingdom
19.United States
20.Barbados
I have had many dealings with many of the countries in the top ten and none of those countries seemed the least bit corrupt to me. I suspect (though I do not know) one of the reasons the United States has performed relatively poorly in this ranking is because so many of its state court judges are elected and that is just not a good thing when it comes to perceptions of corruption. I know many lawyers in many states who will do whatever they can (within the law) to get their cases into Federal, not state, court.
25. Chile
25. Uruguay
I list these two for two reasons. One, though I knew Chile was doing quite well with respect to corruption, I had no idea it was doing this well. I have had very little dealings with Uruguay (I have represented a couple of Uruguayan companies but that was it) and I had no idea it would rank so high.
27. Estonia
27. Slovenia
I list these two because they are the best performers from Eastern Europe.
37.Botswana This is the best performer from Africa. By far.
37. Taiwan
39. Korea (South)
43. Macau
56. Malaysia
I list these countries because they are in Asia and they are all pretty relevant to China. I am not surprised by the rankings of Taiwan and South Korea. They seem right to me. I have been doing business in both Taiwan and South Korea for a long long time and during that time, I have seen both countries become better and better in terms of their transparency. Just by way of example, I used to go out to dinner with the Judges and attorneys in Korea when I would go there, but that ceased a few years ago as I understand that practice has become frowned upon.
61. Turkey I list Turkey because I lived there and because we had to pay around $50 to get our phones installed within two weeks, rather than within ten years and because.....
63. Italy I have had very few dealings with Italy, but I have a lawyer-friend from there and he is always telling me horror stories about its court system.
75. Brazil I list Brazil because it is the "B" in BRIC.
79. China This ranking seems about right to me. Pretty much in the high-middle of the pack. China is amazingly not corrupt when it comes to the various aspects of getting a foreign company established there. If I were to rank China as it applies to just foreign companies, I would rank it considerably higher.
84. India I list India because it is the "I" in BRIC.
84. Thailand This ranking seems about right.
89. Mexico
106. Argentina I list Argentina because it is a pretty important Latin American country and it ranks pretty low.
111. Indonesia
120. Vietnam
139. Philippines
These Asian countries perform quite poorly. Vietnam is much like China, however, in that it has worked very hard to make things better for foreign companies.
146. Russia Russia is the "R" in BRIC. My firm's personnel have been doing considerable business in Russia since before the fall of communism there and I have not detected any real improvement in corruption there during that time.
158. Cambodia
158. Laos
162. Venezuela I am sure having Hugo Chavez as President does not help.
179. Afghanistan
180. Somalia
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Comments
Interesting to see Iceland tied for #8 (or should that be 10? There are three number eights). I wonder if this will change considering the recent financial collapse there.
Incidentally, I was born there, so I'm interested to see what happens there, although I haven't visited since I was a baby and really have no other connection to the place.
Posted by: Nicki | November 17, 2009 8:15 PM
The USA's ranking is lower than one would expect because there are pockets of corruption (Chicago and New Jersey come to mind), that are anathema to the rest of the country.
Having lived in Singapore and Taiwan, neither ranking is surprising, and I agree with you on PRC vis-a-vis foreign investors.
I am sad to see Brazil and Mexico so far down the list. I greatly admire my sales reps in those countries and we are considering investing in Mexico. Hopefully the situation is similar to PRC.
Posted by: WCK | November 17, 2009 8:37 PM
This is an obvious comment, but still important: in the perceived corruption there are 2 factors: "perceived" and "corruption".
In some countries the media is strictly controlled and the people are made to see things in a particular way, in others free media tend to exaggerate the scandals because that is where the money is.
To illustrate this, we might say that the only reason why New Zealand is Number 1 is because the organizers forgot one country that would have scored a 10. That is DPRKorea, where every time I asked these kind of questions, the answer was: zero corruption.
This is not to say that the ranking is meaningless, but just that the insight from direct experience offered by blogs like this one are invaluable to interpret the data. Thanks for that!
Posted by: Uln | November 17, 2009 9:52 PM
New Zealand No. 1? NZ consistently comes in the top few with the Nordic countries, but considering the scandals through the National Party's 1st year back in government over MPs claiming a bit more of the perks than they should be (morally, if not legally, and all parties seem equally guilty), I'm surprised it didn't get bumped down a few spots this time around.
I guess the fact that NZ is too small to ever really get in the news has its advantages.
Posted by: chriswaugh_bj | November 18, 2009 1:53 AM
I'm saddened to see the UK down at #17; I seem to remember us doing better in past years.
Posted by: uk visa lawyer | November 18, 2009 2:08 AM
The high ranking for Singapore is a mistake, because the Chinese leaders of the island nation have institutionalized and legalized corruption.
The dictator of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, pays himself more than US$2.5 million a year. The dictator's son, the current Prime Minister, receives a bit more. The Prime Minister's wife is the head of a sovereign wealth fund, and no one knows her compensation. In all, at least 30 Singaporean public officials are paid more than one million dollars a year.
"Corruption" is in the eye of the beholder.
Posted by: Judge Not Reinhold | November 18, 2009 3:13 AM
The United States should rank much higher with the bailout mess and hundreds of billions of dollars that were mis-allocated and lost, especially with AIG and the big banks and Goldman Sachs. How Goldman plants one of their own in the top position of the exact arm of the Federal Government that is supposed to be objectively regulating and monitoring them is beyond me. The corruption in the US makes the corruption in China look like Child's play when measured in monetary terms.
Posted by: Realist | November 18, 2009 2:49 PM