The most recent Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International (see tables) places Hong Kong next to western democracies. China finds herself barely cleaner than Russia and India, not a particularly great place to be. And perhaps the ultimate proof of Hong Kong's continued self-assurance is its maintenance of liberal British punishments. Capital punishment remains out and the maximum penalty for corruption is ten years. This is sterner than Singapore's five years, yes, but not a patch on China where a bullet in the back an hour after sentencing is entirely plausible. In short, corruption appears to Hong Kongers as a rather pleasant bed of bauhinias versus the mainland. What then can the mainland learn from Hong Kong? 

Sir Murray MacLehose used the Blair-Kerr commission to kick start Hong Kong's ICAC

Post-war Hong Kong found itself in an unusual twilight zone. Decolonisation was either impractical or undesirable. As millions fled first China's Civil War and then the Great Leap and then the Cultural Revolution the British juggled the socialism they were practicing at home with the odd mix of latent colonisation and aggressive decolonisation they were practicing abroad. 

The result for Hong Kong was a curious British Steel fist inside a Chinese Silk glove. A number of benevolent acts unfolded in housing and education and a skeleton welfare state emerged. An emaciated skeleton, true. But it still outdid previous offerings in Hong Kong and certainly outdid what was available on the Chinese mainland. 

Localization was also initiated. People often think Hong Kong localized somewhere after the Joint Declaration of 1984 and before the handover in 1997. In fact, successive administrations of Grantham (1947-1957), Black (1958-1964) and Trench (1964-1971) all featured localization efforts, as did other British post-war administrators. As thousands of British civil servants retreated either to the delights of Godalming Golf Club or the upper echelons of Central Government Offices in central Hong Kong, the city became a safe-haven manufacturer. The legions of talented Chinese that had fled China took up more and more official roles and business boomed amongst the chaos of Mao’s China and the Korean and Vietnamese civil wars. 

Corruption, alas, also boomed. The 1967 riots were mostly anti-capitalist and anti-colonial (Communist elites were disinterested in reacquiring Hong Kong at that time) but the problem of tea-money, black-money, and hell-money was grabbing people’s hearts & minds. Choose your phrase. Corruption was approaching critical levels. But the British still fumbled through for seven more years after the Star Ferry riots. Anti-corruption efforts were kept puny and an exclusively police effort, a point which apologists for the Royal Hong Kong Police (as they became after the riots) rather gloss over. 

To all eyes willing to see the fumble could not last indefinitely. And it was only just that the honour of catalysing improvements fell finally not to a proactive Government House but instead to a famously AWOL police officer called Peter Godber. As is well-known, part of the problem was that Mr Godber was not just any old police officer. By 1973 he was a Chief Police Superintendent (CSP), one rank down from commissioner grade. A bigger problem was that Mr Godber was under investigation for unexplained wealth worth several millions. These were pre-oil crisis millions too, accrued when a mid-levels apartment cost under HK$100,000.

And the biggest problem was that Mr Godber disappeared from Hong Kong under suspicious circumstances. As Godber-gate demonstrations unfolded (more on those later) it fell to Murray MacLehose, Hong Kong’s 25th governor, to initiate the giant steps. He commissioned not one but two official and independent reports: one on Godber’s escape and one on corruption generally. A senior (government-paid) judge called Sir Alastair Blair-Kerr authored both. On corruption Mr Blair-Kerr wrote: ‘The public will never be convinced that Government really intends to fight corruption unless the Anti-Corruption Office is separated from the Police...’ Well said. 

MacLehose seized the opportunity, or had the opportunity seized for him, opinions are mixed, and pushed for an independent anti-corruption organization through LegCo. Following British traditions it was named the Independent Commission Against Corruption or ICAC, a name that had also emerged in other parts of the Commonwealth, most famously in Australia. The Hong Kong Police role as supreme investigator and prosecutor was finally and thankfully cancelled shortly afterwards.

Messages for China 
Given Hong Kong's ultimate success in forcing the issue through an independent commission, there is a certain mystery why there has been no defining Blair-Kerr type commission on corruption in China. Despite the opaque governance in today’s Zhongnanhai, China has a passable history of using official proclamations and reports to initiate new directions. These span as far back as Commissioner Lin’s ban of opium in the 1840s (although ultimately unsuccessful it still galvanized much of southern China at the time) up to Deng Xiao-ping and his ‘black or white cat’ kick-start of capitalism in the 1980s.

Even stranger, opening the People’s Daily newspaper or other Xinhua News coverage of today's China, there are unending proclamations by the Jeremiah du jour, both official and non-official, about how bad corruption is and how important it is to keep striking hard. Though far from complete these official views of corruption in China are still an undeniable achievement. But why no official commission? It certainly can’t be related to what Kissinger once remarked of America, rather frighteningly: ‘the illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ Nothing in China’s official tapestry says an independent commission is illegal.

China's initial handling of SARS proved once again that corrupt government services are noticed most

Given that for most Hong Kongers ‘foreign business’ means China business the unavoidable conclusion is that one of Hong Kong's primary exports to the mainland is bribery. Yet as mentioned before most people are certain Hong Kong is basically clean. 

Why?

One basic answer is that Hong Kong is (mostly) clean on two unexciting but vital fronts: day-to-day provision of government services and day–to-day law enforcement by the police. In the initial years of ICAC operations, most complaints were against these two killers. Reports against government departments neared 90% in the first year of the ICAC. Amazingly half of those concerned the police department. The British prioritised these areas in a way to best improve people’s daily life. Building on Godber’s extradition from England and four years of imprisonment, for example, the ICAC arrested several hundred other policemen during the mid-1970s. And to this day the ICAC still make fairly clear mention of civil servants that are, as it diplomatically notes, ‘recommended for disciplinary action’. Details are available at the ICAC web site: www.icac.org.hk

Messages for China
Applying to China Winston Churchill’s belief that a nation forgetting its past has no future overstates things. But plenty of evidence says that China’s public administrators have a long history of ignoring problems of daily life. True, a pastiche of incompetent and corrupt police and other government officials is far from an exclusively Communist work-of-art. Sleaze is something which rooted deeply in China during the Nationalist era (1911-1949) and before that during the Qing emperor-system. 

But the Communists are like all governments. They have to play the hand dealt. So there is another mystery of China. Why avoid prioritising anti-corruption measures in the unsexy but vital provision of daily government services? Why is China always targeting super-rich businessmen and powerful provincial leaders guilty of mega-corruption? These are no doubt serious and worthy of punishment. Yet often they have little-to-no visible impact on the hardships faced by the masses in daily life. As the British found in Hong Kong, more or less, it is not necessarily signature cases that alter people’s perceptions.

China's progress on a more open judiciary is not bad, but it's not good either. Hong Kong shows much more consistency is required.

But repeated use and their deterrence diminishes. Hong Kong’s punishment of corruption is not always, and has not been, understandable. Or meticulously fair. But it is mostly sparing and nearly always equitable. Courts have a near faultless record at publicizing both the breach that occurred and which ordinance is being implemented. The punishment is mostly based on precedence and always within well-known and pre-announced limits. Many of the hallmarks, in other words, of common law are still intact.

This is not to say Hong Kong has perfect prosecutorial blindness. At times it is not always clear if both the giver and the receiver of a bribe are liable to the same punishment, a similar oversight that happens in China. (They are both guilty in Singapore.) And as in all countries rich are more likely to escape than poor, a point that Ms Sally Aw will no doubt confirm. The HKSAR government avoidance of prosecution because it might lead to the collapse of Sing Tao Group, one of Hong Kong’s largest employers, remains a great indignity on Hong Kong’s post-handover identity.

Messages for China
Though mainland’s punishments are done in a rather more grisly fashion than western eyes can handle, they deserve credit for their enthusiasm. It is true, for example, that China can look rather smugly at the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which has been in place since 1977 yet has seen fewer than 50 convictions. China has prosecuted many more important offenders than America. 

But look at Hong Kong compared to China and there is a pressing need for mainland authorities, both central and provincial, to be clearer on which law is being used when punishing, and what the limits of punishment are. Equity in punishments is seriously needed in China. 

China has some good basic schooling but needs to improve its encouragement of cocking a snoot at officials

When protestors in Hong Kong rallied in Victoria Park in 1973 to condemn the government, their focus was on preventing future problems as much as punishing CSP Godber. Perhaps their actions did not set the ICAC in stone. But they certainly set it in sway. The Hong Kong ordinance that followed shortly afterwards established the ICAC and required an integrated fight against corruption on three fronts: investigation, education and prevention. Prevention, went the logical thinking, is better than cure as much as corruption of society as corruption of the body.

Over the years Hong Kong’s focus on prevention has not perhaps produced the greatest ever marketing campaigns. Thankfully, though, tired and draconian ICAC publicity campaigns in the 1980s (‘Whichever way you look at it, corruption doesn’t pay’) have been replaced by slightly more imaginative things like ‘3G Power: Go get the grafters!’

China can also note that Hong Kong’s continuing focus on education as much as investigation has kept the investment relatively modest. The commission’s current strength is a mere 1,300, a tiny percent of the civil service headcount. 

Messages for China
Everyone knows China could only be described as at the beginning of their journey against corruption. This is perhaps ironic given leaders claim to have such attentive eyes on the lessons of history. Even Thomas Jefferson warned as far back as the 18th century this rather obvious point: ‘The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold on us.’ 

Unfortunately Jefferson’s warning would bring only four words prominently to mind for China: stable, door, horse and bolted. China could therefore do well to detach themselves from constant punishments and think of education more, particularly in paying cadres to educate in both cities and provinces that there are laws against corruption that will be enforced. As Hong Kong has found, people need to be told repeatedly that defeating corruption is not just about punishing those unlucky enough to get caught.

Liked or not the People's Republic is marching towards democracy. Hong Kong shows that small-d democratisation helps fight corruption even when postponing big-d Democracy

Democratisation in Hong Kong arose from the very odd paradox that Britain became involved with after the war. In the same way that Hong Kong talked-the-talk about laissez-faire capitalism whilst walking-the-walk (somewhat) of socialist red-tape protecting workers, so Hong Kong achieved a form of democracy without ever, as it were, achieving democracy. It was a  fudge which only the British could have managed.

In part this emerged from Britain’s credible heritage of enfranchisement. From the Reform Acts of the 1830s onwards, the British had discovered through painful experience, and ahead of much of the world, that a large electorate made it infeasible to bribe so many people in one time. Rather ironically something that would have impressed Scrooge was not a Scottish creation but an English one.

Fast-forwarding a century-plus to Hong Kong, one of the misunderstandings of Chris Patten’s administration is that it initiated democracy that was previously non-existent. In fact Patten merely strengthened an existing trend brought to Hong Kong by generations of British administrators schooled in the ideals of democracy.

The first elections to Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) were in 1985, a relatively short time after the ICAC’s creation. Admittedly they were far from capital-D Democracy. Only 12 seats were elected from functional constituencies, plus one each from members of the Urban Council and Regional Council, but it was still something. 

Thereafter the British maintained a discreet but notable drip-drip of democratisation without ever going the Full Montesquieu. In 1988 two more seats in LegCo were opened to functional constituencies. By 1991 two-thirds of LegCo were elected in some form: 21 from functional constituencies and 18 from geographical constituencies.

Certainly Patten’s 1995 democratisation was the boldest move, but it should be understood in this gradualist context. For the record, Patten’s LegCo had 60 Members, 30 elected from functional constituencies, 20 by direct elections in geographical constituencies, and 10 by the Election Committee constituency.

Related to the continual dispensing of small-d democracy, the British were also careful to copy another thing from home which kept democracy workable: an inquisitive and critical press. Perhaps Hong Kong’s press did not always ensure Hong Kongers were never awed by their administration. But they went some way towards ensuring that influential elements in Hong Kong were moderately worried by citizens who had some form of vote. 

The effect of small-d democratisation for Hong Kong was fundamental. The British may have withheld universal suffrage, despite swithering with its introduction at various stages after the war, yet by 1997 most Hong Kongers had the experience of voting for at least administrative officials. There was a continual but subtle message that small-d democracy counted.

These two processes, gradual democratisation and a free press, ultimately impacted Hong Kong's corruption. It is no coincidence that at the time of writing, approaching three decades into the life of the ICAC, more than 90% of corruption reports come direct from the public of Hong Kong.

Messages for China
Many in Beijing, of course, consider democratisation is impossible for China or impossible for the Communist Party, which are wrongly seen as indivisible elements. This divorce from the realities of history by senior officials is well known and a separate discussion altogether.

But a more careful look at how the British handled democratisation in Hong Kong shows that there is such a thing as small-d democracy. Most importantly, this approach has a useful role in the fight against corruption, whether that fight happens in people’s head or elsewhere.

001, Finland, 9.7
002, Iceland, 9.6
003, Denmark, 9.5
004, New Zealand, 9.5
005, Singapore, 9.4

011, United Kingdom, 8.7

014, Hong Kong, 8

018, United States, 7.5

023, France, 6.9

030, Taiwan, 5.7

066, China, 3.4

083, India, 2.8

086, Russia, 2.7

133, Bangladesh, 1.3

Source: Transparency International

Source: Transparency International