150039 SE Corruption and anti-corruption in China (EC Politik, Ökonomie und Recht) (2019W)

Corruption has been a pivotal issue in studies of modern China across multiple disciplines, including political science, public administration, economics, anthropology, sociology and law. Meanwhile, anticorruption, which used to be merely an auxiliary topic in association with corruption, has recently gained an independent status and become a topic of interest for students of Chinese studies in its own right. This course will introduce both topics conceptually as well as empirically, employing a wide range of materials, including the most authoritative academic research outcomes from a variety of disciplines and concrete cases of corruption extracted from media reports or court documents. Other than its multidisciplinary nature, this course will distinctively take a historical comparative perspective and survey practices of both corruption and anticorruption not only in modern China but also from imperial China. In addition, this course will also place a focus on the cultural aspects of corruption without subscribing to cultural relativism. In other words, rather than simply attributing certain distinctive features of corruption in China to its culture, the course will examine to what extent and in which aspects corruption in China is different from corruption, say, in Austria, and what exact factors have contributed to such differences. At the end of the course, students are expected to gain a good understanding of the fundamental features of corruption practices in China, the regulatory regime of anticorruption in China as well as a comparative perception of corruption and anticorruption both across time and across culture. For biographic information about the lecturer, see https://univie.academia.edu/LingLi/CurriculumVitae.