Wielding the sword: President Xi’s new anti-corruption campaign

A state achieves legitimacy through multiple sources, one of which is the effectiveness of its governance. Generations of scholars since Hobbes have identified the maintenance of peace and order as core functions of a legitimate state. In the modern world, economic prosperity, social stability and effective control of corruption often provide adequate compensation for a deficit of democracy. Corruption closely correlates with legitimacy. While a perceived pervasive, endemic corruption undermines the legitimacy of a regime, a successful anti-corruption campaign can allow a regime to recover from a crisis of legitimacy (Gilley 2009; Seligson and Booth 2009). This is the rationale behind the periodical campaigns against corruption that have been conducted by the Chinese Communist Party (‘Party’ or ‘CCP’) (Manion 2004; Wedeman 2012). Political leaders in China have found it expedient to use anti-corruption campaigns to remove their political foes, to rein in the bureaucracy and to restore public confidence in their ability to rule. Through anti-corruption campaigns, emerging political leaders consolidate their political power, secure loyalty from political factions and regional political forces, and enhance their legitimacy in the eyes of the general public. In an authoritarian state that experiences a high level of corruption, an anti-corruption campaign is a delicate political battle that addresses two significant concerns. The first concern is to orchestrate the campaign so that it is regime-reinforcing instead of regime-undermining. To remain credible, the regime must demonstrate its willingness and capacity to punish corrupt officials at the highest levels.preprin

Transport decarbonization in big cities: An integrated environmental co-benefit analysis of vehicles purchases quota-limit and new energy vehicles promotion policy in Beijing

In the deep decarbonization era against climate change, big cities set ambitious targets for road transport. As China’s capital, Beijing has very strict vehicles quota-limit policies. This study contributes to the literature for its innovations on the evaluation of quota-limit executive policy for big cities which few studies have studied, and its improved method with integrated analysis model which distinguish itself for including future co-benefit estimation and enterprise-level data analysis. This study estimates the energy consumption and health environmental co-benefit up to 2030, results show that the ambitious policy will significantly reduce both CO2 and key atmospheric pollutants emissions. Besides, the health economic loss from different illnesses attributed to NOX, CO, PM2.5 and HC will be 65 %, 61 %, 19 % and 57 % lower than reference scenario in 2030. During the energy transition, gasoline will still occupy the biggest proportion of the passenger sector fuel use in Beijing. However, the quota-limit policy will have significant integrated impact on both emission mitigation and avoiding public health damage. This study provides a good reference for big cities in other countries for both its improved method and the effectiveness of administrative decree policy for urban transport planning.Aside from "PARIS REINFORCE" (Grant No. 820846), the authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 71704187), the Beijing Social Science Fund (Grant no. 17GLC045), and the Research Foundation Flanders (Grant No. 76473)