Politics of visual discourse in China: the corruption cartoon

This article investigates single-panel cartoons portraying official corruption in China’s longest- running state-owned cartoon newspaper Cartoon Weekly ( Fengci yu youmo). A total of 433 cartoons are identified as relating to corrupt officialdom between 2012 and 2019 in the wake of Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption signature policy. In contrast with the individualizing critique of political cartooning in liberal democracies, the corpus of corruption cartoons investigated in this article is argued as a didactic form of visual schematization in a pseudo-self-critical discourse typically buttressed by verbal reading instructions. To support this claim, the article addresses its politics of visual discourse by employing Peircean hypoiconicity, consisting of direct resemblance, diagrammatic schematization and metaphoric displacement. Accordingly, the article identifies three major features of corruption cartoons as anonymization of direct resemblance, visual schematization of policy and metaphoric displacement of conventional symbols.

How Does Income Inequality Influence Environmental Regulation in the Context of Corruption? A Panel Threshold Analysis Based on Chinese Provincial Data

The question of how the income inequality of residents affects the level of environmental regulation in the context of official corruption was the core research issue of this study. We analyzed this problem using the panel threshold regression model from 26 provinces in China from 1995 to 2017. We found that when there is no official corruption, the widening of the residents’ income inequality promotes stricter environmental regulations; when the corruption problem is serious, the expansion of the residents’ income inequality leads to the decline in environmental standards; that is, the impact of residents’ income inequality on environmental regulation has a threshold effect due to corruption. In addition, the threshold effect due to corruption of all residents’ income inequality on environmental regulation is mainly generated by the urban residents’ income inequality and the urban–rural income inequality. This paper contributes to the literature that concentrates on the relationship between income inequality and environmental regulation, and shows that corruption is a key factor that can deeply influence that relationship. The research conclusion shows that increasing anti-corruption efforts can not only maintain national political stability, social fairness, and justice, but also be a powerful measure for environmental pollution governance.

Conclusion

In concluding the analysis of guanxi, the image is invoked of Chinese reticulated carved balls, in which one hollow sphere sits inside another, with as many as a dozen—each smaller than the other—interlocked in a descending nested order. The suggestion is that this is a metaphor for guanxi in today’s China, in which guanxi determines relations between businesses, and between entrepreneurs and officials; additionally, popular mobilizations against official corruption draw on the guanxi between protestors, and state repression of protest draws on the guanxi between state workers and protestors, and so on, in continuing descending interlockings of guanxi. It is shown that guanxi is sufficiently versatile to access quite different resources, and sufficiently flexible to enter new areas of relations and engagement. Reliance on guanxi is not confined to the elderly, but used by young people in China, and the educated. The future of guanxi seems assured.

“Our Cause Is Just”: Loyalty, Propaganda, and Popular Moods

The state’s mobilizing efforts could not have been sustained without the support and sacrifices of ordinary people. The initial military losses and daily conditions were so demoralizing that the state’s ability to garner popular support assumed grave importance. Although at times communication broke down, a unifying wartime culture emerged based on political education, newspaper and radio reportage, art, poetry, and song. Collective activities such as production campaigns and civil defense bound people together. Over time, propaganda became franker and more emotional. “Vengeance propaganda,” based on eyewitness accounts, reached its pinnacle with the discovery of the death camps. Propaganda changed again when the Red Army entered Germany. The state was responsive to popular moods, which evolved from the shock of invasion to anxiety over retreat, disgust with official corruption, fury at Nazi devastation, and pride in the Red Army. Propaganda was most successful when it elevated the experiences of ordinary people into a larger political understanding.

Why Was It the Ming Dynasty that Engendered the Guanxi Motif in Fiction?

Compared to other informal social network mechanisms, guanxi is more common in China and is the most typical. Even in daily life, it is indispensable. Hence, in Chinese fiction, the guanxi motif is prevalent and important. Interestingly, before the Ming dynasty, guanxi was not a literary motif in fiction. This article suggests that three factors contributed to the rise of the guanxi motif in fiction in the Ming dynasty. The first was the boom in fiction writing, especially in the genre of realism, that occurred in this era, which expanded the scope of literary representation. The second was the degradation of public morals in the Ming dynasty, a momentous social transition that Ming fiction writers noted and portrayed. Guanxi, as a disruptive social mechanism that dismantled previous models of human connection, became a focus in their works. The third was the fact that the atmosphere of money worship promoted by guanxi, together with official corruption, facilitated widespread social inequality. Guanxi, as the crux of inequity, inspired writers to expose social turpitude. More importantly, the guanxi motif satisfied the need for plot conflict in literary works. Thus, it became a necessary motif in Ming fiction.

The Issue of the Establishment of the Shadow Market of Political Services in Migration: Theoretical and Methodological Aspects

The article analyzes the problem of the emergence of threat-forming factors of economic security and financial sovereignty of Russia, the source of which is the sphere of criminal activity, which is based on illegal relations and connections between the elements of the closed chain “criminal migration — shadow economy — official corruption in the public service”. In the scientific literature, such a criminal and corruption activity is considered as a “market for shadow services”.

Conclusions

Chapter 10 explores some hanging questions. The issue of Crawford’s guilt or innocence is essentially moot today, but a number of points that never arose before the special commission merit consideration. The chapter comments on the practical difficulties that the Indian Penal Code of 1860 imposed on the task of successful prosecution of official corruption back in the colonial past. Beyond comments on the Penal Code of 1860, Chapter 10 also explores the relationship between decision making at various levels of governance, and certain qualities of the British imperial rule in the Bombay Presidency. This discussion stems from the facts that (1) the Crawford Tribunal found Crawford innocent of all counts of corruption, (2) the secretary of state for India concurred with the tribunal’s finding, and (3) even though Crawford was found innocent of bribery, mamlatdars were condemned as guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty of bribery. Bribery of whom? The presumption was that money had been paid for favours, but the tribunal found that Crawford had received none of it, and Crawford was found not to have done the mamlatdars any favours, so had bribery taken place at all?