China’s current crackdown on corruption and official excess, comprehensive as it may seem from the outside, mirrors many failed anti-corruption campaigns from the past. It also risks reinforcing, rather than reducing, the sense among Chinese people that corruption has become pervasive — a sense reflected in the comment of one Chinese Internet user earlier this month when thousands of pig carcasses were found floating down the Huangpu River near Shanghai: “The government is as corrupt as these dead pigs.”

The effects of the current anti-corruption campaign extend to all, including the elite and the sectors of Chinese society that fortify their elitism. And yet the campaign does not appear to be headed for any meaningful success in changing the behavior of officials high or low. A new phrase reportedly popular among government officials — “eat quietly, take gently and play secretly” — indicates that the behavior targeted by the campaign continues.    Article