Check the following article,
Growth, and Corruption in China by Andrew Wedeman.
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Rising Corruption and Rapid Growth
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Three factors help explain why this was possible.
First, corruption was not a serious barrier to the initial acceleration of growth.
Second, the most intense period of corruption coincided with large-scale transfers of value from the state to the emerging market economy.
Third, despite a somewhat halting start and less than decisive results, China’s anti-corruption efforts managed to bring corruption under control by the early 2000s, albeit without significantly affecting its overall severity.
The first two factors combined to create a situation wherein corruption fed off growth rather than stifled it. Even though corruption became much worse than it had been in the pre-reform period, it was kept at levels that are not necessarily extraordinary for a developing economy.
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