Corruption in China spawns a bestseller

AS SHE lays bare the darker social and economic consequences of China's two decades of reform, He Qinglian does not mince her words . In this year's best-selling book, The Pitfalls of Modernisation, the 42- year-old author launches the sort of broadside against Chinese officialdom that might be expected to result in an unwanted knock at the door by the public security goons.

The writer lashes out at "the politics of swapping money for power", the "excessive gap between poor and rich", and at a potential "social crisis". Nine publishers turned down the manuscript, fearing the consequences of printing such a book.

These days, Ms He finds herself under assault, but not from the authorities. "The problems do not come from the government but from some cultural hooligans in China. The hooligans steal my name to produce a fake book, an illegal publication under my name. In China there are no effective measures to protect copyright."

And how are sales of her real book? "The official number of copies my book has sold is almost 200,000, but the pirated copies are five or six time this number," she says.

Ms He is a publishing phenomenon in China. Her book is an academic, carefully argued attack on corrupt Chinese officialdom and on the institutionalised graft that has enriched those in power. Such has been its success since publication earlier this year that, like all bestsellers, it soon caught the eye of the pirate publishers. Ms He is even suing one writer for allegedly passing off his work under her name.

Her main concern, however, is the gap between the theory of China's reform and uglier reality. It is now exactly 20 years since China's former strongman Deng Xiaoping launched his reform programme, and Ms He lambasts the powerful elite, which during that period amassed huge amounts of money, mostly by siphoning off state assets. "Several illegal people with power accumulated their money by exploiting the shortcomings of the system ... In less than two decades, China has seen a transformation from egalitarianism to a considerable gap between the rich and poor," she writes.

The "power-holders" in government departments and enterprises have accumulated "huge wealth at a speed the world has rarely seen", she says, by abusing their control over permits and the "power to distribute resources".

No one in China is unaware of the country's endemic corruption. The past few weeks have seen the sacking of China's top anti-corruption prosecutor because he had "violated discipline", and revelations of a massive pounds 460m VAT fraud ring involving 89 defendants. But Ms He goes further in specifying the ills of society that have resulted from what she calls a "crippled" reform programme. "I think the largest drawback of 20 years' reform is that we overlooked social justice, while emphasising economic development," she said from her home in Shenzhen, in southern China. She doubts that the official anti-corruption drive will be successful.

"The problem arises from an incomplete monitoring system," she says, pointing the finger at the notion of a one-party state trying to police itself. She cites the "collusion between underworld society and officials".

Such views were not easy to get into print. Ms He tried nine publishing houses in five provinces. "None dared to publish it. They all felt the social value and market value of the book was high. But they could not afford the political risk," she says. As always in China, it needed someone with political clout to back the book. Liu Ji, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and close to China's President, Jiang Zemin, had it published as part of a series under the theme of "China's problems". Mr Liu "thinks the book is a patriotic book", says Ms He, an economist by training who is still on the staff of the Shenzhen Legal Daily.

Patriotic or not, it is carefully pitched to expose problems in Chinese society, while not attacking China's leaders, or the Deng programme. The party itself, after all, is ostensibly as worried about corruption and the growing wealth gap as is the author. The book appears to have been adopted by those who say they are trying to clean up the system. Ms He said: "In the central party school and the central government ministries, many people have told me privately their (high) opinions of the book."

But she plays safe when it comes to the question of whether the answer is political reform. "The problem is when to reform and how to reform. I think it will take some time before (the party) reach a consensus. I think they might think about political reform because of corruption," she says.