Caption
President Donald Trump pose with NATO heads of state and government at the Hague on June 25, 2025. (Getty Images)
The unprecedented anti-corruption campaign launched by Communist Party Chief Xi Jinping in late 2012 shows, among other things, that a kleptocracy has taken root inside the Chinese state and economy. While the campaign has provided more detailed information on the scope and depth of corruption in China, the origins and characteristics of this new type of kleptocracy remain poorly understood.
Using data collected from more than 100 corruption cases involving multiple party and government officials, Minxin Pei argues this kleptocracy originated two decades ago when elites in the Chinese party-state, private businesses, and organized crime colluded to loot state-owned assets. The effects of such looting and collusion go beyond the illicit enrichment of a small number of elites. Pei contends that they are the underlying forces causing the decay of key institutions in the Chinese party-state.
On November 21st, Hudson Kleptocracy Initiative (KI) hosted a discussion moderated by KI Executive Director Charles Davidson on the sources and implications of China’s kleptocracy.
Related Events
03
June 2026
In-Person Event | Hudson Institute
Authoritarian Persistence in Latin America: What Should the US Do?
Featured Speakers:
Elliott Abrams
Daniel Batlle
03
June 2026
In-Person Event | Hudson Institute
Authoritarian Persistence in Latin America: What Should the US Do?
Please join Adjunct Fellow Daniel Batlle for a conversation with Elliott Abrams, whose leadership on Latin America policy stretches from his service as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs under President Ronald Reagan to his role as special representative for Venezuela in the first Trump administration.
Featured Speakers:
Elliott Abrams
Daniel Batlle
04
June 2026
In-Person Event | Hudson Institute
Spain’s Latin American Reckoning
Featured Speakers:
Julio Crespo MacLennan
Daniel Batlle
04
June 2026
In-Person Event | Hudson Institute
Spain’s Latin American Reckoning
Join Hudson as Adjunct Fellow Daniel Batlle sits down with Julio Crespo MacLennan, a historian and one of the leading scholars on Spain’s democratic transition and on Europe’s relationship with the wider world.
Featured Speakers:
Julio Crespo MacLennan
Daniel Batlle
11
June 2026
In-Person Event | Hudson Institute
Growing the DIB: A Conversation with Deputy Assistant Secretary of War James Mismash
Featured Speakers:
Nadia Schadlow
James Mismash
11
June 2026
In-Person Event | Hudson Institute
Growing the DIB: A Conversation with Deputy Assistant Secretary of War James Mismash
Please join Hudson Institute for a fireside chat between Hudson Senior Fellow Nadia Schadlow and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Growth and Director of the Office of Small Business Programs James Mismash.
Featured Speakers:
Nadia Schadlow
James Mismash
12
June 2026
In-Person Event | Hudson Institute
Winning the Innovation Competition
Featured Speakers:
Bryan Clark
Dan Patt
Emil Michael
12
June 2026
In-Person Event | Hudson Institute
Winning the Innovation Competition
Please join Hudson Institute Senior Fellows Bryan Clark and Dan Patt for a conversation with Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael about the Department of War’s efforts to bring AI to the battlefield and implement an innovation strategy that makes the most of America’s commercial and government research sectors.
Featured Speakers:
Bryan Clark
Dan Patt
Emil Michael
Related Research
Caption
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall in Moscow on May 9, 2026. (Getty Images)
Caption
A sign is displayed at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) headquarters on June 1, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Getty Images)
Caption
A man walks past an electronic board displaying the movement of 10-year government bonds in Tokyo on December 22, 2025. (Getty Images)
