Can China Tame The Corruption Beast?

Mao Zedong famously warned that a single spark could start a prairie fire. Now China's current crop of leaders are worried that the country's ever more numerous sparks of corruption could ignite an inferno--one that might even see the Communist Party go up in smoke. Graft on an unprecedented scale is stretching all the way up from the rice paddies of rural China to high levels of government.

From shakedowns of peasants to massive smuggling campaigns that rob the state treasury of much-needed cash, the scale of graft has reached a level where it may threaten the country's continued economic progress. Indeed, after seeing a top-drawing anticorruption film, Live or Die, in August, President Jiang Zemin described the movie as a "powerful shock and a profound warning."