The Jakarta Post, 3/11/2003 5:17:22 PM
RI tops Asian corruption league: survey
HONG KONG (JP): Indonesia is still top of the Asian corruption league but expatriate
businessmen say the problem is accelerating most quickly in China, a survey of the
Asian Intelligence released on Tuesday.
AFP reported that the survey found Indonesia was perceived as the most corrupt of 13
Asia-Pacific countries listed for the sixth year running.
But China's perceived corruption grew more than any other country, seeing it leapfrog
the Philippines into fifth place behind Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Thailand.
"Corruption in the mainland is so serious and pervasive that the Communist Party
admits its existence could threaten the Party's very survival," said the report compiled
by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. (PERC), listing the problem in
China as "very bad".
It found corruption was believed to have worsened in nine of the 14 countries graded,
including the United States and Australia which were surveyed as benchmarks. The
US figure was blamed on last year's American corporate scandals.
Singapore was easily the cleanest country, followed by Australia, the United States
and Hong Kong. Indonesia's problem was seen as a hangover from the Soeharto era.
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