THE PRC SEES THE PROBLEMS, EVEN IF WESTERN LIBERTARIANS DON'T:

China Takes Aim at Corruption: Communist Leaders Focus on Illicit Dealings of Rural Officials (Edward Cody, January 8, 2006, Washington Post)

In the face of rising discontent over corruption, China's senior Communist Party leaders called on members Saturday to work harder to stop bribery among businessmen and local officials in the country's thousands of cities, counties and villages.

The appeal, in a communique issued after a two-day meeting of the party's Central Discipline Inspection Committee that was attended by President Hu Jintao, seemed to take particular aim at corrupt rural officials whose illegal dealings have helped generate a wave of riots and peasant unrest over the past two years. Much of the violence has stemmed from anger over land confiscations in which, farmers allege, village or county officials took money from business developers in return for favorable deals. [...]

The committee also singled out the spread of bribery in China's health system, a source of increasingly angry grumbling among people in the city and countryside alike.