Comparative grand corruption and protection pacts among elites: the cases of Ao Man Long in Macao and Hui Si-Yan in Hong Kong

Although Transparency International has consistently ranked the governments of both the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR), both under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), much higher on the clean governance scale than the PRC itself, the reality is that the two special administrative regions witnessed two prominent cases of political corruption comparable to the mainland corruption. These were the Ao Man Long case in Macao and the Rafael Hui Si-yan scandal in Hong Kong. This paper examines the two cases of political corruption in both Macao and Hong Kong and makes comparisons and contrasts between them. It argues that individual greed contributed to the two cases of high-level bureaucratic (grand) corruption in Macao and Hong Kong, implying that institutional safeguards against corruption, such as the establishment of anti-corruption commissions, and the scrutiny of the mass media, are by no means adequate. In other words, institutional mechanisms against corruption in the HKSAR and MSAR do have loopholes that need to be plugged. Moreover, protection pacts between a minority of government officials and the business elites can be formed because of their close personal connections, strengthening the possibility of grand corruption.