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Asian Business Strategy & Street Intelligence Ezine

And the fairest in Asia...? No prizes for guessing it is Singapore, which has risen from being the evil frog to the glamour prince of South East Asia in a few short years.

As we predicted, a pragmatic and outward-looking Singapore has mustered international opinion behind them by continuing to be the most transparent nation in Asia, and as it has done for several years, even out-scored the US, land of the free, but still more corrupt than Singapore. Is it about time we threw out the old theory that political participation, transparency and reduced corruption always go together?

...Not quite, as full political participation and the accountability that comes with full democracy is certainly a help, but a country that has until recently been the scourge of the West for it's Asian values form of authoritarian capitalism continues to hold the mantel of the most transparent in Asia. The traditional icons of freedom and democracy in the region (Thailand and the Philippines), on the other hand still have problems in keeping corruption under control. Of course they have problems of much larger populations, a large rural base, and relatively less developed economies, but this is tangential to the argument that democracy and transparency is not the holy duo that many make it out to be.

The latest rankings, editorial and methodology from Transparency International are provided here. It is important to note that the index is based on "Perceptions of corruption" from around 10 different surveys conducted by independent research groups and institutes.. A meta-index if you like. ..And like anything relating to perception... subjective rather than objective, and subject to the ubiquitous personal prejudices and cultural xenophobia of the research subjects.

Given this, we provide below an analysis of the corruption perceptions of Asia Pacific countries, as well as results from earlier studies.

 

	1998 CPI Rank	1998 CPI Score	1995 CPI Score	Difference
New Zealand	4	9.4	9.55	-.15
Singapore	7	9.1	9.26	-.16
Australia	11	8.7	8.80	-.10
Hong Kong	16	7.8	7.12	+.68
United States	17	7.5	7.79	-.29
Japan	25	5.8	6.72	-.92
Malaysia	29	5.3	5.28	+.02
Taiwan	29	5.3	5.08	+.22
South Korea	43	4.2	4.29	-.09
China	52	3.5	2.16	+.66
Philippines	55	3.3	2.77	+.53
Thailand	61	3.0	2.79	+.21
India	66	2.9	2.78	+.12
Pakistan	71	2.7	2.25	+.65
Vietnam	74	2.5	N/A	---
Indonesia	80	2.0	1.79	+.21

• An index score of 10 means totally clean, a score of 10 means totally corrupt
  
• Vietnam data not available in 1995
  
• A difference score of over .20 is colored red to indicate an improvement, blue to indicate a worsening
  
• Raw data courtesy of Transparency International and Goettingen University's Internet Center for Corruption Research

First the good news. Most Asian countries were perceived to have improved in the 3 years until 1998, with the best examples being Pakistan, China, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Japan suffered a major move in the wrong direction however. Whether this is due to an actual increase in corruption or just that Japan's new willingness to become just a little bit more open and convict corrupt officials, is not addressed by these figures. We would suggest it is the latter.

As we have stated in previous analyses, corruption is in the eye of the beholder. But the above provides a rough guideline on what to expect when doing business in any of these countries, and from personal experience, seems fairly reflective of the actual reality.

After an event-filled year in most of the region, including leadership changes and high profile corruption trials in Japan, Indonesia, China, Malaysia and Thailand, we look forward to seeing the changes next year.