Why we can’t emulate Hong Kong, Singapore and China in fighting corruption

CORRUPTION is not destiny, as they say. And they point to Hong Kong, Singapore and more recently, China, which totally crushed corruption within a generation. How they did it is part of humankind’s stock of knowledge, the template is there for any country to use.

Spoiler alert though. At the end of this column, I argue that we can’t defeat corruption at this period of our history as we lack the most important factor for these three countries’ success: a strong political leader with the enormous political will and a reputation untainted by corruption.

Hong Kong in the 1960s and early 1970s was a byword for corruption. In fact, one Filipino term for bribe money, tong, originated in Hong Kong and widely used by its police, referring to the same thing. Bribery was systemic, institutionalized in the very machinery of government. From the moment you filed for a license to the minute you called an ambulance, a bribe — “tea money,” they called it — was the price of service.

The scandal that shattered this culture broke in 1973. Its police chief superintendent was under investigation for an unexplained HK$4 million fortune, and slipped out of the colony. Public outrage erupted, and with it, an unmistakable demand: clean up or lose legitimacy.

The governor of Hong Kong Sir Murray Maclehose — described by London newspapers as a charismatic visionary — responded decisively in 1974, creating the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). The ICAC was designed with one important feature: independence. It reported directly to the governor, not the police, not the bureaucracy. It was armed with three strategies: enforcement, prevention and education.

The early years were brutal. High-profile arrests — including senior police officers once thought untouchable — sent shockwaves through the ranks. The agency paired aggressive investigations with structural reforms that simplified government processes, reducing opportunities for graft. Meanwhile, an extensive education campaign reshaped attitudes, from primary schools to mass media, building a new social compact that rejected bribery.

By the late 1980s, petty corruption had been largely eradicated. The transformation was staggering: from one of the most corrupt territories in Asia to a benchmark for integrity. What made the ICAC work? Institutional independence, ample resources and, critically, public trust. The people believed in the agency because it showed results, and because no one, not even the mighty police force, was above the law.

Singapore

If Hong Kong’s story is one of institutional shock therapy, Singapore’s is a tale of relentless, methodical reform.

At independence in 1965, Singapore was a struggling city-state — poor, insecure and drowning in corruption. Bribes greased everything: licenses, permits, even police investigations. Weak enforcement and a culture of impunity meant graft was not just tolerated; it was expected.

The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) had existed since 1952, a British creation lodged symbolically in the Supreme Court to signal independence. But under Lee Kuan Yew — another Asian charismatic leader — it was revitalized and moved under the Prime Minister’s Office — a statement of intent that no one, not even ministers, was beyond its reach. The Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) of 1960 gave the CPIB sweeping powers: to compel testimony, to examine bank records, to investigate both public and private actors.

Singapore’s strategy combined strict enforcement with structural reform. Civil service salaries were raised to levels competitive with the private sector, reducing the lure of bribery. Recruitment and promotion were merit-based, insulating the bureaucracy from political patronage.

Transparency was institutionalized. The CPIB operated openly, encouraging citizens to report corrupt practices. High-profile prosecutions — including cabinet ministers — demonstrated that the law was applied “without fear or favor.” These cases shocked the establishment but cemented public faith in the government’s integrity.

Over decades, the system matured. Red tape was slashed, procurement processes digitized, and ethics education embedded in schools and civic programs. By the 1980s, Singapore was no longer a corrupt backwater but a global exemplar of clean governance — a transformation built not on a single dramatic purge, but on the quiet, relentless grind of institutional discipline.

China

Corruption in China was as old as its vast imperial bureaucracy of olden times. But the problem metastasized after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the late 1970s and 1980s. Market liberalization brought unprecedented growth — and with it, unprecedented opportunity for rent-seeking, collusion and abuse of public office.

Early anti-graft campaigns sputtered. Local protectionism shielded powerful figures. Enforcement was sporadic, often symbolic.

Enter Xi Jinping in 2012. Declaring corruption an “existential threat” to the Communist Party, Xi launched the most comprehensive — “longest, widest-ranging, and most penetrative” — anti-corruption purge in modern Chinese history. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection led by Wang Qishan, became the spearhead, with sweeping authority to investigate at every level of the party and state.

The strategy was blunt but effective: hunt both “tigers and flies” — high-ranking officials and petty bureaucrats alike. High-profile takedowns followed: Zhou Yongkang, the former security czar; Bo Xilai, a charismatic Politburo member; generals and CEOs. The message was unmistakable: no one was untouchable.

By 2023, over 4.7 million officials had been investigated, with thousands prosecuted and jailed. Extravagance — luxury banquets, lavish gifts, wasteful spending — was reined in across the bureaucracy. Procurement was digitized, reducing the face-to-face transactions that breed graft.

Lifestyle check

One of the effective tools of these anti-corruption campaigns was the “lifestyle” check. This involved comparing a government official’s net worth to his income, with a discrepancy automatically meaning that these were generated from corruption, with the burden of proof on the official being investigated.

There is a big difference though in the way Hong Kong and Singapore implemented lifestyle checks from ours. In the former, assets of the accused are immediately frozen until he can prove he is innocent of corruption. In our case an accused’s assets are not seized, which he uses to contract the most expensive lawyers to argue through the different court levels up to the Supreme Court. A public works and highways undersecretary accused of corruption through a lifestyle check appealed his case up to the Supreme Court, which after 10 years acquitted him, claiming that the evidence against the official were not enough to show his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. In three other cases, the officials simply resigned, their hundreds of millions of graft money intact. How can that discourage corruption?

Why we cannot crush corruption in our country would be obvious in this review of how Hong Kong, Singapore and China did it. The anti-corruption campaign was launched and undertaken to its total success by Sir Murray Maclehose, who served as governor of Hong Kong from 1971 to 1982. He is considered the “father” of modern Hong Kong, who undertook reforms that transformed the backwater fishing port into one of Asia’s most successful economies.

I don’t need to describe Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and China’s Xi Jinping as towering leaders of Asia of this century, more charismatic than the HK governor.

In contrast, Marcos Jr. has inarguably proven to be a political pygmy, bereft of political spine. Cory, Ramos, Erap, Arroyo, Aquino, Duterte: Marcos is our dullest president in the post dictatorship period. How can he defeat an existential threat to our nation?

How can the House of Marcos lead a momentous anti-corruption campaign when many consider the executive branch he leads as the most corrupt ever that petty even amateur criminals — could undertake massive ghost and defective flood control projects and getting billions of pesos? The House of Representatives on the other hand, which is led by his cousin, Martin Romualdez, was called by a magazine in its cover story as “the biggest criminal syndicate of this country ever” — and no one, not one congressman protested. The son of the world’s second biggest kleptocrat — according to a 2004 Global Corruption Report, No. 1 being Suharto — leading the Philippines’ anti-corruption campaign? We would be the butt of jokes.

Corruption in this country in scale and adverse consequences is far worse than the scourge of illegal drugs. Former president Rodrigo Duterte could have succeeded in undertaking such a campaign. His daughter Sara — and maybe the emerging dragon-slayer Rodante Marcoleta — can.

If the Marcos-Romualdez gang manages to stop them from leading the country in 2028, then indeed, in a tragic way, “corruption is destiny.”

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Why we can’t emulate Hong Kong, Singapore and China in fighting corruption
Source: Breaking News PH