There were no independent legal or audit system and no free media. The People’s Armed Police was unaccountable leaders were regarded with fear and respect. In the absence of a private sector, or even of any concept of personal economics, all corruption was officially defined as theft from the people, and pursuing profit became a politically subversive act. In such a context corruption itself and all responses to it could only be political. The corrupt were perceived to be such not because of system failure but because they had been hit by tang-yi pao-dan, capitalism’s sugar-coated bullets.