Is ‘resource curse’ to blame in regions hit harder by Xi’s anti-corruption campaign?

The China-morning-post" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="12558" data-entity-type="organization">South China Morning Post has launched a major data project diving into President Xi Jinping’s signature anti-graft campaign. In the third part of a series accompanying the data project, William Zheng looks at the relationship between rich regional resources and corruption.Beneath the desolate Gobi Desert and sparsely populated mountains of China’s less developed regions lie abundant mineral resources, ranging from coal, the most basic fuel for China’s economy, to critical minerals needed for cutting-edge industrial machinery and state-of-the-art military products.These regions are not only rich in natural resources critical to the world’s second-largest economy, but also appear to be fertile ground for deep-seated corruption.