Does Corruption Really Impede Economic Growth?

China has has stunning sustained levels of rapid economic growth for many years, doing more to reduce the number of people in extreme poverty in the last generation than any other place on Earth. It has done so, despite, or perhaps because, of its immense corruption, which remains rampant.

Arguably, this corruption has made it possible to cut through byzantine red tape and communist ideology, and developed social bonds between businessmen that have substituted for the weakness in China's rule of law. 

Alternately, corruption is a drag on the Chinese economy, but is dwarfed by more fundamental factors driving economic growth that have overcome this source of waste in the economy.