Cover image of "A Case of Two Cities," a novel about an anticorruption campaign in China

Corruption plagues all authoritarian systems no matter how idealistic their origins may be. The absence of checks on the supreme ruler radiates downward throughout the system. Opportunities open for officials high and low to abuse their authority for personal gain. And by the 1990s that pattern was clear to everyone in China. Corruption reigned in the Chinese Communist Party. From Zhongnanhai in Beijing to villages and towns throughout the country, wealth was accumulating in the hands of officials. In response, Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin launched China’s first nationwide anticorruption campaign. And an order from Beijing propels Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau into a high-stakes investigation into corruption. This is the setup in A Case of Two Cities by the superb Chinese American mystery author Qiu Xiaolong.

The highest-profile anticorruption case in China

In three previous novels in this series, Inspector Chen resolved some of the country’s most politically sensitive cases. He is a “rising cadre” marked for higher office in the Party. His girlfriend in Beijing is an “HCC,” a child of a high cadre who may be a Politburo member. And Chen is a modernist poet of distinction who has gained literary renown. But because neither his poetry nor his job earns him enough to live comfortably, he supplements his income by translating American mystery novels. And those books demonstrate how much more politics complicates his investigations than those of any American detective. But never before has Inspector Chen been assigned a case with more sensitive implications. Because a high official in Beijing has just dumped in his lap the highest-profile anticorruption case in China.

A Case of Two Cities (Inspector Chen #4) by Qiu Xiaolong (2006) 307 pages ★★★★★

Photo of Jiang Zemin, head of the Chinese Communist Party who launched the country's first nationwide anticorruption campaign
This man, Jiang Zemin, served as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party throughout the 1990s, when this novel is set. (Jiang died at the age of 96 in 2022.) He launched the anticorruption campaign detailed here but to little effect, as the novel makes clear. Image: AP – SkyNews

A “case of two cities” that spreads to the United States

A newly rich businessman named Xing Xing has fled to the United States with a fortune gained through high-level connections in the Chinese Communist Party. Xing is “a high-ranking Fujian Party cadre and business tycoon with an empire of smuggling operations under him, run through his connections at all government levels.” He’s seeking political asylum, claiming to be the victim of a power struggle, and threatening to reveal the criminal activities of high-ranking Party officials.

Xing’s case has risen to the top of the agenda for the Central Party Discipline Committee in Beijing, and its “retired” chairman taps Inspector Chen to lead the investigation in Shanghai. But Chen and his trusted aide, Sergeant Yu, will find their inquiry spread from Shanghai to Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian Province. It thus becomes a “case of two cities,” as the title suggests. And eventually Chen will continue the investigation in Los Angeles and St. Louis as well, where he has been sent as head of a writers’ delegation by forces in Beijing determined to sweep his inquiry under the rug.

Careers—and lives—are at stake

The stakes are high for all concerned. For the Party, which fears that the extent of corruption will be exposed to Western media. For Xing himself and his connections, all of whom know too much. And for Chen and Yu, when a single misstep might sideline their careers—or endanger their lives and those of their families. Because first one, then another, of the key figures in the case die under mysterious circumstances. And along the way one of the powerful officials Chen interviews threatens the life of his ailing mother.

Ever since the 1980s, when China took its first tentative steps along the “capitalist road,” stories have surfaced in the Western press about corruption in the Party. A few dramatic stories have highlighted individual cases. But Qiu’s novel is the first book I’ve come across that details precisely how corruption operates and the futility of the campaigns periodically launched by Beijing to stamp it out.

Common themes in the Inspector Chen novels

The dominant theme in this novel is official corruption. But three other themes surface prominently as well.

Food

Author Qiu Xiaolong celebrates Chinese cuisine in his writing. But you’re unlikely to recognize any of the dishes he describes because they bear no resemblance to what usually passes for Chinese food in the United States or Europe. For example, Qiu describes a meal shared by Chen and Yu at a Shanghai restaurant: “Yu chose his noodles with dried shrimp and green onion; Chen had his with deep-fried rice-paddy eel. In addition, they ordered a small bamboo steamer of pork-and-crab soup buns with the lotus leaf–covered bottom. And two side dishes of the famous xiao pork.” But there are numerous other meals described in similar detail.

Poetry

Like Inspector Chen, Qiu is a widely published poet. He’s intimately familiar with the classics of Chinese poetry through the ages, and that knowledge frequently surfaces in the pages of these novels. Inspector Chen quotes poetry extensively in conversation and recalls passages from the classics as he thinks through the steps of his investigations. If, like the author, you’re a poetry aficionado, you’ll enjoy reading this novel.

For example, when Chen begins to understand the dimensions of the task he’s been handed, an eighth-century Tang dynasty poem comes to mind:

Oh, do not laugh

if I fall dead

drunk on the battlefield.

How many soldiers

have come really back home

since time immemorial?

Subtlety

Americans have a reputation throughout the world for frank talk. But nowhere do people find this habit more dismaying than Eastern Asia, especially Japan and China. And Qiu demonstrates over and over again in the pages of A Case of Two Cities (as he does in the other novels in this series) how very different is communication in China even among colleagues and friends. Subtlety, innuendo, and indirection reign. Rarely do two people speak forthrightly about sensitive subjects.

For instance, Inspector Chen confronts a high-level official early in the story. In the course of the pleasantries, the man says, “People know a lot about you, our poet chief inspector. Someone just told me about your hongyan zhiji [girlfriend] not only in Beijing but in the United States, too.” It came like a seemingly effortless blow delivered by a tai chi master: we know everything about you, so you’d better look out.”

About the author

Photo of Qiu Xiaolong, author of this novel about an anticorruption campaign in China
Qiu Xiaolong. Image: Washington University

Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai in 1953. He holds degrees from East China Normal University (BA), the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (MA), and Washington University in St. Louis (MA and PhD). (Qiu relocated to the United States following the Tienanmen Massacre to avoid persecution by the Chinese Communist Party.) He was on the faculty of Washington University from 1996 to 2005 and continues to live in St. Louis with his family.

Qiu is an accomplished poet as well as a crime novelist. He is the author of thirteen novels to date in the Inspector Chen Chao series as well as four other books. He has won awards for both his poetry and his crime novels.

Previously I reviewed the first three novels in this series:

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