Abstract: Types of corruption in China, recent literature tells, are constantly evolving with the change of political and economic environment, a trend which is told mainly by a decrease of the number of self corruption while an increase of the number of transactional corruption. Such a conclusion runs against the finding based on the quantitative analysis of the indictment text data, that is to say,there has not been a noticeable decline of self corruption in comparison. The two almost weigh the same in absolute quantity, while bear obvious differences in their distribution and sources. Two contributors, a further data analysis finds, stand out as important structural sources of self corruption in China： one lies in rural grassroots political power because there lies a lot of opportunities to embezzle, misappropriate and falsely claim various funds allocated; the other government size because higher proportion of fiscal expenditure in GDP offers more opportunities for public office holders to occupy public property.

Key words: self corruption, corruption, misappropriation of public funds, rural grassroots political power, government size, urban-rural division, urban-rural divide