The difference between PRC corruption and US corruption which westoids label as lobbying, and thus totally legal is PRC corruption at least doesn't undermine state capacity. That's why PRC shipbuilding is 100s times larger US, but only generates a single digit times more revenue. Each ton us US ship built is literally magnitude more regulatory capture / rent premium... which of course is not corruption and totally functional /s. Maybe problem is PRC purging too much, but US not purging enough. At least PRC purging going to get younger gen with more technical aptitude working with modern doctrine. Who does the US purge to get procurement back on track?
TLDR PRC corruption is steroids, US corruption (i mean lobbying) is sleeping pills. PRC trying to take less juice, but US still hammering the ambien.
The difference is that the PRC isn't bound by the same property rules and rights that apply in the U.S. or most of Europe. If the U.S. tried to do what China does when it wants to build something, people everywhere would be yelling their heads off about the extreme abuses of eminent domain.
There's a reason ghost city wiki article got renamed to underoccupied developments. There't aren't 100s of ghost cities. Either way this case of building housing runway, considering PRC urbanization rates = 100s of millions still need to urbanize, prebuilding housing stock is just preparing even if inefficient.
RE bubble did not nearly destroy PRC economy, it's the 2-3% difference between 5% gdp growth vs 7-8%. 2-3% of gdp is misallocation, but compared to US spending 8% more on healthcare vs oced peers for worse results, it's not gross misallocation. BTW the 1T+ HSR network in PRC that's suppose to be staggeringly wasteful? That's 6 months of US surplus health spending. Even the most wasteful shit in PRC west harps about is basically moderate waste that delivers abundant surplus. VS west's moderate-extravagant waste that delivers paperwork.
>that apply in the U.S
See PRC nail houses. PRC eminent domain in many ways stricter than US, difference is PRC can afford to pay peasants lavishly to gtfo.
>plenty of lobbying in China as well.
Yes of course, lobbying/corruption/capture, it's part of any system. The point is system can use it to boost abundance, others scoliosis. What's better, corruption that builds more infra or corruption that bills more meetings.
And to circle back on topic, vis as vis PRC MIC, corruption = more hardware because more hardware = more graft. The side effect of more hardware = cheaper per unit cost due to economies of scale.
Now, from that aforementioned loyalty angle… this definitely works. If you purge dissent and people with a history of lateral, non-conforming thinking, you most definitely get a system where people ask “how high?” when you scream “jump!”.
I mean, Trump has been doing much the same with the American military, albeit less dark (only relieving them of their positions). It’s the authoritarian/fascist playbook in action, and it will mean much less resistance in the ranks when ‘murica decides to invade Canada, or Greenland, or any other juicy target.
Completely different.
Stalin purged people with war experience to replace them with people with less war experience. Xi is purging pencil pushers and is going to replace them with other pencil pushers.
Let's not act like Xi is purging Bradley or MacArthur