Then I will ask you a few questions that may be you can clarify...
CAPITALISM WITHOUT DEMOCRACY
When it is
THE GOVERNMENT, which is pretty much The Communist Party of China, is responsible for the access, purchase, and distribution of goods and services, the Party created well known benefits such as contracts, credit, interest rates, below-market prices, and best of all: subsidies. The opposite of these benefits are items like licensing approvals, property taxes, import tariffs, and assorted regulatory restrictions.
Therefore...Bribes are needed for two main reasons:
- To access and obtain government benefits
- To reduce overall cost or its corollary to deflect a potential greater cost
Or to put it another way: Governmental (Party) benefits incentivizes bribery from the entrepreneur while the bribe at the same time incentivizes Party officials towards favorable interpretation and enforcement of regulations to reduce those Party inspired and imposed costs for the entrepreneur.
So...Is it true that Chinese private entrepreneurs, in the early stages of economic reforms, recognized the need of/for collusion with Party members at all levels to increase their wealth, concentrate it, and emulate their behaviors like that of Western capitalists but with the additional benefits of Party protection? Kellee Tsai found in 1991 that approximately %7 of private entrepreneurs reported being Party members. Is it true that Zhang Houyi, Ming Zhili, Liang Zhuanyun, and Liu Wenpu found this group doubled its Party membership in 1993 and increased to %18 in 1997 with an additional %11 of private entrepreneurs in their survey indicated a desire to join in order to have Party endorsement in their ventures? Is it true that Li Qiang researched that, per capita, there are more Party members among private entrepreneurs (%34) than among the general population (%5)?
To join the Party, a person must formally submit an application, endorsed by two Party members/patrons, then be assessed throughout a probationary period during which he is reviewed by the Party at all levels of Party structures. The 'review' or probationary period is where the entrepreneur has access or 'face time' with the necessary Party bureaucrats to bribe them for access to business opportunities managed by other Party members who went through the same process. If and once he is accepted, depending on his bribe outlay that may put his family at the poverty line, he is required to regularly attend Party functions and pay Party dues, but by now his access to other business opportunities is quite assured. In short, The Party is the patron, the lobbyist, and finally the guarantor of access/success to Western style capitalist wealth generating in China for the entrepreneur, all the while when required he mindlessly parrot communist/socialist/Marxist/Maoist/whatever-ist lines the Party ordered him to say.
Is it true that even private entrepreneurs who do not wish to join the Party recognized the need to partner with businesses whose owners are Party members and/or join Party endorsed organizations in order to gain mutual Party derived benefits and increased their combined wealth, something in line of the Self-Employed Laborers Assocation, Private Enterprises Association, or the Industrial and Commercial Federation?
China International Fair for Investment and Trade
China Vitae : Biography of Bao Yujun
Is it true that these organizations are nothing more than Party designed mechanisms intended to monitor and exercise control over these entrepreneurs who do not wish to join the Party? Is it true that the Party's reach, power, and coercion of non-Party entrepreneurs over all of China is such that Bjorn Alpermann, in his 2002-4 survey of rural private entrepreneurs, found over %70 of small businesses owners were members of at least one of these government sponsored organization? Is it true that Jianjun Zhang found that village elections winners were wealthy private entrepreneurs with ties to these Party controlled organizations? Are we expected to believe that the above Bao Yujun, Party member and mouthpiece-in-chief of the Party's progaganda newspaper, is on the lookout for the interests of non-Party members who are engaging in capitalist ventures on their own without official Party patronage?
For all your criticisms of uneven wealth distribution in the US, none here have any doubt that if
YOU have the chance, you would do exactly what is needed, as outlined above, to put yourself in the upper strata of Chinese society. There are no shortages of Western business advice for the newcomer to China on how to act upon being approached by a Chinese official asking, sometimes not so subtly, for a bribe.
Actually...The best joke here is a bunch of conscript rejects making ridiculous claims about military affairs, particularly weaponry. The second best joke is the same bunch that believe China can...ahhh...'collapse'...the US economy.
Granted...The pie chart above is dated, but nothing so drastic has changed since then, and we can use it as an easily grasp graphical reference. Still...We can be generous and say that %30 of US debt is foreign owned.
Here is the breakout of US debt =>
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt <=
We can see that China owns roughly %20 of this %30 with Japan very close behind, making a figure of %6 of the total debt. Does anyone really believe that even if we grant a generous additional %2 of debt to China, making %8, this would be enough to 'collapse' the US economy? Say that China 'dump' or more accurately sell US T-bonds
en masse. What make anyone believe that Japan and other US friendly countries will not pick up those bonds? The other countries will pick up some and the American public will pick up the rest, all the while we will recognize this move for what it is: a hostile act intended to harm our economy. Yes...China has the right to sell, but we also have the right to impose an import tariff on Chinese goods, making Chinese export more expensive. In the short term, such a trade war will hurt US but it will be the Chinese economy, not ours, that will collapse.
For the long run, there are wiser and smarter heads in the Chinese government than a bunch of conscript rejects who can barely balance their checkbooks but has no problems making proclamations on global economics, and that is worth a laugh from reading...