[oblio]

There are plenty of big companies outside of China that are both big and don't follow military practices for management. You scale big companies like you scale anything: you break down the problem into smaller subproblems and solve those.

You make it sound like only way to scale is by having a dictatorship and a strong chain of command. Historically the more power the peons had, as long as they didn't completely disregard the chain of command, the stronger the organization was.

Also, despite China having 1 billion people, you don't need 1 billion employees to turn a profit. Even the biggest Chinese companies, outside of state owned ones (which have different, more social, objectives) aren't much bigger than other big companies worldwide.