[strogonoff]

> In China, politicians control billionaires.

The problem is when said politicians are a small faction of fallible people with unlimited power and no procedure of being peacefully replaced. Such a setup strongly hints at the fact that they really don’t want to give up control, which implies any policy is bound to protect their position first. They might act selflessly or benefit the nation at some particular point in time, but blindly counting on it being consistently so seems foolish.

[tmule]

“ They might act selflessly or benefit the nation at some particular point in time, but blindly counting on it being consistently so seems foolish.” I think you’re right. But Chinese politicians are yet strongly motivated by nationalistic impulses, which are long dead in the thuggish political establishment of the West where nationalistic impulses are long dead (the GOP does performative nationalism very well, but they’re always ready to jump into the next war that’ll kill tens of thousands of Americans).