[seanmcdirmid]

Its more like an Aristocracy these days (as it was pretty much before since before Qin). Certain powerful families control about 90% of the government and 40% of the economy. Otherwise, the government is completely opaque, and its hard to tell who is really in charge and what relationships (guanxi) connect them together.

[rdl]

From what I've read, the national government is a lot more consistent and essentially "good" than some of the local government leaders, which is kind of the opposite of the US.

(I'd still far prefer the US to China, and don't think either the US or China are perfect, but most China's regional governments seem to be really bad even in comparison to the national government.)

[seanmcdirmid]

No not really, but the national government wants you to think so. The local (less powerful) officials have always been convenient fall guys for national problems, as in "we are good, but our hand chosen underlings are the bad guys." The problems are pervasive up and down.

You'll find that a city like Shanghai or even Kunming are much better governed than the capital of Beijing due to strong local governments and less national government interference.

[rdl]

Shanghai is an exception, as are the SEZes. Shanghai almost seems like another country -- it's not as uncorrupt as HK, but is pretty similar to a place like Thailand, from what I saw of it (I know some people who have businesses there, and have spent about a year in total between HK, Shanghai, and Thailand, although I only did business myself in HK)

[ChuckMcM]

You should try reading stuff written by Tibetans :-) More seriously though after going through various debates both with Chinese nationals and Chinese ex-patriots the only conclusion I can rely on is that its "complicated" and just as someone from the #Occupy movement might write a very different description of the benevolence of our government than someone in the 1%, points of view are greatly affected by their origin.

[rdl]

Yeah, I'm not really including Tibet. I see that as a geo-strategic thing vs. India, and Tibet wasn't exactly a progressive wonderful state before the Chinese, either.

However, in Western China, non-Han seem to be treated better by the national government than by regional or local. Although the weird "Uighurs in Guantanamo" thing was just totally surreal (we essentially bribed China into supporting us in the Iraq war by letting them classify muslim semi-separatists as global jihadis, and thus cooperating with the Chinese government in detaining them)

[seanmcdirmid]

Tibet was as provincial as the rest of china was before the communists, no doubt. The only reason the Han are hated so now is that the gov is so god-damned paternal about it to the Uighurs and Tibetans, that and a Han manifest destiny.

Hu Jintao was in charge of Tibet during the troubles of 1989, his protege was then in charge of Tibet and took a harder line (confiscating Dalai Lama pictures), and then got promoted to xinjiang where he promptly started a get tough on islam campaign.

Tell me how the national government isn't involved again?

[rdl]

That's not "corruption", though.

[seanmcdirmid]

No, just normal douche baggery :)

[dmix]

Source(s)?

[rdl]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_China is a start http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/fighting_corruption...

There have been a fair number of executions of local government officials.

It's much easier to make the case "corruption at the local level is really bad" vs. "the central government isn't corrupt" -- I'm just saying the local people are worse than the central government in a lot of ways.

The least corrupt entity is the PLA, which has the most power at the national level.

The most corrupt things are land sales, which are handled at the local level.

[ksec]

Uhm... That is what is happening in Japan. But Not in China.

[seanmcdirmid]

Sounds very wumao!