The article is not intended as a highlight of whatever sort of "corruption" of the political system though. I think the Substack author Jordan Schneider also so

The article is not intended as a highlight of whatever sort of "corruption" of the political system though. I think the Substack author Jordan Schneider also somehow missed the point/misled with his introduction. It's intended more as an objective description of how the officialdom works, and how they should deepen the reforms based on such objective understandings. There are some interesting studies that compared levels of corruption between the US and China, especially during 19th century when US was still rapidly developing. Even now we all see how corrupt some US police/politicians in small places could be. I don't think the conclusion "I had not truly realized the extent of corruption in China until that moment." was a fair conclusion especially in the context of this article.