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So I think I'm getting your point slowly. It's not that China is great but rather you think the US are deeply corrupt. It's a valid point to think autocracy is

So I think I'm getting your point slowly. It's not that China is great but rather you think the US are deeply corrupt. It's a valid point to think autocracy is better than corruption. I disagree on the level of corruption in the US I think, as far as I understood you. I do not deny there is corruption though. I would be interested in knowing the level of corruption in China but I think the autocratic grip on the press is too strong to have any valuable data.

trasz 4y ago
Thank you! Indeed that would be a (rather rough) first approximation. It's more complex than that though. First, I'm not convinced that US is less autocratic than China. European countries of course are, but US is not a functioning democracy anymore; it's corporations who decides how the Congress will vote, not citizens. Second - I think we might be using a different definition of "corruption". In US many mechanisms that would normally be considered corruption are legal, and thus aren't technically a corruption. And yeah, would be great to have more reliable numbers for China. I don't think that's due to the "grip"; rather, it's a cultural thing: Chinese don't seem to value openness same way we do. At the same time, China is absurdly huge; I'm not sure we can have reliable numbers for all of the geographical Europe, and China is twice that.