plawolf
Lieutenant General
Point one is really irrelevant at best and part of the whole corruption in reality when in the west. The kind of western propaganda-poster brave independent investigative reporter doesn’t actually exist in real life other than literal 1 in a million unicorn flukes. The regular reporter just report what they are ordered/allowed to report, most are more than happy to bend the truth or outright lie to do it. Case in point, I have yet to see any such piece on the blindingly obvious corruption and incompetence within basically all of the Pentagon’s major procurement programmes.
Almost every project is delayed, vastly overpriced and usually not meeting core performance requirements, and not one single vaunted brave independent western investigative journalist can do one single piece on it?
Relying on reporters to protect you from systematic corruption and graft is like relying on wild foxes to guard your henhouse.
There is also a fundamental difference in how corruption and graft is handled in China compared to the west that goes a long way to explaining both how so many high rankers are usually swept up in such scandals, as well as how Chinese defence procurement can deliver the kind of undreamt of real world deliveries despite all the corruption cases.
In China, especially when it comes to government and defence related procurements, you won’t be allowed to weasel and fineprint your way out of trouble on some technicalities. You can have a bulletproof defence by western standards, but still get convicted if your intentions were dishonest and you benefited as a result of that dishonesty. Hell, you don’t actually even need to profit personally, if the state has suffered damages as a result of your actions, you are basically fucked if there is any hint of dishonesty or malicious compliance involved.
The bar is even higher for Chinese officials. It’s simply not good enough to say I did everything in my contract as a defence if shit went down under your watch. Often you can have honest officials get swept up for simply not going the extra mile to ask that obvious key question or follow up on something that just seemed a little fishy. Yes it can be harsh and unfair, but it does create an environment where everyone is constantly going the extra mile, just in case. And China as a nation benefits massively from that. That is also why a lot of the people who are caught up in such large cases don’t actually get career or life-as-they-know-it ending consequences if they are merely involved due to incompetence or laxity. It will massively derail your career, but it’s not something you cannot come back from.
