It’s one of those ironies in power structures, how a ‘communist’ society can act as turbo capitalist one and visa versa. It’s a mistake to think that just because things are one way at the top they’re the same way all the way down the power structure. Even with heavy corruption there are competing corrupt entities which can lead to a healthy competition of governance as an emergent behavior. Dysfunction at one level efficiencies at another. Corruption is self corrupting so it’s difficult to maintain at all levels.

In my view much of the ‘corruption’ in the west takes the form of very legal financialization, this massively rewards consolidation as the high debt to equity ratios means low interest rates are paramount and combining two entities allows one to act as insurance for the other lowering the risk component of the interest rate allowing the entity to out compete the remaining entities. Once reaching a certain size the company becomes too big to fail and the risk component merges with the US government. Since the US government is very receptive to donations these companies are in effect able to form an oligarchy. Compare this to China where companies are subordinate to the politicians.

I think the West overestimates the deleterious effects of corruption of our competitors and underestimates our own systemic (and legalized) corruption.