No, CB, I don't accept that the U.S. is nore corrupt than China. Under capitalism, honest dealing *among capitalists* is important for the system to work. That's why Enron is so threatening to capital markets. The US has the most transparent capital markets in the world and threats to that transparency are threats to liquidity. The evidence for that argument is right on the stock ticker.
Under the Chinese command system, corruption itself is important for the system to work. It is the corruption that provides liquidity. Who are the successes in the New China? The same people that succeeded in the New Russia - people who knew how to work the system from within, find real economic value and get at resources trapped in bureaucratic coffers to exploit that value. They were the corrupt officials - scroungers and fixers - who made/make the system work in the first place.
As Russia and now China give over to a more free enterprise system, the fixers and the scroungers are unleashed without the legal infrastructure to regulate their behavior, and thus corruption grows. In Russia, it destroyed the economy.
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