Japan is a good case study of what happens when a nation submits to the Western Capitalist Bloc.
Like China, Japan developed its economy quickly. Unlike China, the Japanese government became puppets of the Japanese capitalists. Japanese democracy has not been working for a long time, if it ever did. Politics are controlled by a handful of wealthy families. The common people vote for the same batch of politicians every election, such that most have become jaded and given up.
The Japanese Capitalists, the ones who actually rule Japan, make a lot of nationalistic noise when faced with China or Korea, but they shut their mouth like good little employees when faced with their corporate overlords, the American Capitalists.
It's no coincidence that if you take a look at the ranks of Chinese billionaires, including people like Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma, they are overwhelmingly admiring of the West. Indeed, the hope of the West, even just a few years ago, was that China would turn out like Japan, except bigger. It was the hope of the Western Capitalists that Chinese billionaires would take over the rulership of China, and toe the line when it came to Western interests.
Of course, that is patently nonsense because those Western Capitalists have no understanding of what China is. Nevertheless, during the 90s and early 2000s, even in the 2010s, there was a real sense that money = power. Corruption among the public servants was the doorway for wealth to access power. Frankly, remembering what the 2000 - 2010 decade was like, I am still amazed that Xi Jinping was able to tame the corruption in the CPC so quickly and so thoroughly.
