I just had this idea, we all know on surface corruption is all bad, especially when police wants to shake you down, or any other nameless bureaucrats use their power to enlarge their own wallet.
But what about other aspects of corruption that we think as corruption but might be somewhat beneficial. By that I mean personal relationship and informal arrangements that facilitate all business operations in China. For example, if you want to start a business, or if you want to get a license to sell something, the normal bureaucratic procedure would take months to get approval, but if you know someone personally, you can speed up the paperwork process, and this in the end would bring greater value added to the business.
I mean this doesn't necessary to be all bad, I know of course there are plenty of bad sides of this kind of corruption as company that gets projects with no bidding process so that they keep more profit for themselves, then give kickbacks. But on the other hand, this would have faster decision making and turn around time.
Another question is, if China is so corrupt, how is it able to grow it is economy so fast in the recent decades? Because conventional logic would states that if a nation is corrupted, it would became a bad environment to do business in, so that investors would not come to invest, and business would not want to set up shops, and people would not benefit. But clearly this is not the case, overall the economic growth have helped everyone from the poorest to the rich, many people argue that the rich became especially richer, even so, the poor have also benefited tremendously from the economic growth as well.
So if corruption is one force that eat away at economic growth, what is the other force that drove China's growth in the past 2 decades when compare to other nations?
But what about other aspects of corruption that we think as corruption but might be somewhat beneficial. By that I mean personal relationship and informal arrangements that facilitate all business operations in China. For example, if you want to start a business, or if you want to get a license to sell something, the normal bureaucratic procedure would take months to get approval, but if you know someone personally, you can speed up the paperwork process, and this in the end would bring greater value added to the business.
I mean this doesn't necessary to be all bad, I know of course there are plenty of bad sides of this kind of corruption as company that gets projects with no bidding process so that they keep more profit for themselves, then give kickbacks. But on the other hand, this would have faster decision making and turn around time.
Another question is, if China is so corrupt, how is it able to grow it is economy so fast in the recent decades? Because conventional logic would states that if a nation is corrupted, it would became a bad environment to do business in, so that investors would not come to invest, and business would not want to set up shops, and people would not benefit. But clearly this is not the case, overall the economic growth have helped everyone from the poorest to the rich, many people argue that the rich became especially richer, even so, the poor have also benefited tremendously from the economic growth as well.
So if corruption is one force that eat away at economic growth, what is the other force that drove China's growth in the past 2 decades when compare to other nations?
