Sell China short. Why? Read this: "Large organisations have their own oligarchic logic, and the bigger they are, the worse it gets. As (China's) Supreme Leader, Xi can't know everything. He has to rely on reports from underlings, and every underling has his (its almost always "his") agenda, which is not necessarily aligned with the national interest. And at the scale of the Chinese state, even the best-motivated of Xi's underlings are also having to rely on summary reports from underlings to know what is going on in their area. One big effect of this is that the Supreme Leader is often the last person to hear bad news. At every level the problems get hidden, because nobody wants to go to the boss and say "this problem is getting away from me: help!". This is why so many big company projects "suddenly" go off the rails: all the problems were there and known to the people on the ground, but the VIPs were living in blissful ignorance until t