China Dictatorship (中国独裁统治)

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Over the course of their investigation into the CIA’s China-based agent network, Chinese officials learned that the agency was secretly paying the "promotion fees" - in other words, the bribes - regularly required to rise up within the Chinese bureaucracy, according to four current and former officials. It was how the CIA got "disaffected people up in the ranks. But this was not done once, and wasn’t done just in the [Chinese military]," recalled a current Capitol Hill staffer. "Paying their bribes was an example of long-term thinking that was extraordinary for us," said a former senior counterintelligence official. "Recruiting foreign military officers is nearly impossible. It was a way to exploit the corruption to our advantage." At the time, "promotion fees" sometimes ran into the millions of dollars, according to a former senior CIA official: "It was quite amazing the level of corruption that was going on." The compensation sometimes included paying tuition and board for children studying at expensive foreign universities, according to another CIA officer.