Two things on this and then I’m just going to let this go, as you say it’s really not related to the OP. First, per capita GDP is kind of a silly metric to use. Take your first list (I also didn’t check, just going to base it on the assumption it’s right). Of those countries listed, none of them are in China’s league despite having roughly equivalent GDP per capita. It’s silly to compare Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Costa Rica or Lebanon, let alone Kazakhstan and try and make a case that they are roughly equivalent because of per capita GDP. China is the number two economic power wrt total GDP, and while Russia is still a military power they aren’t really in China’s league either from an economic or global impact perspective. I’m willing to entertain that Brazil and Turkey are at least arguably large powers to compare with China for the sake of the corruption debate but those others aren’t even close.
I’m unsure what your point about the US having higher GDP per capita than your final list is supposed to show, but the point I was making is that if you think that Americans don’t talk about corruption in the US you are sadly misinformed. In the US, corruption within America is constantly talked about, though as with many things American it has a decided political tilt. Right wingers rail about corruption at the federal level (you have but to listen to Trump and his followers on this, as it’s pretty much in everything they discuss) and leftwingers talk about corporate corruption and politicians in the pockets of Big Business™. I’m fairly sure that part of the reason the US ranks so relatively high on the list is because if you use polling data you are going to get a hell of a lot of Americans and probably everyone else thinking the US is riddled with corruption.
I’ll make a final point (ok, so it was 3 points not 2 :p) wrt corruption in China. We could go into all the aspects…personally, I think China should be ranked a hell of a lot higher…but let’s just look at one thing going on for the last few years. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign. So far, over a million members of the CCP have been prosecuted over the last decade or so for corruption. Over 100k in 2016 alone. Now, there are many theories as to what is really going on in China. Some subscribe to the view that the CCP is just riddled with corruption. Some subscribe to the view that a lot of this is basically part of Xi and his factions power grab. I think it’s a little of both. Either way, however, that alone shows a systemic corruption issue in China, something that goes from the lowest levels of their government (i.e. the CCP) to the highest levels. And that’s but scratching the surface of corruption in China. Just the Falun Gong stuff alone, even if we discount the whole executing prisoners for meditating and using their spare parts for profit thingy should put China high up on the list.
Final final point (yeah, that’s 4…sigh)…I DO have a nuanced view of this ‘than U.S.-Good / China-Bad’. I’ve bothered to look into China from a number of different view points, and have changed my own (pretty ignorant and simplistic, admittedly) position on China over the years. I used to think that China was a pretty good place, that they had mainly put aside the communist roots and embraced capitalism, and that much of the bad press they get was just growing pains of an emergent economic superpower. But then I started to dig a bit deeper and found there IS more nuance in all of this than my rather simplistic view of China from before. While I don’t believe that the US is the font of all goodness and light in the world, I think I’m pretty safe in saying that the CCP IS BAD, and the US in a straight comparison is ‘good’ for certain definitions of that term. Personally, I think that this board has a dual standard and some serious blinders on when looking at China (or Russia for that matter, though this whole Trump thing is changing that).
Anyway, enough drunk posting and streams of consciousness for the night (I had a 5th point, but mercifully it has vanished with this latest glass of tequila). I’ll probably regret hitting submit tomorrow. 