to them from the center, goes to the province first and then to the city level. The prefecture, there are five levels of government in China, and so the prefecture at the bottom is stuck with all the costs and yet it doesn't have the right to keep most of the revenue. So what can they do? They had to raise money through debt. Wow. How would you compare it to the Soviet system pre-1991, pre-1989? You know, I don't know enough about the Soviet system to be able to tell you. Let's just say that the Chinese system is, they're very, very different in a lot of different ways. The Union was and is a petroleum state. So they have a lot more natural, unitary organization to their government and also it has radically lower population, what, 130 million or so, compared with 1.3 billion, with a territory that's much, much larger and tributaries, you know, rivers and a few railways that connect all the key cities. So that's very different. The kind of power that you can exercise over Russia and the (18/57)
You are viewing a single comment's thread from: