China. Inc.

Why Compare a Country to a Corporation?

Comparing a state to a corporation risks oversimplification, but the intellectual payoff is worth it. Analogies clarify hidden structures. They help people—especially Americans steeped in corporate culture—see governance through familiar eyes.

And when you apply this lens to China, something remarkable happens: you realize the world’s most populous country runs more like a corporation than like a democracy. In fact, it may be the most corporate-like country on Earth—and that tells us a lot about how it works, why it works, and why it sometimes outperforms the West.

What Is a Corporation, Anyway?

For most Americans, corporate life is the water they swim in—so familiar they rarely notice it. But to understand China. Inc., you need a quick refresher on how a corporation is structured:

• Legal Personhood – A corporation is its own legal entity.
• Shareholder Primacy – It exists to maximize shareholder value.
• Board of Directors – Sets strategy and hires/fires the CEO. A CEO may look powerful, but he serves entirely at the board’s pleasure.
• Executive Management – Implements board strategy; answers upward, not to employees or “the public.”
• Hierarchy and Non-Democracy – Personnel decisions, promotions, and policies are top-down. Nobody votes on them.
• Profit Motive – The engine of everything.

Nearly half of all U.S. jobs fall within corporate structures. Yet, like the fabled fish asking other fish, “What is water?”, few employees ever stop to consider what a corporation actually is.

China. Inc. — The Analogy in Action

U.S. Corporation	China. Inc.
Shareholders	Citizens—the ultimate beneficiaries
Board of Directors	Politburo Standing Committee—sets direction and can hire/fire the “CEO” (President & Secretary General)
CEO (and C‑suite)	President & Party Secretary General—implements strategy, serves at the Politburo’s pleasure
Mid/Late Managers	Provincial, municipal, and county leaders—performance-based promotion
Entry‑level staff	Civil servants, administrators, army officers
Operational Goal	Shareholder profit vs. national development, social stability, citizen welfare
Governance Style	Both are non-democratic in operation: promotions and decisions are top-down
Fiduciary Duty	To shareholders only vs. to citizens as a whole

So yes, if you squint, China really does look like a giant corporation.

The Paycheck Test — Where the Analogy Breaks

The resemblance stops cold when you look at compensation:

• In U.S. corporations, CEO pay routinely runs 300x or 400x higher than that of the average worker. Stock options and golden parachutes reward executives for juicing quarterly returns.
• In China. Inc., pay doesn’t mirror managerial rank. A provincial party secretary or cabinet-level minister earns only a modest multiple of an ordinary civil servant’s salary. President Xi Jinping summed it up bluntly:

• “If your goal is to get rich, don’t work in the government; if you want to work in the government, don’t expect to get rich.”

Promotions come from performance—delivering growth, stability, and competent governance—not from swelling personal bank accounts.

Planning & Vision — The Real Divider

Corporations as Planning Machines

Unlike democracies, corporations are designed to plan. As Karl Marx famously put it, M → P → M′ … to ad infinitum: money seeks to reproduce itself endlessly. Survival depends on planning not just for the next quarter but for decades.

In theory, this makes corporations better long-term planners than democracies, whose horizons rarely extend beyond the next election cycle.

China. Inc. — A Super-Planner

• Its basic planning unit is the Five-Year Plan—a formal roadmap updated every half-decade.
• Unlike U.S. corporations shackled by stock-market short-termism, China. Inc. can invest in projects with deferred payoffs: high-speed rail, semiconductor self-sufficiency, poverty eradication.
• The Politburo behaves more like a classic 1950s corporate board than today’s Wall Street-obsessed ones—measuring performance by tangible results, not by quarterly stock price.

The U.S. Federal Government — No Vision at All

The U.S. federal government, by contrast, is not a planning agent. It reacts; it does not strategize. Worse, it takes orders from corporations that themselves are trapped by Wall Street’s quarterly whip. The result: short-termism everywhere, and a government with essentially no vision.

A 2,000-Year-Old Corporation

One common misunderstanding must be dispelled: China. Inc. is not a modern Communist invention. The board of trustees may be new, but the managerial system is ancient.

The Politburo today plays essentially the same role as the imperial court did under the emperors. The emperor appointed ministers who not only ran the country but also constantly “harassed” him with moral lectures—reminding him of ancient sage kings, who, as legend had it, rose before dawn, governed tirelessly for the people, and did not waste themselves in the arms of 999 concubines.

This managerial bureaucracy dates back to the Former Han Dynasty, which refined and institutionalized the bureaucratic apparatus inherited from the Qin.

Just as CEOs come and go but corporations remain, emperors rose and fell, dynasties changed, and now a Communist “board” holds sway—but the underlying managerial system of China. Inc. has endured for over two millennia. That continuity is unmatched anywhere else in the world.

No Elections in Corporations — And That’s the Point

Here’s something Americans never think about: we don’t hold elections in our companies.

No company votes on who becomes the next manager or CEO. Employees don’t go to the polls every two years to pick middle managers or every four years to elect a new CEO. Promotions are appointed based on performance—that’s how corporations work, and everyone accepts it.

Yet when Americans talk about China, they act as if elections are the only “legitimate” way to run anything. Folks, you don’t demand elections in your own workplace—why demand them for a state that functions like a corporation?

Meanwhile, Americans drag themselves to the polls every two years for Congress, every four for the House, every six for the Senate, and every four years to pick another asshole to occupy the White House. And what do you get? Clowns, half-dead geriatrics, movie stars, TV hosts, and, yes, people who win mostly because they are the right skin color for the political moment.

Why? Because the U.S. federal government is not a corporation—it’s a circus run on popularity contests. China. Inc., by contrast, appoints, promotes, or demotes managers based on performance, exactly as corporations do.

The Key Contrast — Purpose

At the core is a difference in purpose:

• A U.S. corporation exists to serve shareholders only.
• China. Inc. exists to serve citizens as a whole—the “shareholders” in this metaphor.

Both systems are hierarchical and meritocratic, but one measures success in profits, the other in public welfare and national strength.

Why This Analogy Matters

Thinking of China as “China. Inc.” doesn’t reduce it to a company—it reveals its organizational logic. For Americans used to corporate life, it’s an eye-opener:

Structurally, China looks far more like Apple or ExxonMobil than like Capitol Hill. But in mission, incentives, and long-term vision, it is a different species entirely—a 2,000-year-old corporation that still knows where it’s going.