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Freakonomics Radio

Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China? (Update)

with Yuen Yuen Ong

Published September 26, 2025
View Show Notes

About This Episode

Stephen Dubner interviews political scientist Yuen Yuen Ong about her research on corruption in China and the United States, based on her book "China's Gilded Age." Ong explains her four-part typology of corruption, how certain types of corruption can coexist with rapid economic growth, and why she believes the U.S. and China are both experiencing different versions of a "Gilded Age." She also critiques common corruption metrics, discusses China's evolving political-economic model under Mao, Deng, and Xi, and reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of capitalist prosperity and democracy.

Topics Covered

Government corruption U.S.-China competition Economic development Wealth inequality Poverty and inequality Financial stability Regulatory capture Gilded Age Access money corruption Lobbying and political influence

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Quick Takeaways

  • Yuen Yuen Ong argues that corruption does not disappear as countries get richer, but evolves into more sophisticated forms such as influence-based "access money."
  • Her "unbundled corruption index" suggests the U.S. has much lower levels of petty theft, grand theft, and speed money than China, but a similar level of high-end access money.
  • China's rapid growth despite widespread corruption is explained by a shift away from growth-killing petty and grand theft toward growth-fueling but risky access money linked to real estate and finance.
  • Ong compares types of corruption to different drugs: petty and grand theft as toxic, speed money as painkillers, and access money as steroids that boost growth but create long-term systemic risks.
  • She contends that both China and the U.S. are in "Gilded Ages"-China in an early, infrastructure- and construction-driven phase and the U.S. in a more financialized, tech-driven phase.
  • Ong criticizes conventional corruption indices and social science methods for oversimplifying complex, hidden behaviors and incentivizing research on what is easy to measure.
  • Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign mixes genuine concern with political consolidation and relies on top-down commands that, Ong argues, attack symptoms more than root causes.
  • She sees democracy, muckraking journalism, independent prosecutors, and electoral reforms as key tools that allowed the U.S. to move from its first Gilded Age into the Progressive Era.
  • Ong emphasizes that capitalist prosperity has improved lives but also generates inequality, cronyism, and climate problems, and she remains cautiously optimistic about the U.S. because of its openness and opportunities.

Podcast Notes

Episode setup and connection to previous China discussion

Reason for revisiting this episode

Dubner notes that last week he interviewed Dan Wong about his book "Breakneck, China's Quest to Engineer the Future"[1:04]
That conversation reminded him of an earlier episode with political scientist Yuen Yuen Ong about corruption in China and the U.S.[1:15]
The earlier episode is titled "Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China?" and has been updated with new facts about both countries[1:20]
Listeners are invited to share feedback via email at radio@freakonomics.com[1:29]

Introducing Yuen Yuen Ong and the paradox of China's corruption and growth

Ong's book and research scope

In 2020, Ong published "China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption"[1:59]
Her analysis draws on prosecutorial data, government compensation figures, news reports, and interviews with more than 400 Chinese bureaucrats[2:35]
Her central puzzle: how has China grown so large and so fast despite high levels of corruption?[2:47]

Conventional view of corruption versus China

Economists typically see corruption as an impediment to economic growth[2:53]
Transparency International ranks corruption around the world and shows China as having high corruption[3:05]
Some scholars argue corruption threatens China's very existence, and Xi Jinping has led a massive crackdown disciplining over five million officials and jailing thousands[3:17]

Comparing China and the U.S. on corruption and capitalism

The U.S. ranks much lower on the Transparency International index, but Ong argues the comparison is not straightforward[3:29]
Ong's core argument: today's China resembles the U.S. in its own Gilded Age[3:36]
• She suggests that what we see in China now is what one would have found in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
She argues corruption in rich countries does not disappear but evolves in structure and form and becomes more sophisticated[4:05]
Ong sees China as a newcomer in this evolutionary process of corruption and capitalism[4:14]
She frames U.S.-China relations as a clash of two Gilded Ages: China in Gilded Age 1.0 and the U.S. in Gilded Age 2.0, a more financialized, tech-centered economy[5:29]
Dubner asks if U.S. citizens should avoid feeling smug because American corruption is often legal and not labeled as such[5:59]
Ong observes a striking feature of American culture: judgmentalism linked to a narrative of being a 'chosen country' and beacon of freedom and justice[6:29]
She notes that in many other countries, people do not think of their nation in such grand, chosen terms, which she sees as unique to American identity[6:44]

Parallels between contemporary U.S. and China

Despite regime differences (democracy versus single-party autocracy), Ong says the U.S. and China share problems such as extreme inequality and cronyism[7:16]
Other shared issues include systemic financial risk, excessive materialism, and ecological crises driven by overconsumption[7:29]

Ong's background and interest in governance and development

Growing up in Singapore and early views on governance

Ong grew up in an ordinary middle-class family in Singapore; they were never wealthy but never lacked food or shelter[8:40]
About three-quarters of Singapore's population, including her family, are ethnically Chinese[8:47]
As a child she did not understand governance, although Singapore's governance was extraordinary by development standards[9:04]
Economists refer to the 'Singapore miracle'-a resource-poor country becoming prosperous with strong public services and low corruption[9:12]
She recalls her family dressing up to ride a new subway line when she was six, illustrating how impressive infrastructure once felt[9:37]
• The underground-then-above-ground train route amazed her, but she notes how such achievements later become taken for granted
She links this shift from awe to normalization as a hallmark of development-people begin to take basic infrastructure for granted[10:01]

Education in the U.S. and turn toward studying China

After high school, Ong attended Colorado College and later earned a Ph.D. at Stanford[10:04]
Seeing Singapore's rapid transformation sparked her interest in how poor countries become prosperous[10:11]
She viewed China as the most compelling case study for rapid development and governance[10:22]
Dubner cites numbers: in 1989, China's GDP was $347 billion versus $5.6 trillion for the U.S., about one-sixteenth the size[10:37]
Since then, China's GDP growth has averaged about 9% per year, roughly four times the U.S. growth rate[10:45]
China's GDP is now about $19 trillion with the U.S. at about $29 trillion, putting China within 'shooting distance'[10:53]

Types of corruption and Ong's typology

Chinese corruption vocabulary and examples

Ong notes that corruption is so embedded in China that it has its own vernacular terms[11:11]
A 'naked official' is one whose home in China looks poor but who secretly has substantial wealth overseas[11:29]
Elegant bribery refers to more sophisticated forms of bribery, such as giving art instead of cash[11:40]
• Art's value is subjective, so an arrested official can claim the piece is worthless, complicating prosecution

Why some corruption can coexist with growth

Ong's short answer: China's growth persisted because certain growth-damaging forms of corruption were contained over time[12:31]
She lists embezzlement and petty bribery as examples of corruption that damage growth if widespread[12:38]
She distinguishes between corruption involving extortion/embezzlement and influence-peddling, arguing the latter can be beneficial for business[12:42]

Defining corruption and avoiding ideological bias

Dubner notes that 'corruption' can refer to illegal abuses of power or to legal but morally questionable behavior[13:06]
Ong says she tries to avoid ideological framings and notes the common definition: abuse of public power for private gain[13:37]
That common definition generally excludes legal forms of influence politics[13:44]
Her own definition is broader: whenever someone has so much power they can influence or dictate the rules of the game, there is potential for corruption[13:34]
She emphasizes that in advanced capitalist democracies like the U.S., it's hard to draw clear boundaries around 'excessive' political influence[14:20]

Ong's four-type corruption typology

She proposes a typology based on two dimensions: elite vs. non-elite actors, and theft vs. exchange[14:52]
Corruption involving theft is divided into petty theft and grand theft[15:01]
• Petty theft includes acts like a police officer extorting $200 from someone
• Grand theft covers large-scale embezzlement, like billions siphoned from a country, with Nigeria cited as a classic case
Transactional corruption is split into speed money and access money[15:29]
• Speed money refers to bribes to low- or mid-level officials to overcome red tape, delays, or harassment
• Access money involves payments to powerful officials not to remove obstacles, but to secure special deals

Drug analogy for corruption types and their economic effects

Ong uses a drug analogy: all drugs are harmful but in different ways[16:07]
Petty and grand theft are likened to toxic drugs that only harm and provide no benefit[16:14]
Speed money is compared to painkillers: they relieve headaches from red tape but do not build 'muscle' or grow businesses[16:34]
Access money is described as the steroids of capitalism, enabling rapid muscle-like growth and superhuman performance[16:55]
She stresses that steroids have serious side effects that accumulate and only fully appear in a meltdown[17:05]
In China's case, side effects of access-money steroids include extreme inequality, cronyism that erodes legitimacy, and policy distortions[17:12]
• She cites misallocation toward luxury properties and neglect of affordable housing as a distortion

China's real estate boom, Evergrande, and comparison to U.S. financial crises

Shift in China's growth model toward real estate and debt

China's growth model in the 2000s shifted from manufacturing toward construction, debt, and real estate[17:43]
In that context, capitalists bribed officials for land deals, loans, and construction projects[18:03]
This sets the stage for the Evergrande crisis, which Ong says has long been in the making[18:09]

Evergrande crisis details and historical perspective on crises

Evergrande was once China's biggest real estate firm with more than 1,000 projects[18:19]
Real estate represents up to about 30% of Chinese GDP versus 13% in the U.S.[18:29]
Around 20% of China's housing stock is unoccupied, and Evergrande has been delisted from the Hong Kong exchange, reportedly owing more than $45 billion and undergoing liquidation[18:45]
Ong says the Evergrande crisis is concerning with broad, deep effects but warns against doomsday predictions[18:59]
She cites U.S. history: in the 19th century, America had five similar crises, about one every 20 years[19:20]

Access money and the 2008 U.S. financial crisis

Ong notes that many now call Evergrande China's 'Lehman Brothers moment'[19:33]
She argues the 2007-2008 financial crisis in the U.S. was fueled partly by access money[19:39]
She cites an IMF research paper finding lobbying from 2000 to 2007 was associated with riskier lending and higher delinquency[19:58]
Firms that lobbied were more likely to receive bailouts after the crash; the paper was titled "A Fistful of Dollars"[20:10]

Critique of Transparency International and creation of the Unbundled Corruption Index

Limitations of the Transparency International index

The U.S. is ranked the 28th least corrupt country out of 180 by Transparency International[20:20]
Ong says this ranking obscures the fact that corruption comes in different types that cannot be reduced to a single score[20:32]
Transparency International aggregates third-party surveys that ask broad questions such as how corrupt a country is on a scale, which she criticizes as vague[20:45]

Design of the Unbundled Corruption Index (UCI)

Ong wanted separate scores for petty theft, grand theft, speed money, and access money, calling this the unbundled corruption index[21:10]
She also sought to improve survey data by designing her own vignettes[21:22]
Due to resource limits, she focused on 15 countries including China, India, Russia, Nigeria, and the U.S.[21:37]
Respondents were experts with at least 10 years' experience: professors, journalists, and business executives[21:49]
Instead of vague overall ratings, she described specific scenarios-for example, a contractor with an abundant flow of projects due to political connections-and asked how common they are[22:09]

Findings for U.S. and China on the UCI

Total corruption in the U.S. is much lower than in China, consistent with standard indices[22:41]
Unbundling shows the U.S. is much lower than China on petty theft, grand theft, and speed money[22:41]
However, the U.S. and China have roughly the same amount of access money[22:41]
In China, access money often takes the form of bribes, whereas in the U.S. it more likely appears as lobbying or influence peddling[23:19]
Ong notes that China has no equivalent of the lobbying industry as an institutionalized activity[23:26]
• She argues lobbying is unlikely to evolve in China because power is highly personalist and focused on individuals rather than institutions

Intellectual property theft, access money trade-offs, and financial opacity

Why IP theft is not classified as corruption in Ong's framework

Dubner asks about technology transfer or intellectual property theft between the U.S. and China and whether it counts as corruption[24:05]
Ong does not categorize it as corruption because she focuses on political and bureaucratic corruption derived from exploiting power[24:24]
She says technology transfer is primarily a corporate activity, even if the state is sometimes involved[24:00]
Asked to rank IP theft as a factor in China's economic evolution, she places it 'right at the bottom'[25:05]
She acknowledges IPR theft and imitation goods but cites studies showing China's IPR theft levels are not significantly higher than peers at similar development levels[25:05]

Is access money ever worth it?

Dubner asks whether access money might be worth it if it helps produce public goods, such as a new school, even with kickbacks[25:32]
He contrasts this with the argument that kickbacks could weaken construction quality, citing the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and school collapses[25:54]
Ong says it's hard to disentangle costs and benefits; corrupt incentives might also increase an official's personal investment in a project[25:45]

Lobbying scandals and financial opacity

Dubner references the Jack Abramoff scandal, in which Abramoff boasted that lobbyists effectively 'owned' members of Congress[26:24]
Ong says she does not know whether similar dynamics persist today[27:00]
She recommends the work of Professor Anat Atmati at Stanford Graduate School of Business on problems in banking[27:08]
She argues banking problems are exacerbated by opacity; only a handful of experts understand derivatives[27:19]
Most of the public and even many professors do not truly understand complex financial products, enabling lack of accountability[27:28]
In a highly financialized, sophisticated capitalist economy, technical complexity makes oversight difficult, fostering conditions for corruption[27:37]

China's development model, poverty trap, and multiple 'China models'

China's escape from the poverty trap

Ong's first book, "How China Escaped the Poverty Trap," examined how a poor country becomes prosperous without having rich-country institutions from the start[30:41]
She defines the poverty trap as the difficulty of acquiring middle-class conditions like education and healthcare without already having them[30:38]
World Bank data show that since 1979, China's growth has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty[31:03]
Some scholars hesitate to praise China's miracle because it is authoritarian, and praise could be read as endorsing authoritarianism[31:23]

Misunderstandings about the 'China model'

Ong says a key misunderstanding is assuming a single 'China model'; in reality, there are multiple models depending on time and place[32:14]
She distinguishes at least three Chinas since 1949: under Mao, under Deng, and under Xi[32:25]
Under Mao Zedong, China was a personalist dictatorship with a personality cult and a centrally planned, command economy, which she calls 'a complete disaster'[32:45]
Under Deng Xiaoping, the central government shifted from dictator to director; governance was adaptive, authoritarian, and highly decentralized[32:59]
She argues China's success is often misread as a triumph of top-down authoritarian control, which she says is not accurate[33:24]
Since Xi Jinping's rise in 2012, China has taken a more authoritarian turn compared with the Deng era[32:54]

Managing corruption within autocracy: low-level versus high-level corruption and bureaucrat pay

Why successful autocracies suppress petty corruption

Dubner suggests that in an autocracy, leaders have incentives to reduce low-level corruption while tolerating high-level access corruption[34:43]
He argues low-level greed makes the state look corrupt and may divert spoils away from top officials[34:22]
Ong agrees with this reading, calling it exactly correct[34:50]
Local leaders in Chinese cities and counties want to curb predatory corruption to attract business and investors[35:01]

Profit-sharing and bureaucrat compensation in China

Ong describes a system she labels 'profit-sharing' that operated from the 1990s to early 2000s[35:36]
Official salaries for bureaucrats were very low and sometimes below subsistence, similar to other developing countries[36:00]
In one county she visited, entry pay was under $80 per month[36:12]
Economists call such low pay 'capitulation wages'-so low that officials are expected to make up income via bribes or extortion[36:19]
Ong emphasizes that to curtail low-level theft and extortion, governments must pay real salaries that allow survival[36:34]
She found that over 75% of actual compensation came from variable fringe components: bonuses, overtime, food baskets, free vacations, and similar perks[37:15]
These fringe benefits were systematically tied to local government revenue-raising capacity, hence the term 'profit sharing'[37:22]
Ong argues this system helped China escape the poverty trap by discouraging toxic low-level corruption while allowing higher-level access money to flourish[37:36]

Challenging mainstream scholarship and measurement practices

Critiques of Western development and corruption scholarship

Ong has critiqued influential economists such as Jeff Sachs and Daron Asimoglu in her earlier work on poverty reduction[38:19]
She notes a professional letter described her as having the 'nerves' to challenge luminaries, which she interprets as highlighting structural inequality in academia[38:39]
In an ideal academic world, she says, only the quality of arguments would matter, not who is being challenged[39:17]
Her core critique is that many social scientists reduce development to mechanical outcomes and search for simple, secret 'recipes'[39:25]

Rejecting the mechanical worldview in social science

She says conventional social science assumes development can be broken into discrete variables with interventions producing predictable outcomes[39:48]
Ong rejects this 'mechanical worldview' as artificial and not reflective of how societies function[40:27]
She likens social realities not to machines but to forest ecosystems: multidimensional, constantly changing, and mutually adaptive[40:33]
She argues this requires different methodological tools than those commonly used[40:47]

Resistance to the Unbundled Corruption Index in academia

Ong recounts that reviewers were 'absolutely livid' about the Unbundled Corruption Index when she tried to publish it as a journal article[40:58]
The UCI could appear in her book because books are peer-reviewed as a whole rather than by chapter[41:02]
She interprets reviewers' anger as personal, possibly because they had used conventional measures and did not want them challenged[41:43]

Publication-friendly agendas and measurement biases

Ong writes that easily downloadable datasets have shaped concepts, theories, and policies more than many admit[41:52]
She says researchers often focus on what is easy to measure and regress rather than on all important aspects of corruption[41:09]
Illicit behavior among the powerful is especially hard to measure because they can obstruct scrutiny[42:23]
Ong notes it's easier to condemn corruption among the poor than to probe influence politics among the rich[42:40]
She uses the analogy of 'machine-friendly crops'-farmers choose crops easy to harvest by machine, just as academics choose 'publication-friendly' topics and data[43:05]
She observes that professional incentives skew research toward some topics and methods and away from hard but important questions[42:23]
Ong says she is not trying to be a rebel but does not want to waste her life pleasing conventions rather than seeking truth[41:43]

Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign, socialism, and constraints of democracy

Xi's view of China's 'Gilded Age' and motives for anti-corruption

Ong imagines that Xi might agree with her 'Gilded Age' framing because that is the situation he faces[47:23]
She says Xi's anti-corruption campaign is both a genuine structural reform effort and a tool to eliminate political enemies[48:00]
Xi wants to address corruption to save the country, the party, and himself[48:26]

Zero Tolerance documentary and moral framing

Ong cites a Chinese state TV documentary series called "Zero Tolerance" featuring profiles and interviews with corrupt officials[48:48]
One profiled official is portrayed as corrupted by his family and inculcated with wrong values from youth[49:26]
The series presents corruption as individuals losing morality, idealism, and party loyalty[49:45]
She notes the show is part of a broader effort to revive the anti-corruption campaign as Xi approaches a third term[49:38]

Crackdown on access money via debt regulations

The Evergrande crisis was triggered by new CCP regulations limiting acceptable debt ratios for companies[50:29]
One expert has called this a 'controlled demolition' deliberately initiated by the regime[50:44]
In Ong's taxonomy, this represents a crackdown on access money and reflects Xi's discomfort with runaway capitalism[50:53]
She notes that in recent months Xi has strongly asserted socialist priorities, surprising some observers[51:00]

How Xi's style would translate (or not) to the U.S.

Dubner asks how Xi would judge and try to reform the U.S. system if he were its president[51:23]
Ong says Xi dislikes capitalist excesses and would likely be disgusted by similar U.S. problems[52:07]
In China, he can use top-down commands-banning private tutoring or video games, or curbing big tech-something he could not easily do in a democracy[51:52]
She notes in the U.S., Biden's 'Build Back Better' must be negotiated through Congress, whereas Xi can order infrastructure and 'common prosperity' donations[52:50]
She contrasts Xi's ability to prompt huge donations from companies like Alibaba and Tencent with Biden's difficulty even in collecting taxes[53:16]
Ong suggests Xi would be frustrated and maladapted in a system where capitalists arguably have more power than politicians[54:01]

Progressive Era lessons, China's possible path, and Ong's personal stance

Checks on U.S. corruption from the Progressive Era

Ong says the U.S.'s first Gilded Age ended with the Progressive Era, which pushed for more regulation and less corruption[54:36]
Economists argue the Progressive Era succeeded in making corruption riskier and costlier[54:49]
Key tools included an open press, muckraking journalism, independent prosecutors, electoral reforms, political activism, and labor movements[54:59]
She says all this was possible because of democracy[55:16]

China's attempt at its own Progressive Era

Ong argues Xi's mission is to end China's Gilded Age and move into its own version of a Progressive Era[55:14]
Unlike the U.S., Xi prefers top-down commands and campaigns as his primary tools[56:03]
She believes commands backfire because they treat symptoms rather than root causes[56:09]
She argues Xi must adopt a more moderate approach to balance prosperity with equality and justice without undermining business confidence[56:20]

Ong's motivations and reflections on capitalism and the U.S.

Asked whether she is an anti-corruption crusader or detached scholar, Ong replies she approaches this primarily as a scholar[56:41]
She worries advocacy can hinder explanation and prefers to focus on understanding and framing issues[57:18]
She is especially passionate about questioning whether capitalist prosperity is as unambiguously good as often assumed[57:26]
She notes that prosperity created wealth and a strong middle class but also inequality, cronyism, and climate change[57:41]
Living in the U.S. taught her that 'first world' status does not end a country's problems, which is a revelation to someone from a developing country[58:14]
She observes ongoing inequality, polarization, and populism in the U.S.[58:50]
Despite these problems, she says she is not a pessimist about America[58:56]
She feels there is no other place where someone like her-'intellectually kind of weird and a misfit'-could have had such opportunities[59:19]
She remains confident and hopeful about the openness of the U.S. and its ability to provide opportunity while acknowledging capitalism's dark sides[59:30]

Lessons Learned

Actionable insights and wisdom you can apply to your business, career, and personal life.

1

Corruption is not a single, uniform phenomenon; distinguishing between types of corruption (petty theft, grand theft, speed money, and access money) clarifies which behaviors are most damaging and which may coexist with economic growth.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Where in your own organization or industry might you be conflating very different kinds of misconduct under a single label like 'corruption' or 'unethical behavior'?
  • • How could you redesign your monitoring or compliance processes to differentiate between low-level, transactional issues and high-impact, systemic abuses of power?
  • • What is one concrete step you could take this month to map out the 'types' of problematic behavior in your environment and prioritize which to address first?
2

What gets measured shapes what gets studied and acted upon, so relying only on convenient or conventional metrics can blind you to the most important, harder-to-measure problems.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Which key risks or behaviors in your work are poorly measured or not measured at all because the data are hard to get?
  • • How might your decisions change if you invested in building more nuanced, 'unbundled' indicators instead of aggregating everything into a single score or KPI?
  • • What is one important but hard-to-measure phenomenon you could start capturing with better proxies, qualitative input, or custom data collection over the next quarter?
3

Systems that pay people too little effectively invite toxic forms of corruption, whereas aligning compensation with performance and local outcomes can reduce predatory behavior at lower levels.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Are there roles in your organization where compensation is so low relative to expectations that it creates pressure for side deals, shortcuts, or rule-bending?
  • • How could you better tie variable rewards or recognition to the behaviors and outcomes you actually want, rather than leaving people to 'make it up' informally?
  • • What adjustments to pay structures, incentives, or non-monetary rewards could you explore this year to reduce the temptation for harmful workarounds?
4

Highly sophisticated, technical domains (like modern finance or complex technology) can create opacity that undermines accountability, so leaders need ways to simplify, translate, and subject them to independent scrutiny.

Reflection Questions:

  • • In which areas of your business or field do only a tiny group of specialists truly understand what's going on, leaving everyone else to take things on faith?
  • • How could you bring more transparency to those areas-through independent reviews, clearer communication, or simpler product and process design?
  • • What is one complex process or product you rely on that you could have independently explained or stress-tested in the next few months?
5

Top-down commands can quickly address symptoms but often fail to solve root causes; durable reform typically requires changing incentives, institutions, and feedback mechanisms rather than issuing one-off edicts.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Where are you currently trying to fix problems by issuing rules, memos, or one-time directives instead of altering underlying incentives and structures?
  • • How might you redesign a specific policy or process so that people are naturally rewarded for behaving in ways that support your long-term goals?
  • • What governance or feedback mechanism could you pilot in the next six months to detect and correct emerging problems before they require crisis-level intervention?
6

Prosperity and institutional maturity do not eliminate societal problems; each stage of development brings its own risks and trade-offs, so optimism must be paired with vigilance and continual adaptation.

Reflection Questions:

  • • What challenges in your company, community, or country might be byproducts of past successes rather than signs of simple failure?
  • • How could you build habits of regular reflection and course correction so that growth today does not quietly sow the seeds of tomorrow's crises?
  • • What is one area where you feel 'we've made it' that deserves a fresh look for hidden side effects or emerging vulnerabilities?

Episode Summary - Notes by Sawyer

Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China? (Update)
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