You seem to believe this kind of corruption doesn't exist elsewhere in the world, and that P.R China is somehow unique in it's corruption. I don't agree with this. I'd say the recent wealth in china means you have very rich, and very poor very close to each other and thus corruption is more visible. But the "chinese" are not any different to any other people. Spend some time in India, there is just as much corruption there (if not more?). Spend some time in the U.S discover how corrupt they are... it's no different the world over, just the visibility changes

All those cases you raise, are indeed bad, but are you saying they are the majority?

The cheating example isn't a show of corruption, it's a show of fairness. If this generation of students sitting the gaokou are all cheating, forcing a tiny subset of them to not be allowed to cheat, is disadvantaging. You seem to understand china fairly well, if it were my child, I'd be angry (even if they weren't cheating), as it is clearly setting that group at a disadvantage. Perhaps if the government did it either ubiquitously or (probably better) at random each year, then the issue of cheating would go away. But to "trial" it in one area, is wrong.

> How could you really have lived in Guangzhou for any significant length of time and be so in the dark?

Perhaps I am just more optimistic about where things are at.