I think we all understand now that politics is the enemy of economics. Unfortunately, politics is the very essence of Chinese life at every level. There is hardly anything else. In particular, Chinese culture is profoundly hostile to all forms of enterprise except the political. In short, you play politics.
Hard work has nothing to do with it.
In China, wealth and success have always been inseparable from politics. I know a number of capable and ambitious young citizens of the People's Republic. A reader familiar with the Far East may object that these remarks do not at all describe the Chinese he has met in Hongkong and Taiwan. In both of them a large part of the population was long excluded from politics. In Hongkong there has never been any point in politics at all.