In China you know who is in charge. In the U.S you get all sorts of weird laws and policies and it's all a bunch of proxies implementing them. There's no one to negotiate with because the people setting the priorities and agendas of the proxies are hidden and the only solution is to lobby your own proxies to move around on the chessboard.

Given the silent downvote, I note that I heard it at a talk by a Harvard economic development professor. But it was said as an aside, and I'm unclear on whether it was within their own research focus/expertise. And Harvard econ profs don't exactly have a great long-term trackrecord at avoiding nonsense. So speculative, but not news media random noise. Speculative wrt China - the US description should be relatively uncontroversial.

Maybe it isn't. The ability to freely say whatever you want has been something that's only been true in the US this century and in Europe after the world war (where still some kinds of talk is restricted). Historically this condition has never been true.