"This whole exercise was teaching me that Russian business culture is closer to that of a prison yard than anything else. In prison, all you have is your reputation. Your position is hard-earned and it is not relinquished easily. When someone is crossing the yard coming for you, you cannot stand idly by. You have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, and if you manage to survive the attack, you’ll be deemed weak"
Without knowing the details, this sounds more efficient and potentially fairer for the society. It allows for information and innovation to flow in the industry, rather than a single company making absurd amount of money only because they can keep it secret.
It doesn't mean wealth is automatically better distributed, but it could help.
This is particularly true of a playing field as large and as cutthroat as China, where at any given time there are thousands of competitors jostling for dominance of even the most minuscule of niches.
Yet.
China is different. It’s not an oil and gas oligarchy like Russia or the Gulf states. It is somewhat like the US was during the Second World War—somewhat capitalist in form but almost entirely geared toward the strategic goals of the country, as dictated by the government. The main exceptions are that the US had elections intermittently and that the US was in the midst of total war. China isn’t at war though—it’s just a totalitarian society.