A friend of mine knows a lot of extremely rich and successful...

A friend of mine knows a lot of extremely rich and successful business men in china who operate large factorys, its a totally different world there. In Australia we pay taxes, then that is used to fund bodys to monitor us.

In china no one cares as long as you are slipping them money, so when you start a company you dont just factor in how much it costs you to produce your product and rent your building and pay your staff, but also you have to factor in all the bribes you need to pay to the different government officials to be able to operate and get all the ticks and certifications you need. Even if your company would pass any checks you usually still fail there if you are not slipping them money.

also seen with all the 1000's of empty apartements that were built in china with the local government workers getting very rich collecting payments from developers in exchange for approvals..

China is a hard place to audit..