My wife is Chinese. We're having issues with our Homeowner's Association, and she's happy that she thinks she's found the right person to bribe, and now she just needs to bribe him until we get what we want (architectural changes to shared property).
She explains to me, "This is how you do things in China. You find the person to bribe, then you bribe him, then things get done. In the USA, you don't know who to bribe!"
"Yes," I replied. "Here, you have to be pretty well-connected or wealthy to know who to bribe. It helps keep the plebes out of politics. We're much less democratic than China."