When a well-connected South Dakota state employee traveled to China (at taxpayer expense), he appears to have brought back not just money but certain business practices worthy of Chinese Opera, with its plot lines refined over 1000s of years.
Wealthy Chinese desiring a quick US green card must have felt a strong feeling of familiarity towards this South Dakota script:
• Expenses are paid by government.
• Government approval depends on paying fees to private company owned by government official --
(actually, the Chinese version of this is more subtle, with the government official’s friends and family owning the private company).
• Fees go to offshore accounts of offshore companies.
• The supposed investment project is selected not for ability to make money or employ workers, but instead for its ability to inflate local government’s statistical achievements.
• The investment project happily loses money, while crowding out (from access to loans and to customers) more-sustainable and employment-intensive smaller business that have fewer political connections.
• If the plot is discovered, key investigators drag their feet, key players disappear, and/or key witnesses end up dead --
(again, the Chinese version of this is more subtle, because single party control of courts and media generally makes it unnecessary for witnesses to end up dead).
One audacious wrinkle that even the Chinese must have been startled by was having the same state employee respond to a lawsuit, filed against the state, by writing (badly) the responding brief himself, although he was not a lawyer, and by not disclosing the lawsuit to the state's lawyers.
• Last Act: The presiding government official moves up to higher office.
Key questions that will determine how the last act will actually be played out:
Will South Dakota media alert swing-voters to these reasons to be suspicious of Mike Rounds, and to consider the energy, charm and policies of Democratic nominee Rick Weiland?