China has a millenia-long history of organizing a very large amount of people fairly well. They basically invented bureaucracy. Not everything is better in China of course, but don't forget about that aspect.
Yep, the Chinese basically invented the State and bureaucracy as we know it. In fact it was so good (despite its faults) that when China was invaded by outside forces and occupied, those forces themselves adopted the Chinese state to administer their new holdings.
I'm not being critical of China here though, I'm just being critical of the original discussion point. Quantity has a quality of its own, but it has trade-offs.
