"The history of comprador capitalism came to mind as I was reading through a stack of books recently on corruption in American government. There are many such books, no doubt because the subject matter is virtually inexhaustible. One standout of late is Peter Schweizer’s 2018 volume Secret Empires, describing a phenomenon Schweizer investigated in close-up in his 2015 book, Clinton Cash.

The way the American federal government operates at the highest levels is, now, essentially compradorian. Powerful people—the Clintons, of course, but also players with last names like Bush, McConnell, Kerry, Biden, and Trump—act as middlemen between the “political economy,” a euphemism for “cesspool,” of Washington and the political economies of foreign capitals.

A double layer of compradorism makes this all somehow legal. The Clinton Foundation, Hunter Biden, Elaine Chao, Christopher Heinz: It isn’t the bigwig him- or herself who takes the bribe directly; it’s the “charitable organization,” the spouse, the son, the stepson who collects the “donation” or the “speaking fee” or the investment in the “strategic partnership.”

But just like the cohong merchants in Qing-era Canton, the main thing is to be the hinge between two opposing planes. The point where strength and strength connect is highly lucrative, and comprador capitalists know exactly how to maximize lucre while navigating the realities of power.
....
But what the Clintons themselves are selling is not the gold, diamonds, oil, uranium, or whatever else their hangers-on want. The Clintons are selling the aura of American might. They are selling the afterglow of power. The Clinton cohongs are trafficking in the American empire itself, trading access to the empire’s unraveling power structures in exchange for money and fame and glory and all the rest.

This is different from comprador capitalism. This is comprador imperialism. It has become the default, perhaps the only, way to do business at the upper echelons of the federal power pyramid.

Comprador imperialism is Burisma, and Hunter Biden’s fingerpaintings, and Rudy Giuliani’s weird Ukrainian rolodex, and even the rush among party cadres in Beijing to get their princeling offspring into Harvard and NYU. The American empire is a fading image, but while it lasts there are many in the world who want to bask in its dying light. People on every inhabited continent scramble to appropriate for themselves the iconography of a thing that no longer exists, the Star Spangled Banner waving high on a building, while down below the streets are covered with needles and feces, and, inside, the shell corporations trading derivatives can’t afford to keep the lights on."

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/comprador-imperialism/