> Public opinion is obviously much less important in China.

That really isn’t true. The reason Shanghai didn’t expand their maglev to Hangzhou is because residents were worried about electrical magnetic radiation, which I don’t think is really a thing. Nuclear took a long time to get started in China because people thought the government to be inept and corrupt, an image that has only recently faded away in the last decade. Without free elections, public opinion is actually much more important if you want to avoid economically destructive riots.

But this all happens in back rooms, the legal system isn’t very relevant, so if you have an issue but it isn’t a very popular one, you don’t really have any recourse. For example, niche environmental issues, or ones that aren’t widely recognized yet as dangerous…