Tell me why the US has 5x more prisoners per capita than China

[JustAnotherGen]

4. China's punishment for drug offenders

In China:

According to the law, ‘persons who smuggle, traffic in, transport or manufacture opium
of not less than 1,000 grams, heroin or methylaniline of not less than 50 grams or other narcotic drugs of large quantities’ can be sentenced to death.2 Under the legislation, there are two specific elements that make a sentence of death more likely to be imposed for drug offences.
One of the elements of the legislation that prejudices the accused is that it employs a quantitative model when assessing whether the offence reaches the threshold of severity necessary to impose the death penalty. In practice, this means that the purity of the drug is not taken into consideration, but instead that all substances are treated the same regardless of their content or harmfulness. According the law,

http://www.humanrightsanddrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/IJHRDP-vol-2-2012-BI.pdf


In America:

http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

Racial Disparities in Incarceration

African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population
African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites
Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population
According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today's prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%
One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime
1 in 100 African American women are in prison
Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice).
Drug Sentencing Disparities

About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug
5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites
African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.
African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)

I'm going to go out in a limb and say China doesn't have as many Caucasians buying drugs so fewer people go to jail for selling them a dime bag.