Chinese history is much more complex than your picture.
They had two thousand years of bureaucracy and corruption prior to 1500, and yet remained (intermittently) vibrant and inventive, probably more so than the rest of the world combined.
Somewhere between 1500 and 1600 they appear to have lost that, and only regained it in recent decades.
But you can’t blame it on corruption or bureaucracy as such, because they had those during their most inventive periods.
It’s not really that China slipped backward after 1600, they didn’t. It’s that Europe and then the West barreled ahead, leaving all competitors in the dust. That is what is unusual, not a period of Chinese stasis.
You and I carry E.Coli all the time, but only when it escapes the limits put on it by the immune system does it cause trouble.
Likewise, corruption and bureaucracy are in all societies, it is when they become too large a part of the economy that trouble happens. The USA has tax evaders, for example, but Greece has made it a national pastime.
The S&L crisis of the 70s involved a lot of corruption, but folks went to jail and it was over. Today's banking has a lot of corruption, but now the corruption extends to the Department of Justice and SEC and nobody goes to jail and the penalties are a small percent of the profits so it will not be over soon.
Now, I'm not enough of a historian to know exactly how much corruption or bureaucracy contributed to China's decay relative to the west, but your logic does not work.
However, it is true that a Chinese Emperor did decree the end of their ocean going fleet in the 15th Century, and you could call him the ultimate bureaucrat.