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Very interesting perspective.
Perhaps the Chinese have found the sweet spot between free market capitalism and centralized government control-- a free market neo-authoritarianism? Or are they simply whistling past the graveyard and facing a economic reckoning in the years ahead?
There are contrarian views which suggest that China’s rise as a burgeoning economic superpower portends not a new chapter in an expanding capitalist world-economy but rather the demise of capitalism, as the assimilation of huge numbers of workers in China, India, and other portions of once-Third World will drive up labor costs and reek environmental havoc. The impact of the world’s economy essentially tapping into and inevitably exhausting the last surplus reserves of labor and natural resources is explored by Minqi Li in his book “The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy.” (http://www.amazon.com/China-Demise-Capitalist-World-Economy/dp/158367182X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321051112&sr=8-1)
Their model relies on exports because to have the trade imbalance they do requires the majority of their people to be poor making a few dollars a day making our trinkets and iphones.
In order for their people to move up socio-economically the price of their exported goods would have to rise, too.
Does it bode well for them long term? That is debate worthy subject, and their model is entering uncharted territory. While they are trying to modernize they are trying to do so on the cheap with lots of currency manipulation.
If economics was a zero sum game we’d still be on privateers trying to steal the opposing teams gold. Unless we export our bureaucracy, they’re going to rise up to the level of Japan and Singapore in short order. They’re making headway because Chinese business is market driven and lightly regulated.
I’m just shocked and amazed by how far you can get in life by making things people want instead of stealing money from the productive to give to the unproductive. What China does with business is the opposite of what we do to college, healthcare, air travel, and automobiles. With equally predictable results.
Manufacturing to meet market needs is one thing. An unshackled and highly motivated mind is the one that innovates the best. Owners manual still says we have rights, and right #2 says you get to own dangerous weapons as the best defense of these rights. No wonder we’re arrogant pricks. A lot of Americans look at things from the prospective that they’ve got a right to pretty much do as they please as long as they aren’t hurting others, and that anyone who tries to stifle them is the real bad guy. This is why we have dominated the rest of the world in innovation, even in economic depressions, when the top marginal rate was 92% and money moved slower than molasses.
Normally I would laugh at such a thing. The idea that such a system as communism would even dare compare itself with us is absurd. Of course the reality is we have BUILT their economic prosperity at the cost of our own. When it became cheaper to bring steel from China then to simply make it in Pittsburgh, it became obvious we were doing something very wrong. As a result, I’m not laughing.
China is building a house of cards. They have whole cities almost that are ghost towns because they have been building and building to keep people employed.
China has also much greater income disparity. Super rich, to people who live on $2 a day.
They also have a whole ton of people getting old without any sort of savings or plan to take care of themselves and their population is graying thanks to “one child per family” laws.
That can’t be, that can only happen in our evil system here in the US:rolleyes:
China would be even more powerful economically if they had limited govt similar to our Constitution.