WaPo: Economic freedom doesn’t count
Posted by Marc Hodak on May 20, 2007 under Collectivist instinct | 
3 Comments to Read
Today’s lesson is that China represents “A Shining Model of Wealth Without Liberty.” Here is author James Mann’s breathless warning:
This all adds up to a startling new challenge to the future of liberal democracy. And the result is ominous for the cause of freedom around the world. China’s single-party state offers continuing hope not only to such largely isolated dictatorships as Burma, Zimbabwe, Syria and North Korea but also to some key U.S. friends who themselves resist calls for democracy (say, Egypt or Pakistan) and to our neighbors in Cuba and Venezuela.
That’s his story–a snapshot comparison between nations that pretty cleanly ignores any trends, such as the growing difference between China and the other dictatorships cited by the author, or the increasing similarities between China and the Western countries it is catching up with. All Mann sees is the politics. Sure, he notes that, “The ruling party allows urban elites the freedom to wear and buy what they want, to see the world, to have affairs, to invest and to profit mightily.” But he sees this freedom merely as a sop by the party to bribe the elites into complacency, rather than a possible source of their growing national wealth.
Here is another view.
“Everyone said the fall of the Berlin Wall would herald the spread of democracy around the world. I think the experts and pundits got it wrong. Democracy has made inroads, to be sure. But what really took off was the spread of capitalism. It was the opening of markets that has made the most difference to the most people, lifting millions out of poverty.”
That was Stanley O’Neal, CEO of that petty bourgeois institution, Merrill Lynch.
Which view do you think holds more merit?
KipEsquire said,
The point you’re missing is precisely the fact that what’s going on in China is NOT “capitalism.” It classic Soviet-style apparatchik favoritism embedded within a command-and-control economy, but just with more apparatchiks and a slick marketing campaign to sell them to the West as “entrepreneurs.”
Look at any multi-millionaire in China, and you will inevitably find that he was politically connected before he became entrepreneurially successful. Every single time.
Great work if you can get it — just like it was perfectly neat-o to live in the former Soviet Union — assuming of course you were one of the 10-15% of the population invited to be bona fide members of the Communist Party. Your dacha or mine, Comrade?
Sorry, but Mann is absolutely right. “Market communism” is an insolent contradiction in terms.
M. Hodak said,
China’s economy is not “command and control,” and hasn’t been for over 20 years. At best, one can say that China has now a mixed economy–admittedly more controlled than free–but what exactly China is is besides the point. I was commenting on the **trend** over the past decade or two. Are you saying that the Chinese don’t have more economic freedom now than before? Or that their increased freedom is not a prime contributor to their economic success?
Sandy P said,
If they keep poisoning their customers and customers pets, it’ll be moot.