"China is going through a capitalist phase".
My view:
No. China has been shifting from a communist model to a national socialist model... with state interest in and control of big business... with a mercantilist interest in trade... and not from state industries to privately owned and controlled entities in the free market sense, who are trading in a free market. They have been on that trend for a long time.
But, that trend has largely been ended, already, under Xi, with a revisionist reversion occurring, only in the last few years, but with that shift now breaking the trend in direction that had China moving toward more freedom in corporate decision making. The shift from a more economically driven, decentralized model back to a model emphasizing a more centralized model with more personal control.,, means China is becoming more authoritarian... only now with a single strong man aggregating power making it not matter as much what the ideology is (said to be) as much as what matters being the particular bent of the person aggregating personal power... in a cult of personality. China becoming more like North Korea... obviously means the impact on Jack Ma (and others who have disappeared more completely) is greater than it is on the average citizen, as you might expect. But the era of potential for growing personal freedom in China, as China becomes more like Hong Kong, or as corporate decision making is liberated more, is also obviously at an end, far more depending on what you group belong to, and where you are, etc.
Xi having defeated the factions of his primary political opposition in the party... some time back... leaves China's centralized power being counter-balanced more by and between regional powers and bureaucratic powers. Of those, the military is the primary force that is still capable of directly imposing limits... as they have, recently... although without that providing any moderating advantages to the rest of the world, rather than imposing a framework in which that competition might play out... at great cost to others... as it means internal struggles will more likely play out on battlefields.
With that as a limit, China, today, is not much different than "becoming" Venezuela, under Chavez or Maduro, other than in the differences that exist in timing, in the time it takes to consolidate power, or in the differences in situation (size, inertia) from which the change was implemented. That difference in the degree of aggregation of power in a single person, works together with the difference in one person's ability or predilection versus another's... to foster detachment and whim... and an unpredictability that is not a source of economic advantage. So, in China, you're back to an era in which the personality quirks will matter more than the rational considerations... often enough... to keep things off balance.
China prefers to pretend that the trends enabled by prior choices... dating back to the 1970's.. are inevitably going to be sustained because "China, China, China"... but, team sports don't ever really work that way... as success in competition depends on cooperation... and removing others incentive to cooperate has costs.
That process already under tow... has China living almost entirely on inertia for now... which is not a prediction that anything will change dramatically or abruptly... while it does leave China again both more adrift in market relevance, and more dependent on the success and survival of a single person... which also makes new potential for discontinuous change likely in the near future...
"No difference between communists and kings... other than who gets to be king"... means the politics always devolves into the personal... and more mercurial... as the personality interacts with the aggregation of power in unfortunate ways, more over time.
All of which, being my opinion, should surprise no one... |
