China’s share of global GDP has increased from 3.6% in 2000 to 17.8% in 2019 and will continue to grow, the CEBR said. It would pass the per capita threshold of $12,536 (£9,215) to become a high-income country by 2023.
absolutely insane
China’s share of global GDP has increased from 3.6% in 2000 to 17.8% in 2019 and will continue to grow, the CEBR said. It would pass the per capita threshold of $12,536 (£9,215) to become a high-income country by 2023.
absolutely insane
I was with you right up until your conclusion.
It sounds like ‘developing the productive forces’ is exactly what happened, with the corruption and other excesses to boot. Now Xi’s reigning those excesses in, like you’ve pointed out.
The big next step is ‘demand side reforms’, meaning reducing inequality. We’ll see how it goes, but if it’s anything like the poverty elimination programme, there’s reason to be hopeful.
Regarding housing, you’re right. It’s one of the reasons Shenzhen is moving to the Singaporean housing model and ditching the Hong Kong one. This seems to be the outcome of Xi’s previous statement that houses should be for living in, not speculation.
No one’s saying China’s a utopia. But it’s going in the right direction, which is a hell of a lot better than most other nations right now.
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Just wanna point out that China definitely didn't follow the neoliberal model, otherwise they would have privatized literally everything. China kept control of the commanding heights of the economy with the state.
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Neoliberalism has a much more strict definition than "privatizing parts of the economy". It means privatizing the majority of the economy, inclusing the commanding heights. Also using the state to enforce private property and crush labor is not a neoliberal policy, it is a universal phenomenon. Neoliberalism upholds that private ownership and markets are always better than state ownership. China had a huge amount of state ownership of assets and state control of the commanding heights throughout its fastest growing years. The SOEs were less profitable than private enterprises, inspite of that China's economy grew rapidly. If China truly was neoliberal, it would have privatized all SOEs from the start. And if neoliberal logic was true, China's economy should have suffered due to SOEs, rather than SOEs being one of the biggest reasons for it's rapid and consistent growth.
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You're not getting my point. China is much closer to Keynesianism, Scandinavian-style social democracy than neoliberalism. Neoliberalism = USA, South Africa, Peru, Hong Kong etc. Keynesianism/socdem = Norway, Finland, Denmark etc. China is closer to the second group of nations than the first. Both Keynesians and Neoliberals would argue for privatization of the economy, but the extent of privatization is different. Keynesians call for the commanding heights of the economy to be controlled by the state, which is what China does. So it is quite categorically wrong to call China neoliberal. Like just ask any actual neoliberals if they think China is a neoliberal state.
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You sound like someone who's well-read about the Chinese economy. Are there any books you would advise me to read on that subject?
I’ve mostly picked this up from following knowledgable folks like Michael Pettis on Twitter, and reading SCMP. Bloomberg China also occasionally has good coverage.
I’ve got a list of books I’ve been intending to read, so I’ll put those down here.
Another option is podcasts. David Harvey has a good episode on the economic situation in China.
Not all of these call China ‘socialist’, but that’s really secondary to the point of understanding the system. They’ll help with that.
Of course, you can also go right back to the source and just read Deng.
Thanks! I already knew David harvey's China episodes in his podcast, but but I'm very happy with the suggested reading list Thank you very much!