Promising China Blog: ChinaBizGov
Of those who comment on our blog, I never remember who agrees or disagrees with me on issues, but I always remember those who make me think. That is why I remember G.E. Anderson and that is why I was so happy to learn (from Professor Donald Clarke, the brains behind the Chinese Law Professor Blog) that G.E. Anderson has just started his own blog. Anderson's blog is ChinaBizGov and its tagline is "Highlighting interesting issues in business-government relations in Greater China."
Anderson describes himself as a "China specialist, former CFO, and PhD Candidate in Political Science at UCLA. Research focuses on state-owned enterprises, corporate governance and China's auto industry."
It took me only one post to know I was going to like this blog. The post is today's post, entitled, "Privatization of Central SASAC Assets," in which Anderson talks about a conversation he recently had with a journalist out of Beijing on whether China is moving away from privatization, without really making a conclusion one way or another. This is a great issue and one I too have been struggling with. I did a post a few weeks ago, entitled, "China And The US. Which Of Us Is The Most Capitalistic?" postulating that as the US moves away from rampant capitalism, China is moving towards it. Yet, within hours of having done that post, I started having doubts regarding China's moving toward capitalism.
Is China getting more or less capitalistic? Help me out here cause I dunno.
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Comments
Thanks for the props, Dan. I'm a long-time reader of your blog, and I'm honored to get a mention here.
As for your question, I think it's possible to find evidence for both sides of the argument. And I think it's hard to come up with a definitive answer because we are aiming at a moving target. Economic systems are living, breathing, evolving entities.
I used to think (naively) the US had it all figured out, and that everyone else was aiming to be "like us". Now I realize that we're all in a state of constant evolution, punctuated only by the occasional crisis.
Sometimes a crisis puts a country on a different path; sometimes it just temporarily interrupts a long-term trend. It's too early to tell what the effect of the current crisis will be since, while it's bigger than anything we've seen in 50 years, it's not as big as the Great Depression (a game changer if there ever was one).
I don't think there's any question that the US is becoming less "capitalist", but that is a response to the financial crisis. I would like to think that we have planned some kind of "exit strategy", but I haven't seen much discussion of that. Then again, there are those who would argue mightily that no "exit strategy" is needed, that the US economy needs a heavier permanent state presence.
As for China, I think there's always been the notion at the top that a loosening of political control would only lead to economic disaster. (We know what's right, so why leave it up to chance?) Therefore, crises may be seen by those less inclined toward liberalization as a chance to slow things down, even take a few steps back. (The "shou" part of Richard Baum's "fang-shou" cycle.)
Indeed, it seems to me that the wheels of privatization, after spinning rapidly toward the end of the 1990s, have begun to slow, but they haven't reversed yet. In other words, China isn't becoming less capitalist; it's just not becoming capitalist as quickly as before.
Posted by: G. E. Anderson | January 6, 2009 3:59 PM