Economics

中国的孤独发展模式

Dec 5, 2017 Pranab Bardhan

伯克利—看起来，中国领导人现在已经抛弃了邓小平的“韬光养晦”的建议。在10月份在北京举行的中共十九大上，习近平主席宣布中国进入了“新时代”，将中国的治理体系作为可供其他国家效仿的模式呈现。习近平说，“希望加快发展、保持独立”的领导人，都应该将中国视为“新的选择”。

发展中国家，特别是东南亚和撒哈拉以南非洲地区，似乎对这一可能性敬畏不已。中国官方新闻机构新华社甚至提出，随着西方民主国家的式微，“开明的中国民主”能够提供一个前进方向。

在各种高调的叙事中，有些问题值得一问：什么才是经济和政治发展的中国模式？它真的是更可取的道路吗？

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The Contradictions of China’s Communist Capitalism
Featurechina/Ropi/ZumaPress

Economics 4

The Contradictions of China’s Communist Capitalism

Pranab Bardhan takes the measure of a mutant creature that many have milked but few have comprehended.
China’s New Emperor
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Politics 26

China’s New Emperor

Chris Patten
In another country, Chinese President Xi Jinping's concentration of power might trigger accusations of latter-day totalitarianism. In China, however, Xi's behavior has drawn praise from observers who believe that he is leading the way to the fulfillment of the “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation.
believes that President Xi Jinping's ever-expanding authority is a double-edge sword.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 16 Comments on this article

Wim Roffel Dec 10, 2017

It doesn't matter that much for its economic success whether a government is democratic or not. What matters is that it knows what it wants and how to achieve that. Many comments have mentioned how authoritarian East Asian states like Japan. South Korea and Taiwan were when they industrialized. One could also think of Stalin's industrialization.

On the other hand, when a country's elite doesn't have a clue on how to go forward democracy doesn't offer much help. That is what we see in the Western countries that have been more or less rudderless since the stagflation of the 1970s invalidated its economic model. To a lesser extent we see it also in Japan since it bubble burst in the late 1980s.

Yet I share some of the author's skepticism towards Xi's policies. He sounds a bit too confident - as if he needs to overshout a feeling of uncertainty.
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Xipu Li Dec 9, 2017

The electoral process under democracy itself inherits conflict, if not augment it (Trump's election).
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Xipu Li Dec 9, 2017

Your editor should be responsible for the fact-check. Set aside the historical inaccuracy, you need to point it out clearly that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan achieved their 'high growth' with the assistance of the US. China, on the other hand, was alone and was thwarted by the US as it sees China a rival. And 'isms' play a little or no role in modernising, GPD per capita does. China at the time was poor and hungry, can you be sure that democracy would solve the basic human needs under China's context?
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Ariel Tejera Dec 8, 2017

There is substantial merit, if a population of more than a billion people is able to march together. The strategic problem that Western powers have today is, precisely, that their leadership is nil or else leads towards destruction. So the Asian powers merely have to keep their current low profile , high growth stance, for a few more decades.

“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”
― Sun Tzu
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Seong Ping Chuah Dec 8, 2017

This paragraph is so wrong. East Asian economic booms mostly took place under some sort of authoritarian rules. Post-war Japan was ruled uninterruptedly by a single party (Lib Dem Party). South Korea was under military junta, while Taiwan was under KMT authoritarian regime. South Korea and Taiwan were only democratized after decades of economic growth that got them wealthier. Another amazing example: Singapore, which is still under the firm grip of PAP.
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Paul Daley Dec 7, 2017

You don't have to imitate every aspect of China's development model; you only need adopt its best part - its focus on public. True, China has financed good and bad projects, but so have central banks throughout the West when they decided to support the prices of all assets through massive QE programs that reduced the cost of money to zero. The western investment that resulted may have been less easily identifiable than the Chinese, but were probably more damaging, if you judge by productivity and growth statistics.

What to do? If you want to try out the Chinese model, you could consider converting central bank bond holdings into sovereign wealth funds focused on public or public/private infrastructure projects. It's just a matter of trading one type of bond for another, though the talents needed to choose among projects and bonds would probably go way beyond anything you'll find in central banks these days. But somewhere central banks should be able to find individuals that know not only how to create money, but also how to use it.
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Nicolas Cornejo Dec 7, 2017

China is son unstable that 80% of their population approve of their government. In the US? 40%.
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Nicolas Cornejo Dec 7, 2017

Yes, investment in I&D by the government, that always fails! like the internet, or gps, or everything that came from the US government since 1945.
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Nicolas Cornejo Dec 7, 2017

So, only one country had a democracy while experimenting development? Incredible you are reading this wrong. Lets check your examples: Taiwan had a KMT dictatorship. South Korea had General Lee. Would those countries be like they are today without those developments? Doubt it.
Also, if Japan is your example of democracy...
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ANURAG NIKHARE Dec 7, 2017

Excellent and comprehensive opinion piece by the author. It would be logically correct to assume that there is very little scope for replication of Chinese model of development. Rapid Economic development needs to be complimented by liberalism and democracy in politics which is starkly missing in case of China. However, the history and culture of Chinese civilization undermines democracy and emphasizes upon power to emerge as 'Middle Kingdom'. Neverthless, China is going to emerge as next superpower. Though it remains to be seen how much responsibility in global politics is wrested off by China from USA. It may become the scenario in which China emerges as a superpower without any significant global political responsibility.
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Yoshimichi Moriyama Dec 6, 2017

Democracy in postwar Japan was not anything that was introduced and imposed on reluctant Japan by the United States. Japan had been developing democracy in prewar days, or at least since 1889 when she promulgated its constitution.
Japan's postwar rapid economic growth was not so much take-off as part of the continuation of the prewar trend.

Taiwan and Korea owed their postwar democracy and economic growth to the Japanese colonial rule. "By this standard, however, the best colonial master of all time has been Japan, for no ex-colonies have done so well as (South) Korea and Taiwan (David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Norton, p437.)"
To add to this, Japan spent more money on the development of these two countries and Manchuria than she drew out from them. The northern half of Korea was far more industrialized than the southern half n 1945. It was why Kim invaded the south in June,1950, and why Mao Zedong with industrialized Manchuria in his hands intervened in the war.
George Akita's Japanese Colonial Legacy in Korea, 1910-1945 gives a good account.

Somewhere near Seol they have a museum where the Japanese torture of Koreans
is shown. This is a big lie, as big as their lie of comfort women. "In Yi dynasty Korea, law was administered by court appointed officials. They were all corrupt (as their society was Confucian like China, Y.M.) and verdicts were handed out to the highest bidder. Torture was commonly used, both on suspects and witnesses. This was to gain the desired verdict.
After annexation, in general, Japanese law became the law of the land. An exception was made for the crime of murder. Korean penalties were kept in this case. This was because the punishments mandated by Japanese law were considered too mild to have an effect upon Korean crime. At this time, murder was quite common in Korea (Max von Schuler, An American Speaks The Japanese History That Someone Wants Hidden, Haat Shuppan, Tokyo, pages 106 and 107, ISBN 978-4-8024-0028-2)." A South Korean boy said on the Internet several years ago, "Japan was good. Korea was wrong." He was arrested by the police. He was thirteen years old.

China will not go democratic, because she does not have such political and cultural tradition in the past. Their despotic authoritarianism is the only political style that China knows how to fit in with.
- Leto Atreides Dec 6, 2017
  
  Only a Japanese could still be defending Japan's colonial history, and call comfort women a fabrication, and all the victims' accounts fabrication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women#Number_of_comfort_women
  - Yoshimichi Moriyama Dec 7, 2017
    
    Mr. Atreides,
    I did not deny Japan had colonies, but I stated some facts about Japan' colonial policy.
    During the thirty-five years from 1910 to 1945, the Korean populatin all but doubled; the annual average growth rate was a little over 3 percent, and I understand no part of the world had such a record during the same period; though elementary education had been introduced by Koreans, it had not spread but it began to spread and take root; there nine prestigious universities in prewar Japan and two of them were in Seoul and Taipei, and several years ago two Japanese graduates from Nagoya National University were awarded the Noble Prize fof physics, Seoul National University was established earlier than Nagoya; military service was compulsory but Koreans were exempted.
    We cannot unconditionally trust wikipedia.
    
    As for Korean comfort women, I (Michi) posted a comment, American Humanism, on Chinese Comfort Women, amazon usa. I will be grateful if you read it.
    Some more details by a Japanese expert are available in Japanese and English at the following address: http://www.seisaku-center.net/sites/default/files/uploaded/TheComfortWomenIssueinSharperFocus.pdf.
    
    No professional historian of South Korea says that Japanese kidnapped Korean women or girls and forced them to engage in prostitution with Japanese solidiers, accoding to Sonfa Oh, Getting Over It!: Why Korea Needs to Stop Bashing Japan. She also admits that the Japanese authorities in Korea abolished torture. Oh was a South Korean but is now a naturalized Japanese. It seems that the South Korean government does not allow her to enter the country except when she loses a member of her relatives.
    
    A South Korean professor said in fluent Japanese on an NHK program that postwar South Korea had the keen need for nation building and was trying to instill anti-Japanism as the common national identity.
    - Leto Atreides Dec 7, 2017
      
      I'm no historian, so I cannot judge whether every fact you claim is true and false. Based on what I have read, I'm ready to accept the statement that Korean and Taiwan economy expanded in the last stages of Japanese colonialism because Japan needed to upgrade their industrial capacity to help Japans' war efforts. However, does this justify colonialism, the subjugation of a population, and the countless people murdered by Japanese soldiers for resisting occupation? There should be no moral obfuscation here. If you are not able to answer this in a straightforward yes or no answer, then I have to say, you are morally bankrupt.
      
      It's not the facts that you present that is the problem. Sure, there were comfort women who may have willing participated. Sure, there might have been positive aspects of colonialization. I'm sure one can even find positive aspects of Holocaust. It's the facts that one chooses to ignore that reveals the degree of one's intellectual integrity. What you have presented is selective evidence by some researchers, but you chose to ignore the myriad of evidence that show the suffering of the comfort women. The wikipedia page gives 200+ references. Have you checked these out to see how they weigh against the handful of references you have? Not to mention most importantly, the accounts of the comfort women themselves? The evidence is much more than the debunked stories of Seiji Yoshida. Just because there was not much public awareness before the stories of Yoshida does not mean that these crimes did not exist. Rather, it's a shame that it took a fraud to bring the true sufferings of the comfort women to public attention, instead of much earlier.
      
      Regarding your statement that no professional south Korean historian claims that South Korean girls were abducted by Japanese to become comfort women, I am highly dubious. Here is a footage unearthed by South Korean historians in an American arxiv.
      
      http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-40552914/comfort-women-first-known-footage-emerges-in-south-korea
      
      If you mean that whatever abductions took place were conducted by South Korean helpers of the Japanese, then you are just playing with words to dodge responsibilities, and you know this perfectly well yourself.
      
      If you are more interested in the truth than just defending Japan's wartime record, then you should read other sources and listen to the accounts of the victims. Some of them may not be reliable, but the cumulative evidence gives a much more certain picture.
      
      If you are more interested in defending Japan's wartime record than the truth, then your words no longer carry any weight.
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Godfree Roberts Dec 5, 2017

"China’s model comprises a number of key characteristics, including authoritarian governance buttressed by the perception of stability...But the implication that the first ingredient – authoritarianism – is necessary for rapid development misses the mark. In fact, it is this characteristic of the Chinese system that should give other countries the greatest pause."
An 'authoritarian' government is one that tells corporations what to do. A 'liberal' government is one that does the bidding of corporations.
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