Quel équilibre entre l'Etat et le marché pour la Chine ?

Apr 2, 2014 Joseph E. Stiglitz

PEKIN – Aucun autre pays n'a connu une croissance aussi rapide et n'a extrait autant de gens de la pauvreté que la Chine au cours des 30 dernières années. Malgré l'opposition de puissants intérêts particuliers, la volonté de ses dirigeants de revoir le modèle économique du pays quand et lorsque c'est nécessaire, constitue une marque du succès chinois. Et maintenant que l'Etat met en œuvre d'autres réformes fondamentales, ces intérêts particuliers font tout pour y résister. Dans ces conditions, les réformateurs pourront-ils triompher à nouveau ?

Pour répondre à cette question, il faut prendre en compte un point clé : de la même manière que dans le passé, le cycle actuel de réformes va restructurer non seulement l'économie, mais toucher aux intérêts particuliers dont dépendent en partie les réformes futures. Et aujourd'hui, tandis que l'on porte beaucoup d'attention à des initiatives importantes - par exemple l'intensification de la campagne anti-corruption - le plus grand problème auquel la Chine est confrontée concerne les rôles respectifs de l'Etat et du marché.

Il y a plus de 30 ans, quand les réformes ont commencé, la direction était claire : il fallait que le marché joue un rôle bien plus important dans la répartition des ressources. Et c'est ce qu'il a fait, au point qu'aujourd'hui le secteur privé est beaucoup plus étendu qu'il ne l'était alors. Il y a un large consensus sur l'idée le marché doit jouer un "rôle décisif" (selon l'expression des responsables politiques) dans beaucoup de secteurs où les entreprises publiques dominent. Mais quel devrait être son rôle dans les autres secteurs, et plus généralement dans l'économie ?

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Frank O'Callaghan May 4, 2014

China faces many issues. The wave of productive energy released by the export-driven and market reforms over the last three decades has created a class of wealthy beneficiaries as well as moving many from poverty. The class of excessive wealth is now a threat to the stability that China prizes so highly. Urban unemployment of the young and ambitious haunts the regime. Increasing affluence of a minority will not suffice to quell the demands of a new generation who do not participate in the bounty. Glaring inequality breeds discontent. Control of media and community organisations can only delay the reckoning. China must also deal with it's demographic shock. The one-child policy is leading it to the gerontification that has overwhelmed Japan. It has taken three decades for China to grow powerful and now it is in a race against itself to grow rich before it grows old. As it moves towards a stable population, that population will be increasingly aged. There will be an increasing need for a stable and efficient State to manage this. Social stability has been based on a strong central authority, family cohesion, limited aspirations and a tradition of deference. These factors may not be counted upon in a gobalised China where change is the new constant.
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David Donovan Apr 24, 2014

Perhaps free speech and democracy could be an aid to reducing pollution and corruption in China? When people can feel free to stand up to, speak out again, and vote against these things without pervasive fear, no doubt they will go away.
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srinivasan gopalan Apr 10, 2014

With due deferene to the illustrious commentator and renowned economist, let me contend that Prof.Stiglitz's contention that the challenge for Chinese leaders is to devise effective regulatory regimes that are appropriate for its stage of development is easier said than done. Even countries as big as the United States had failed in regulatory agencies' remit when the financial meltdown supervened in 2008, it would not be fair to expect other governments with different models of development to put in place any efficacious regulatory machinery to check market aberrations. In fact, the Chinese biggest structural deficiency remains lack of political freedom and choice to its billion-plus citizenry with the State refusing to 'wither away to ensure the ascendancy of the people (proliterait!). As long as the ruling dispensation is content with experimenting esoteric models of development mixing market forces with control regimes, the resulting skewed pattern of development is inevitable. Again, mere regulation is no salvation to the fundamental maladies plaguing the system and unless governance itself is garnished in a democratic fashion involving the willing participation of all and sundry, the future and fortune of the Middle Kingdom would remain at best unexplored bonanza to both China and the rest of the world!.
G.Srinivasan, Journalist, New Delhi
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Mr Econotarian Apr 6, 2014

Perhaps free speech and democracy could be an aid to reducing pollution and corruption in China? When people can feel free to stand up to, speak out again, and vote against these things without pervasive fear, no doubt they will go away.

Also hopefully China will not reproduce the US example of linking health care to employment, as the US did during WWII through making employer-paid health care benefits tax free.
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Ronald Abate Apr 3, 2014

re: embracing America's profligate materialist life-style would be a disaster" that assumes the world remains as it is, which is never the case. Chinese demand will create price signals that will generate major changes in consumption and lifestyle patterns without the need for government and it's cadre of intellectual elites telling people how they should live and consume.

As for climate change or, if you prefer, global warming, if the truth be told, there is no "real" consensus that it will be catastrophic, which is all that we need be really concerned about. In fact, a slightly warmer world, which would mostly mean warmer nights and warmer temperature in the Northern Hemisphere, may, on balance, be beneficial. What we do know about the climate is that it is far more complex than the warmists want to admit. We do not have thermometers that provide the amount of warming cause by the burning of fossil fuels and what is natural variation. Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT (now retired) has testified on numerous occasions that the warming during the 20th century was within the bounds of natural variability. Dr. Judith Curry, head of the climate sciences department at Georgia Tech University, has, since the ClimateGate e-mails were made public, become a skeptic that is awed by the complexity of the climate system. Russ Roberts, moderator at econtalk.org recently interviewed Dr. Curry and you follow her posts at judithcurry.com. Russ Robert also moderated a first: a debate between an alarmist (warmist) and a skeptic which was held at the University of Alabama. That debate can be accessed at econtalk.org It was not a slam dunk for the alarmist.

Finally, anyone concerned about climate catastrophe should read Rubert Darwall's book "The Age of Global Warming, A History" to appreciate how unbelievably common warnings of apocalypse has been down through human history. Dr. Matt Ridley also has a chapter (9) in his book "The Rational Optimist", on how humans believe far more readily predictions of catastrophe than optimistic predictions, which is why there have been so many in the past that have never materialized. It seems to be part of our genetic makeup.
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Eli Levine Apr 2, 2014

Unfortunately, the CCP quashed the Populists under Bo Xilai and put into power a conservative who only seems concerned with tightening things under him while neglecting to effectively tend to the problems within his society and geographical territory. Lots of sword rattling against Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam; lots of putting down dissidents and Tibetan/Uigher nationalists. There are some high profile corruption cases being put out. However, nothing systemic or far reaching or sustainable seems to be being done for the sake of the people of China. One would wonder what would indeed happen to the reigns of the CCP if they let market liberalization allocate resources out of the hands of the CCP members, such that new factions take ownership. China is not a country that has historically done well when a multitude of factions are competing for the centralized control of the government. One can only shudder at the implications for the rest of the world's economy and geo-political/social-political orders as a result of that kind of collapse.
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Jason Gower Apr 2, 2014

Perhaps ideal but the assumptions are huge; so huge in fact that they are probably unrealistic. Economic policy has shown that China is just as obsessed with the headline GDP number as anybody else. We all just assume that China is going to make this shift from export to consumption driven growth but what basis do we really have to assess the future behavior of the Chinese consumer, savings, etc? How much do we really even know about the true debt (and any other for that matter) statistics that we get out of China? Like all emerging economies, China faces challenges; the political element given the size of China's population could make the coming decades all the more interesting.
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Canyon Bosler Apr 2, 2014

Isn't it pretty shallow to pin the savings and loan crisis on lifting Regulation Q without looking at how the incentives created by Regulation Q incentivized bad behavior and severe maturity mismatches? Yes, lifting Regulation Q hastened the demise of zombie S&Ls, but part of the reason they became zombies in the first place was their guaranteed access to cheap deposits which allowed them to engage in high-risk, high-return behavior. If interest rates had been flexible during the stagflation period, S&L lending behavior would have been much different (possibly good, possibly bad). Regardless, the damage done by liberalization of interest rates was not simply because flexible interest rates are bad (maybe) -- it was more about the shift from illiberal to liberal rates, combined with the maturity mismatch that kept the rates on their 15-30 year fixed-rate mortgages low while their short-term deposit rates spiked.
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John Shin Apr 2, 2014

Professor Stiglitz's prescription for China, though valid, will not see its day under the sun; replacing land sales with higher tax collection is anathema to vested interests; instituting environmental taxes equally revolting (to status quo); raising taxes and installing property taxes dangerous to the regime's stability. Perhaps the greatest resistance is going to occur if and when SOEs are privatized; the managers of these firms are probably plotting to take privatization as opportunities to take what they can. Chinese society today is one without an astute moral persuasion; and as such, they are doomed to greater instability in the coming future.
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Marc Laventurier Apr 2, 2014

Thanks to Prof. Stiglitz for countering Prof. Feldsteins' recent article in these pages entitled 'A Healthy Path to Chinese Consumption Growth', a doctrinaire right wing formula for disaster. Disastrous and moronic.
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