China is a peculiar case. It has embraced parts of capitalism that ensure market growth. The huge domestic market coupled with aggressive stealing of IP to create cheapest-in-the-world knock-offs have fuelled its exports. However, having this selective breed of capitalism has allowed its leadership to sidestep aspects of American capitalism e.g. influence of corporations on leaders. This means that companies don't have the same lobbying power in influencing policy/laws/IP etc. So basically we have this wealthy nation with its leadership not generally obliged to listen to either market or its people. So they do what they want to do.
Its like the skinny kid hit the gym, made a ton of money and is now back in the neighbourhood throwing its weight around.
>Its like the skinny kid hit the gym, made a ton of money and is now back in the neighbourhood throwing its weight around.
Translation: Everyone loves it when autocratic toughmen are in charge and get results. Well, until they turn against your interests and now you bemoan not supporting a more open and democratic system. First they came for the Socialists...
Its incredible how we're throwing away thousands of years of government theory here because one country can mass produce disposable tech garbage for the world and suddenly autocracy and totalitarianism is popular with geeks and MBA's because of it.
The whole "rise of the BRICS" choir that dominated this site and reddit for the past few years is starting to fall silent as Russia and Brazil's economies continue to do poorly and as China enters its first major growth downturn. Turns out "BRICS autocracy and corruption is just as good as Western democracy and open government and markets" didn't work out in practice. The autocratic approach is just central-planing with a different face and as such isn't agile enough to move as trends and markets change.
> However, having this selective breed of capitalism has allowed its leadership to sidestep aspects of American capitalism e.g. influence of corporations on leaders
This is not a surprise if you understand China's political culture and its long, long history.
For literally thousands of years, political elites in China have understood that political power follows economic power, which is why the richest in China are generally Party members and high officials.
When Deng Xiaoping said "let some people get rich first", he meant those with political connections.
American politicians and citizens allowing corporate interests to slowly take over the political process is due to not understanding how history works.
> which is why the richest in China are generally Party members and high officials.
Wouldn't that be the case with pretty much any totalitarian regime?
> American politicians and citizens allowing corporate interests to slowly take over the political process is due to not understanding how history works.
I'll take the flawed lobbying system over the Chinese system any day.
>
Wouldn't that be the case with pretty much any totalitarian regime?
No. There are plenty of totalitarian regimes where any actual wealth held outside of a tiny ruling clique is considered unacceptable.
China's trick is that they 1) embraced de facto capitalism and 2) managed to spread the wealth amongst a relatively large Party base (as a % of the population) while still maintaining insider control. That's a very, very fine balancing act, and most authoritarian regimes can't manage to do it, leading to either failure to sustain economic growth (e.g. Russia, or North Korea) or complete loss of control to new economic elites.
In fact, Xi's anti-corruption campaign may potentially destabilize the Party because it breaks the implicit contract that has kept the Party together for the last 3 decades (namely, support the Party, and we'll look at the other way on corruption).
This is another example of both American Narcissism plus insufficient understanding of Chinese business environment. Leaders are "human beings", which means they do business on behalf their own interest. Tobacco industry spend billions on lobbing/advertisement to want public believe "smoking is healthy". And listen, China is a whole different world at a complete different stage than USA, so why do u expect it should be like USA? Look out the window and you will see how many developing countries ruined because they were once obsessed with the so-called "American capitalism".
Its like the skinny kid hit the gym, made a ton of money and is now back in the neighbourhood throwing its weight around.