Barry Naughton On China’s Economic Rise

[@YuLiang83]

Any analysis of China economy without considering the role of a strong government is doomed. The Chinese government built the excellent infrastructure, trained hundreds of millions of literate skillful workers, laid foundations for comprehensive heavy industries, set clear goals and policies to attract FDI. Without its competence and motivation, China's rise would not be possible.

[@kooisengchng5283]

Americans seem to be viewing China with American lenses ALL the time. They just don't get it inspire of studying China for so many years. Basic premises are not dealt with ie. Chinese mindset, work culture, achievement oriented work ethics etc. I learn more from Kishore Mabhubani and George Yeo.

[@georgesiew6203]

One very misleading point made by the speaker is the reference to market oriented reforms that create greater efficiency. He states that China is changing its goals of reaching greater economic efficiency and that those are no longer the primary goals. What he neglects to tell you is that market oriented reforms don't always create greater efficiency. What reforms actually create greater real efficiency in the economy is not clear. If you pursue narrow minded efficiency as defined by a set of assumptions, namely those of neoliberal economists, you could very well be wrong and instead cause great economic damage. In this sense the problems of following simplistic market oriented reforms are simply ignored by the speaker. We don't have to look far for examples of market oriented reforms gone wrong, East Palestine is a good example of a disaster caused by pursuing simple market oriented reforms in the rail industry. The Chinese indeed are pivoting from simplistic market oriented reforms but what they are pivoting to? This is left unexplained by the speaker except to imply that it is something nefarious or at least foolish. What is true is that the Chinese aren't sure of exactly what to do on the reforms front. The template they got from the Americans only goes so far before it goes off a cliff. Now they have to do some hard thinking and experimentation to find an alternate route. It is completely understandable that they are hesitant and non-comital given the only thing they know for sure is they don't want to keep following that path past the point when it takes the traveler off a cliff.

[@kalipotmeng]

Prof. Naughton has many insights, but I think he's such a liberal free market economist that he cannot comprehend or approve of the recent changes of Chinese policies by Xi. In Prof. Naughton's vocabulary, reforms mean pivot to free market mechanism. This is not what the Chinese leadership means. Popping up the real estate bubble is actually an example of taking short term pain for long term gain. I seems Prof. Naughton does not appreciate it as such. Maybe a financial crisis like that of 2007/8 in the US is considered more market oriented? Fortunately the Chinese leadership does not listen only to the western economists...

[@SLF-o2w]

Louis Gave (Gavenomics) has a good understanding of what makes China’s market socialism with Chinese characteristics tick. He analyzes that only 10% of Chinese are in the stock market, compared to Americans, so Xi doesn’t worry about them but rather the 90% whose livelihood does not depend on the stock market. We remember the original building of the Shanghai stock market in 1988 and a movie made about the early participants who did not understand that stocks went down as well as up. It was a comedy made to educate the Chinese urban public about what a stock market was.

[@kalipotmeng]

@@SLF-o2w I listen to Vincent Gave, too 🙂

[@SLF-o2w]

Also, remember the recent Hong Kong-Shanghai Connect to create a joint stock market to promote more investments and to bring Hong Kong capital into Shanghai.

[@spiritofgoldfish]

The classical role of government is to tax away economic rents and use it to lower the cost of production. This is done through subsidies for such things as public infrastructure, education, and health care, not raising the cost of living and therefore the cost of labor, as with monopolistic privatization. The problem with economics as it is understood in America, is that there is no distinction between wealth production and wealth extraction. Production of goods and services speaks for itself, but monopolies and the banks (FIRE, finance, insurance, and real estate) extract what is called economic rent. The free market Adam Smith talked about is free FROM economic rent, not free FOR economic rent. This is Industrial Capitalism (China) as opposed to Financial Capitalism (USA), and it is what the conflict is really all about. American democracy is entirely theatrical with the majority having no more effect on the rentier oligarchy than the Chinese majority on the Communist Party of China. If the US was a democracy, we would have a decent minimum wage, public health care, free education, parental leave, and gun control, to name a few, all by popular demand.

[@YuLiang83]

A country generally has 3 major forces: political, social, and capital. US has an elegant design of separation of powers to balance powers within political realm, but it ends up being a weakness or design flaw to be manipulated by capital (plutocracy) and social forces (identity politics and political correctness). All the popular demands you mentioned can be easily achieved if US had used the money for Afghanistan war to those areas.

[@hydroac9387]

The losers in USA was the American working class, who saw their good paying union jobs exported to China and to a lesser extent Mexico. These folks then had to take service jobs, which paid less and had meager or no benefits. Americans honor work and a middle class lifestyle, and the working class saw their hopes and dreams destroyed.. The worst thing you can do is take that dream away from millions of families and their children. These angry Americans are the Trump voters, and are a primary driver for the rise of American nationalism and increasing mistrust or even hostility toward China. Politicians take their cues from their voters, which is why both Republicans and Democratic parties are skeptical or hostile to China and will provide a long list of legitimate grievances (IP theft, forced tech transfer, internal trade blocks, favored SOEs, massive subsides). Expect America to strategically detach from China in key industries, and the list of targeted detachments and sanctions will grow. It is also likely that Western democratic allies will also join this economic disengagement to some degree, especially for strategically sensitive technologies and critical supply chains. Smart money is looking for the exit from China due to the growing threat of US sanctions, tense relations, and Chinese economic chaos and Zero Tolerance COVID-related supply chain disruptions . Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calls this detachment 'friendshoring', which is a combination of taking supply chains home or setting them up in friendly countries. Fortunately there are numerous friendly countries that will welcome investment. In addition, America is likely to take a page from China with increased mercantilism, shameless internal barriers for Chinese companies and especially CCP-controlled SOEs, favoritism to American and western companies, massive subsidies to key industries, and blacklisting entire Chinese industrial sectors from the American market. It took 40 years for America and the West to become entangled with China, and partial separation of the West from the CCP will likely proceed methodically.

[@qake2021]

Yes, Loser is American public‼️ 🇺🇲 is run and controlled by the 1% 🐷 at expense of the 99% 🐑 and trying to blame on 🇨🇳. 🇺🇲 continues to contain 🇨🇳 is big wasted of time and energy‼️ The difference between 🇺🇲 and 🇨🇳 is that American government is controlled by the 1% 🐷 for short-term profits while 1%🐷 in 🇨🇳 does NOT influence Chinese government.