[A-List] Re: China not transitional to capitalism: experts

["John Gulick" <john_gulick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Henry:

While I might disagree with the analysis of a Maurice Meisner or other
similar "libertarian Marxists" who claim that the PRC earns the
classification of "bureaucratic capitalism," the article you posted from the
People's Daily is so much hogwash. I'm not exactly sure why so many
academics and experts in the PRC
are inclined to resort to mysticism when explaining its pell-mell GDP growth
these last 25 years, but I suspect it has something to do with an incentive
structure that rewards said academics and experts
for enshrouding this process in as much jargon-ridden mystery as possible,
rather than in offering clear and critical analysis (there are of course
some signal exceptions, such as Han Deqian). Most infuriating of
all is the tendency, repeated over and over again in this piece, for
high-profile Chinese economists to
call neo-classical economics "Western economics," as if a) no other schools
of economic thought exist in the so-called "West" (itself a problematic
construct), and b) there is something innately and peculiarly
"occidental" about neo-liberal models of capitalist economy and ideological
apologia for said forms of economy. In essence, it seems that the Chinese
academics and experts are bandwagoning with the CCP in the crude and cynical
way it plays the cultural nationalist card to exempt itself from internal
criticism. If the "West" equals the Reaganite-Thatcherite worldview and
program, and if China has plainly "got rich" by following a tack other than
the Reaganite-Thatcherite worldview and program, then only the "East" (or
more specifically, Chinese) can fully understand why China has "gotten
rich." The notion that properly comprehending China's development
performance is a function of whether one is endowed with the appropriate
cultural epistemology or not seems to be part of the CCP's larger project to
secure legitimacy strictly on the basis of nationalist criteria, rather than
the socialist and nationalist criteria of times gone by. But I suppose that
none of this should come as a surprise, given that in the
last years of his life Deng Xiaoping expressed admiration for Lee Kuan Yew
and his crackpot views on Confucian exceptionalism.

Well, I don't have any more patience, much less time, to spend on this.

John Gulick

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