TPA

Does China Truly Offer an Alternate Economic Model?

For Christ sake... We had the Governor of Illinois trying to sell the President-elect's Senate seat less than two months after the election!

The West needs to step down from the moral high ground and stop deceiving ourselves. "We the People" is great, but there are also many problems within our borders. There are good and bad apples everywhere, in every country, and in every culture; and people in power will always have the option of misusing it.

The answer to the author's question of which economy is better... "neither". The free market economy has its excesses (very apparent during economic busts), but also its advantages (very apparent during booms). A good example is America's free-thinking ability to innovate at the drop of a dime.

Advances in a centrally controlled economy can make the nation look like an economic miracle because of the shear speed at which decisions can be made (8+ subway lines being constructed in Shanghai over the past 4-5 years); but a mistake can also cause disaster (eg Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, etc). Singapore (definitely a success story) is also a centrally controlled economy (at least single party government) as was Taiwan in the 80/90's; but the sheer scale of China places it in the forefront of most discussions.

In the case of China during this worldwide downturn, the nation's government has simply had the foresight to be more finanically conservative and more patient than say Eastern Europe. I'd opine that the government was exceptionally smart (though self serving) over the past 10 years.


On Dec 24 10:18 AM sorno wrote:

> Have you seen any corruption news in china? The amount of money is
> far more than US. The money raised from the campaign is used for
> the campaign, not much for personal use, that's a difference. In
> US, people corrupted to get more money for themselves, in china,
> people corrupted to get money for themselves and for their whole
> family of successors, that's another difference. Base on your opinion,
> which country has the best system now?