What Xi Jinping thinks about development economics — Andrew Batson

Must-read.

Note: Xi Jinping was trained as a chemical engineer.

Andrew Batson's Blog
What Xi Jinping thinks about development economics

Andrew Batson

Zhou Xin, Nectar Gan and Catherine Wong — Xi Jinping: China to stick to Communist rule and its own path to cope with ‘unimaginable’ perils

Warning to the US and UK (Anglo-American Empire) and their European vassals in NATO that there will not be regime change in China resulting from ongoing liberalization? China is committed to going its own way, which is unique to its history and conditions, so get used to it.

“The practices of reform and opening up in the past 40 years have shown us that the Chinese Communist Party leadership is the fundamental character of socialism with Chinese characteristics … east, west, south, north, and the middle, the party leads everything,” he said....

Xi stressed that China would stick to its own chosen path, namely socialism with Chinese characteristics.

“To push forward reform and opening up in a country with 5,000 years of civilisation and a population of 1.3 billion, there are no textbooks containing golden rules or teachers who can be arrogant to the Chinese people,” he said....

South China Morning Post (Singapore)
Xi Jinping: China to stick to Communist rule and its own path to cope with ‘unimaginable’ perils
Zhou Xin, Nectar Gan and Catherine Wong

See also

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on Tuesday for the unswerving implementation of reforms on Beijing’s terms, saying no one could boss it around, but offered no new measures in a speech marking 40 years of market liberalization.…

Xi’s emphasis on the need for “top-level design” suggested he is not willing to significantly reduce the state’s role in the economy, Beijing-based political commentator Zhang Lifan said, noting that the trade war had already hurt the economy.

“He is talking about the need for a strong government, big and powerful state-owned enterprises and large-scale investment. It seems his thinking on this has not changed,” Zhang said....

Reuters
China's Xi pledges 'unswerving' reforms, but on own terms

Kevin Yao

Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng — How Cities Are Saving China

China is finding its way alone as new type of socio-economic system on the scene that also has to interact with the current world order. It's doing all right, and even great as far as development economics goes.

Project Syndicate
How Cities Are Saving China

Andrew Sheng, Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong and a member of the UNEP Advisory Council on Sustainable Finance, former chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, and currently an adjunct professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing; and Xiao Geng, President of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance, and a professor at Peking University HSBC Business School and the University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Business and Economics

Frank Li — What is China's State Capitalism, Anyway?

From my perspective, Frank Li is the simply best analyst on China and comparison and contrast of China and America in the sense of being informed, objective, and balanced. His writing is very accessible, and he provides a lot of links to related topics. He takes the long view.

econintersect
What is China's State Capitalism, Anyway?

Frank Li | Founder and President of W.E.I. (West-East International), a Chicago-based import & export company

Zhang Yan — Xi's thought a development of Marxism

Marx gets and update with Chinese characteristics.

In contemporary China, guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, the scientificity and truthfulness of Marxism has been fully tested, its people-oriented approach fully implemented, and its openness and epochal character fully manifested. Xi's thought therefore is a development of Marxism, which is applicable to today's China.

Ecns —China Daily
Xi's thought a development of Marxism

Zhang Yan,researcher at the Marxism School, Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee

Zhang Jun — China’s Vision for the Next 30 Years

Taking the long view with central planning.

Achieving the lofty development goals China's leaders have set will not be easy. But with a clear development blueprint and a powerful leader whose political clout all but guarantees continued reform, the country seems to be in a strong position to sustain its unprecedented economic success in the coming decades. 

Short article for addressing such a large undertaking, but it's comprehensive. The Chinese leadership knows where it wants to go. Now it needs to continue to actualize its vision for the country. Given the Chinese population is over a billion people it's a daunting task.

The leadership is not leaving this to the vagaries of the market. Markets are to be harnessed rather than left to themselves on the assumption of spontaneous natural order arising from "free markets" acting automatically as an optimizer.

Chinese socialism is challenging capitalism, while also using some capitalist methods such as markets. It's worked quite well so far, although some capitalist countries are shouting foul as their firms have to compete with Chinese SOEs (state-owned enterprises), leading to political friction over trade.

Project Syndicate
China’s Vision for the Next 30 Years

Zhang Jun | Professor of Economics and Director of the China Center for Economic Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai

Adair Turner — China vs. the Washington Consensus

Neoliberalism versus market socialism with Chinese characteristics. Which wins?

Since Deng introduced market socialism, China has been kicking butt in terms of growth rate, defying neoliberal predictions, while neoliberal economies have been mired since the 2008 crisis.

What's up with that? Adair Turner explains.

What is overlooks, however, is the history of the US, which adopted the American System over the British system as a result of Alexander Hamilton's influence and followed up with the National System of Friedrich List. 

China is following a similar path while hewing one that is suitable for the conditions that China faces. Seems to be working just like — like the US after the founding. Surprise.

Turner appears to be in the right ball park in contrast to most Western economists analyzing China, but even he seems to miss the obvious point that the huge and "potentially bad" debt extended by the state to state owned countries is actually public investment and that the only constraints are availability of real resources and inflation, neither of which presents any serious issues at present. Hand-wringing over this debt is comparable to hand-wriging over the size of the public debt of the US or Japan. It's irrelevant.

Project Syndicate
China vs. the Washington Consensus

Adair Turner

See also


China’s Contradictions
Stephen S. Roach

Ecns — The Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era

Infographic

Ecns
The Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era

Reuters — China's Xi says study capitalism, but Marxism remains top

Communist Party members should study contemporary capitalism but must never deviate from Marxism, Chinese President Xi Jinping said...

“If we deviate from or abandon Marxism, our party would lose its soul and direction,” Xi said. “On the fundamental issue of upholding the guiding role of Marxism, we must maintain unswerving resolve, never wavering at any time or under any circumstances.”

Xi said the party should better integrate the basic tenets of Marxism with the “reality of contemporary China and learn from the achievements of other civilizations to create and develop Marxism”, Xinhua said.

“Xi also asked Party members to study contemporary capitalism, its essence and patterns,” the report added....

Reuters

China's Xi says study capitalism, but Marxism remains top

Relentless efforts should be made to adapt Marxism to China, to the era and to the public, President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said on Friday.…

Xi said that as a party upholding Marxism, the CPC should make sure its theories keep up with the times.

Drifting away from or betraying Marxism will lead to the Party's losing its soul and direction as it moves forward, Xi added.

Marxism is unsurpassed in achieving great heights and having a huge influence, he said....

Since China has undergone remarkable changes following its reform and opening-up, Chinese are most qualified and capable of unveiling the lessons and natural laws behind such changes and of making original contributions to the development of Marxism, Xi said.

Party members should be self-conscious about and confident in the theory, focus on what they do, listen to what the people think, respond to actual needs and fully sum up the practices of socialism with Chinese characteristics, Xi said.

Additionally, the Party should continue improving its capabilities in analyzing and tackling issues by using Marxism, and continue strengthening its capabilities in addressing major challenges, risks, resistance and contradictions, he said.

Ecns

Adapting Marxism called crucial
China Daily

Supercomupters.

Ecns
Amazing Chinese “brain”

teleSUR — China to Teach ‘Core Socialist Values’ in Schools

"Learning the core values can make the younger generation better understand their responsibilities. It is a moral impetus to make students become better people," Li Shenghui, a middle school math teacher in Guangzong, North China's Hebei Province told the Global Times.

The ethical codes were first defined at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

There are 12 in all, which are written in 24 Chinese characters.

According to the People's Daily, the values include prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, the rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity and friendship.

teleSUR
China to Teach ‘Core Socialist Values’ in Schools

Adam Garrie — President Xi rejects western political models in speech praising Chinese traditions

Forewarned is forearmed. Xi is determined not to fall into the same trap as Gorbachev.

Expect to see more push back against rules dictated by the West and especially the US.

Chinese people in general have a strong preference for stability and harmony. Individualism, which is the foundation of Western liberalism, is foreign to them.

The Duran
President Xi rejects western political models in speech praising Chinese traditions
Adam Garrie

Graham E. Fuller — Democracy, the “Great Debates,” and China

Graham Fuller talks some sense.

Now let’s look at the other end of the spectrum. It’s interesting that China today is actually quietly touting to the rest of the world its own evolving system. Of course we recoil from the terrible catastrophes of Chinese regimes over most of the past century. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that China has been concerned with principles of good governance going back some three thousand years, including Confucian principles of the responsibility of “cultivated” or educated people to govern wisely; that was probably as good as it got in that era. More important, the state bureaucracy was selected through massive nation-wide examination systems to choose the most qualified. The system had its good periods and bad, almost on a 300 year cyclical basis—breakdown and restoration.
Today China is creeping back again, this time from the disasters of Chairman Mao towards a semblance of order and rationality in governance. It has implemented a series of often unusually effective policies that are slowly bringing an ever rising percent of the rural and urban poor into the middle class and a slightly freer life.

Now, I don’t want to live in China particularly. But consider the daunting challenges of running this country: one that was left behind in the last century or so, invaded by English and Japanese imperialists, massively misruled under fanatic communists (not all were fanatic) for fifty years, and now presides over a population approaching 1.4 billion people. China’s leaders operate on the razor’s edge: meeting pent-up demand after decades of deprivation, managing the transition of millions of peasants who want to come to the cities, feeding and housing everyone, maintaining industrial production while trying to reverse the terrible environmental damage wrought in earlier decades, to maintain stability, law and order while managing discontent that could turn violent, and to maintain the present ruling party in power to which there is no reasonable alternative as yet. That’s quite a high-wire act.

So if you were running China today, what would you advocate as the best policies and system to adopt? Chances are few of us would simply urge huge new infusions of democracy and rampant capitalism. The delicate balance of this frail recovering system needs to be guided with care. But it is basically working—as opposed to looming alternatives of chaos and poverty.

China today suggests to developing countries that China’s own model of controlled cautious light authoritarian leadership—where leaders are groomed over decades up through the ranks of the party— may be a more reliable system than, say, the bread and circuses of the US. That’s their view.

No one system has all the answers. But it’s worth observing that by now the US probably lies at one extreme of a political spectrum of bread-and-circus “democracy.” Can the system be reformed? Ever more serious questions arise about the present system’s ability to meet the challenge of this century—along multiple lines of measurements.

And, as world gets more complex, there is less room for radical individualism, whistle blowing, and dissent. Vital and complex infrastructural networks grow ever more vulnerable that can bring a state down. The state moves to protect itself. The strengthening of the state against the individual has already shifted heavily since the Global War on Terror and even more so under Obama.

I’m not suggesting that China is the model to be emulated. But we better note how it represents one rational vision of functioning governance of the future—under difficult circumstances—at one end of the spectrum. The US lies at the other. Is there anything that might lie somewhere between these two highly diverse systems of governance?

Just sayin’.

In the spirit of disclosure, this is a view that I have espoused previously so I am biased in its favor. I am happy to see someone "on the other side of the fence" putting it forward for consideration in the policy establishment.

Democracy, the “Great Debates,” and China

Graham E. Fuller, former senior CIA official

David K. Schneider — China's Legalist Revival

Backgrounder. Many good comments, too.

The National Interest
China's Legalist Revival

David K. Schneider | associate professor of Chinese at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Wikistrat senior analyst

See also

How China Sees World Order
Richard Fontaine, Mira Rapp-Hooper

A rant, but it makes a point. The US had industrial and population superiority over Nazi Germany and Japan, but it doesn't relative to China. China has about a billion more people than the US and it is the "world's factory." In addition, China strategy emphasizes swarming.

One Big Reason America Isn't Ready for World War Three

Peter Navarro | Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine

Is America Willing to Wage War Against China to Save the Status-Quo?

Hugh White | Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University