Re:China to Set Up ‘Security Offices’ Inside Internet Companies
by netcan on Wednesday August 05, 2015 @04:58PM
(#10012815)
I agree, to an extent but I think you are overstating it. Russian Communism had similar results (I think it's the 20s-40s though. They moved from Czarism to communism. That's either proof that it's easy to grow from a low base or that communism is good at it. It might be that the two are unrelated. Overall, I tend to agree that degree to which China was depressed under Maoism needs to be accounted for.
Still, China's been doing better than India and a lot of other more liberal places.
I think the general point is inconclusive, but it's the specific point that matters. China over the last generation got a lot richer and there is no reason to think it would have done better economically if it was more liberal politically.
I think that even with the Stasi, corruption and the appeal of western culture to East Germans, the regime would still exist had it not failed economically. And, like I said at the start I think it's a stretch to tell China that they're in the same boat as N Korea, Cuba, and the USSR.
Even the worst leadership can make the jump from farming to industry. This is more or less the story of communism in the 50s and 60s. Suddenly, a lot of farmers went from backbreaking work just being able to feed themselves to making products. This is an economic force multiplier. The problem is autocratic states can't get past this stage very well. Compare N Korea and S Korea's GDP per capita over the decades, past the 1970s, the South led and had to liberalize a lot to continue growth. Now they're seen as a economic miracle at $26,000 GDP per capita compared to the North's $1,800. In the 50s and 60s we all sat stunned at how well the North was beating the South! Now they're an international laughingstock.
>The idea that political freedoms necessary for democracy are intertwined with the economic freedoms necessary for capitalism had a lot of traction
When everyone gets sick of factory work and realizes they own no property, can't give their children a better life, can't open their own businesses, have to bribe everyone to get even the basic services, etc they will have problems the same way N Korea, Cuba, and the USSR did. They just haven't hit that wall yet. That wall is coming. There's no avoiding it. They will either liberalize to stay competitive or pull a Putin and say "This is good enough, right here" and fall deeper into isolation, autocracy, corruption, economic stagnation, and more mindless jingoism/island annexation.