In my last column, “Stop Stimulating in Public,” I praised the Chinese for their habit of saving. Whatever their economic and political system, unlike the American government and people, the Chinese and their overlords do not see in debt a virtue to be compensated for, subsidized, and forgiven—in essence what American politicians are busying themselves with right now.
To say that the strength of the Chinese economy is derived, unilaterally, from that government’s exploitation of its people is to err on the side of social determinism—something Americans are increasingly prone to. It’s a view “liberty lovers” of the Beltway and their Objectivist tagalongs promote by default in their enthusiasm for going around the world rescuing the unfortunate. People can rescue themselves.
Social determinism is anti-individualism. In this context it implies that unless individuals have a certain political system (usually courtesy of the American taxpayer), they’ll never transcend their circumstances. History teaches us otherwise. People are driven to self-actualization no matter what. (Do read about Viktor E. Frankl, in this context.)
It’s also a mark of the cloistered American, dismissive of the drive individual Chinese display, and the skill they are capable of acquiring. China is not Africa! Each year, China graduates the number of engineers the US has in total: approximately 300,000. Since our state and its apparatus are accreting, we’re in the unproductive business of lawyering up; they’re making things. As Sean, who has traveled to China tells me, they’re still largely in the imitation phase, but, boy, do they learn fast.
All economic indicators rate Hong Kong as the freest spot in the world. Go live there, if they’ll let you—and if you’re able to afford housing, and stomach the climate (I’m Heidi of the North-West) and the customs.
Mainland China, of course, is another matter. Still, China is not what the backward Sinophobes in the US depict it to be. The latter have usually never been out of the country. Massive economic restructuring and market reforms have created a 300 million strong Chinese middle class. Poverty levels have gone from “53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001… Only about a third of the economy is now directly state-controlled. As of 2005, 70% of China’s GDP was in the private sector.” Underway are “the foundation of a diversified banking system, the development of stock markets; [and] the rapid growth of the non-state sector.”
An important point to make is that “although the government still dominates the economy in parts, the extent of its control has been limited by the sheer volume of economic activity.” Again, individual human action overwhelms state destruction.
To say, moreover, that private property is non-existent in China is also no longer true (to the extent we’re able to ferret out untruths, we don’t countenance them here on Barely a Blog). “Following the Chinese Communist Party’s Third Plenum, held in October 2003, Chinese legislators unveiled several proposed amendments to the state constitution. One of the most significant was a proposal to provide protection for private property rights.” The Chinese financial system is also being liberalized, so that to assert that Chinese can’t own stocks and shares is, again, simply untrue.
Sounds like they’re catching up while we’re falling behind—their people, like East Europeans, want economic freedom; ours crave controls. That’s really the danger.
Another distortion in need of dispelling: The Chinese suffer because they’re a source of cheap labor. As I’ve written in “Free Trade, Not the WTO, Will Enrich the Third World,” “Nike [for example] is either offering higher, the same or lower wages than the wages workers were earning before its arrival. This franchise would find it hard to attract workers if the case was that it was offering less, or the same as other companies. It must be then that Nike, and Starbucks are benefactors that offer the kind of wage unavailable [in poor countries] prior to their arrival.”
The Chinese call their economic system “Socialism with Chinese characteristic.” We call our economic reality free-market capitalism, but it is also a Third Way system:  “Socialism with American characteristics.”
As for the importance of a political system: what a joke. Voting is a joke. If the American government kept its mitts off my bank account and property, I would not care one whit whether they called themselves, more honestly, socialists, or, dishonestly, capitalists. China at least is honest about its economic system, and, it appears, about the benefits of liberalizing it.  
The picture of China to emerge from behind those pretty shoji screens is complex. But the trend is unmistakable: China is becoming more, not less, liberal.

Update I: My tolerance for displays of the Fabian mindset on a free-market  blog is low these days. I am not going to give space to the commie nonsense of income gap or economic disparities as indicators of injustice. We are not social levelers here; nor egalitarians. If you don’t know that this is the essence of commie claptrap, then read up. I’ve provide a reading list. My essays in the “Economy” and “Sod Off Uncle Sam” Archives also cover free-market fallacies. Start with “Slouching Toward Socialism.”

Update #II: In reply to Alex’s response to my first update: It’s scarier than you think. Banging on about income inequality as an indicator of an unjust society is very much part of the conservative nomenclature these days—as is global warming hallucinations, amnesty for any and all, etc. I can go on and list a host of issues over which there has been a complete convergence between contemporary “conservatives” and the liberal-left. On second thought, given that you bested my efforts on the State of Disunion, you could too. We are all left-liberals now!