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German Statesman the Inspiration Behind China’s State Control
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A group of Chinese speakers warned in stringent tones on Friday morning in Davos that the country’s free-market reform is stalled, and China is sliding backwards towards greater state control of the economy.
Hu Shuli, editor of Caixin Magazine and a widely recognized leader of China’s “reform faction,” launched a breakfast forum by identifying delayed economic reform as one of two key risks for the Chinese economy going forward, alongside weakening exports in the wake the of the euro-zone crisis.
Several panelists agreed emphatically. “What we need is reform-minded leaders and grassroots entrepreneurs, not a loose monetary policy and low interest rates,” said Zhang Weiying, a professor of economics at Peking University.
The last few years have been a difficult period for the reform faction — a group of intellectuals and policy makers that have constantly pushed the envelope for further opening up of the Chinese economy over the last 30 years.
The global financial crisis in 2008 halted much progress on reform, as China’s top leaders came to see the western liberal model that the reformers upheld as seriously discredited. Key reforms that would open up the country’s financial sector such as the liberalization of interest rates and the opening of the capital account have been put on the back-burner, and the timeline for their realization is uncertain.
The most alarmist commentary on Friday morning came from Xu Xiaonian, a professor at the China-Europe International Business School.
“State capitalism is not something new. When Bismarck invented this idea in 1870 it gave Germany impressive performance over the main superpower of the time, Great Britain,” he said. “But 20 years later, it was the First World War.”
Otto von Bismarck’s model was replicated by other Asian nations before China, including Singapore and Japan, Mr. Xu said. While it can deliver dramatic results in GDP growth over the short–term, he identified three major flaws: inefficiency, as resources are misallocated; inequality, as state champions earn ‘monopoly rents’ and squeeze out independent competitors; and instability in the long-run.
“Even Nazism was a form of state capitalism, and what the Third Reich brought to the world we all know,” Mr. Xu said.
Despite those catastrophic long-term risks, in the near term, Mr. Xu said he isn’t very worried about the state of the Chinese economy. But even while expressing confidence, he couldn’t resist a jibe at China’s econometric authorities. “The National Bureau of Statistics won’t let growth go below 8%, we know that.”
John Zhao, chief executive of Chinese private-equity fund Hony Capital, said he believes China’s leaders still share a consensus on the need for continued reform.
“The only question is will they have the political will and courage to pay the price on their own watch,” he said. He likened the situation to the euro-zone debt crisis, where “the solution is obvious but the political system is screwed up.”
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