China vs. China

Friedmania is in the air.

Hot For Sweaty Asian

Communist Red China is in the news again, mainly because the mainstream media Stalinists love anything Big Communist.  Maybe I should lower-case that to "stalinists" since it refers to the default position of everybody on the Left, and as we all know Stalin defined the Left and the Right in 1928.

Ronald Bailey

This time Reason sent their decidedly anti-Communist Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey to the latest Red China showcase event: The U.N. Climate Change (sic) Conference in Durban, South Africa.  The self-professed fan-boy of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) was actually amazed that so many pundits buy the claptrap that if we only accede to Red Chinese demands we can save the world.  Those demands being Communist China gets to do whatever they want and all of Red China's industrial competitors get to provide welfare to "developing" (aka backward, aka Third World) countries.  Read his article, he was there and covers it better than I can.  It is a breath of fresh air after a short series by the insufferable Friedmanosis .

Tom Friedman, Red China Fanboy

During the past week the Friedmanista concubines of Red China have been touting the big strides of Red Chinese crony capitalism and warning the US that we need to watch out for them.  They have seen the future and it is Capital Communist!  Never mind that they are channeling Lincoln Steffens and Will Rogers at the same time, they have the guts to say that the US will be 'overtaken' by a country whose economy is smaller than Mexico's.

About this "economic overtaking" business for a moment.  Who cares?  As long as we have freedom and a comfortable standard of living it really does not matter who is "bigger," it matters only that we are free to make our own choices as individuals and that we have a decent comforts.  Do you know who cares?  Andy Stern and others who wish to scare us deeper into Socialism, that's who.

If you do not know who Andy Stern is, Worker's World glowingly describes him like this (links added by me):

Andy Stern, former head of the giant Service Employees union in the United States, recently visited China as part of a delegation organized by the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the Center for American Progress. Stern, knowing very well that U.S. workers are in the midst of a long-term crisis of unemployment that shows no letup, was highly impressed with the goals of China’s 12th five-year plan, which were explained to the visiting group by high-ranking Chinese officials.

Deirdre Griswold expands on the 'virtues' of central planning.  The requisite "commanding heights" phrasing always entertains me, but she sounds serious about it -

China allows capitalism to exist — it has stock markets, private ownership of some of the means of production, a growing bourgeoisie, and many social features of capitalism, like a big income gap between rich and poor. But it also has state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, especially the major banks, as well as the industries vital to China’s infrastructure.

If you are into Red porn, read the rest.  I did it so you don't have to.

The Stern article in question is one the Wall Street Journal published by Stern on 1 DEC 2011, China's Superior Economic Model The free-market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history.  Skipping to the important parts of Stern's audition as the 21st century Sino-Eisenstein:

While we debate, Team China rolls on. Our delegation witnessed China's people-oriented development in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in Western China, which is led by an aggressive and popular Communist Party leader—Bo Xilai. A skyline of cranes are building roughly 1.5 million square feet of usable floor space daily—including, our delegation was told, 700,000 units of public housing annually.

Of course, the word of the PRC government is good enough  for Stern.  One wonders why scenes like this were not mentioned.  Perhaps they were not on the tour?


Back to the Stern article:

Meanwhile, the Chinese government can boast that it has established in Western China an economic zone for cloud computing and automotive and aerospace production resulting in 12.5% annual growth and 49% growth in annual tax revenue, with wages rising more than 10% a year.

For those of us who love this country and believe America has every asset it needs to remain the No. 1 economic engine of the world, it is troubling that we have no plan—and substitute a demonization of government and worship of the free market at a historical moment that requires a rethinking of both those beliefs.

America needs to embrace a plan for growth and innovation, with a streamlined government as a partner with the private sector. Economic revolutions require institutions to change and maybe make history, because if they stick to the status quo they soon become history. Our great country, which sparked and wants to lead this global revolution, needs a forward looking, long-term economic plan.

Do not confuse the Stern's idea of streamlined government with anything a libertarian would envision.  His version of streamlined government is more like Mao, Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin.  Or perhaps what Obama would be doing if that pesky Congress and those radio talk people were not standing in his way.

These reports resemble the infrequent dispatches about Idi Amin's Ugandan  public works projects from the 1970s, on a much larger scale.  They are also reminiscent of Soviet endeavors to make "the biggest", like airplanes that were 1/4" longer than the American version.

Jonah Goldberg did a fine job of dissecting Stern's WSJ piece:
The Problem with China Envy
What liberals want to copy is the authoritarianism.

Stern sees the Chinese government’s allegedly keen ability to “plan” its way to prosperity as the new model for America. It is an argument of profound asininity. China had five-year plans before it started getting rich. Under the old five-year plans, China killed tens of millions of its own people and remained mired in poverty. What made China rich wasn’t planning, it was the decision to switch to markets (albeit corrupt ones). The planners were merely in charge of distributing the wealth that markets created.

Indeed, rapid economic growth always makes government planners look like geniuses when the reality is that the planners are more like self-proclaimed rainmakers who started dancing only after it started raining. When the rain stops, which it will, they’ll have much to answer for.

Oh, and what about labor? There’s one labor union in China, and it’s run by the government. (The Nazis had pretty much the same system.) Stern doesn’t seem to care.

Goldberg is much more generous than me with the When the rain stops, which it will, they’ll have much to answer for. phrasing.  They will not be answering to anybody, as George Will said to Charlie Rose:


Enough with the Red China envy and support.  Speaking well of anything going on mainland China today is nothing short of propping up a slavery colony.  One only needs to glance at a comparison to Taiwan to see that Communist China is a paper tiger.  The PRC and the ROC began at roughly the same moment. If you want to talk income gaps, China has 115 billionaires and at least 115 million people living on a dollar a day or less. Nearly all of those billionaires got rich gaming a corrupt political system. Remember that when you see whining like this: The most prosperous 20 percent of Taiwanese reported average disposable incomes of NT$1.79 million last year, or 6.34 times the income of the poorest 20 percent, government data showed. (apparently 2010 stats)

Piss on Mao, and Stalin too

We need to abandon the notion that consumer goods will bring Communist regimes to their knees too, as George F. Will mentions in the video with Charlie Rose.  The only thing that brings authoritarian regimes to their senses is force.  Showing the Soviets that they could not possibly compete with us militarily is what toppled them from within.  The lesson China took from that was to keep their society closed, befriend the wandering useful idiots in the west, and offer up slave labor for western commercial enterprises.

Even with their central planning, massive monuments to government, public works projects that are the envy of Tom Friedman, and central planning, Red China is still a third world economy train wreck.

The Train Wreck That Is Red China

Taiwan vs. That Other China

Less Socialism Equals More Freedom and More Prosperity

A Mao Fan-boy

If you read and believe folks like Thomas L. Friedman, you would think that everybody in China now makes $40,000 per year and that their embrace of "Capitalism" done right brought them there.  Well, Friedman and his cronies are right, but not in the way that they think.  You must give them a little leeway.  They live in a world where Mao is a hero, "The Great Leap Forward" is viewed as a stroke of brilliance gone awry, "The Cultural Revolution" is a great awakening, and Chiang Kai-shek was the fly in the ointment who prevented a 'superior' International Socialist Utopia from emerging in Asia.

For many Chinese and other normal folk, the real government of China is in Taipei, Taiwan. Some hope that any day now the Maoist writers in the West will realize that true freedoms and commerce exist in Taiwan and the wise thing to do is spread that wiseness to the mainland.  Some of us are not holding our breath.  After all, the per capita GDP of Taiwan was $37,209 in 2010, with 1% inflation and less than 1.2% of the population below the poverty line.

A Maoist

Now, the China that Friedman and his lemmings think that they are talking about has some not so shining stats: GDP (PPP) $8,289, 4.1% unemployment and almost 3% below the poverty line.  The last two statistics are questionable.

The People's 'Republic' of China just began allowing private property in 2007 and the state still owns all land.  Proponents of the PRC's recent growth cite the adoption of "capitalism" in the same way that they throw other words around: without meaning or substance.  Sure, China has invited in corporations from the rest of the world and supplied slaves to work in the new factories as China becomes the biggest crony capitalist regime since Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.

Granted, Red China set some incredible records in the 20th century.  During Mao's "Great Leap Forward" Red China produced more unusable steel than all of the other nations of the world combined.  In the process, they destroyed forests (in the manner that American tree farms are falsely accused of) and starved tens of millions of people to death.

A Nationalist

In the mean time, that other China, Taiwan, endured a state of Martial Law, necessary to repel the Red Chinese military incursions that lasted well into the 1960s.  When the state of emergency eased, so did Martial Law, which was replaced by a democracy in the 1980s, that endures to this day.  Something key throughout the evolution of the Republic of China (Taiwan) was something known as the Taiwan Miracle.  This "miracle" was commerce, ownership of private property and a gold standard currency.  Taiwan 'suffered' the same "fate" as Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong.

A phrase I have heard a few times in the past from Socialists is "You are not more free, you just have more stuff."  In a tragic way, this backwards comment describes the current Red China perfectly.  It is a dictatorial regime without the simplest of freedoms, but the slaves have a bountiful choice in consumer goods.  George F. Will expressed some needed concern about this state of affairs on the Charlie Rose Show in 2008.  That a prosperous, market allocating, semi capitalistic economy and an unchanged oppressive regime is quite dangerous.

For some reason, to the likes of Friedman and others, Taiwan is invisible to them at best and the 'reason' for Red China's problems at worst.  It is as if Taiwan is the Israel of the Pacific for all of the failed Socialists to blame their problems.

Recalling George F. Will, Live

Back around 1990+/- a year or two, I had the pleasure of seeing the great Dr. George F. Will speak live to a college crowd.  I dearly wish I could find a transcript from that tour.  The whole speech was memorable and several passages were relevant for my current book project.  Full disclosure:  I am a huge George F. Will fan.

"There are more Communists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Russia today."  He used that saying on television and in the speech.  I am trying to find his exact words describing how he described the Communist phenomenon.  Quoting him directly, with a proper reference, is preferable to paraphrasing.  So, I will paraphrase here and use this in the draft, hoping to replace it with a passage from a transcript:

There are many books in libraries around the world on the process to turn any society into a Communist society.  Indeed, a command directed system is an efficient way to turn an agrarian society into an industrial society.  However, there is not one book in existence on how to go the other direction, from a Communist system to a free market system.

Professor Will was both correct and incorrect in his estimation of available 'instruction manuals' for the free market.  Hayek, Rothbard, Friedman, Williams and Soewell all had great bodies of work at that time for getting government out of economic micromanagement.  The entire Libertarian movement is based on this notion.

One book that may not exist, and the world would be better off if it does not exist, is a manual to transform a Soviet system to a Liberal Democratic system, which is not much more than rearranging deck chairs and turning government assets into private assets for the pleasure of government.

He made a great showing on Charlie Rose a few years later with a good perspective on 21st century China:


Will shines in spite of the noise coming from the interviewer: