Ross Clark
Already a subscriber? Log in
Growth in China has not been achieved by keeping people in orange jumpsuits. Economically, China is no longer a communist country. Big business has been warmly embraced, farms decollectivised, property rights created and private businesses encouraged. Property speculators have been encouraged to make fortunes, which they can then spend in Western-style shopping malls or on sports cars to buzz up and down the country’s growing motorways.
China has created a political model such as the world has not seen before, or certainly not on this scale: economic liberalism combined with social authoritarianism. It has had its perestroika without much in the way of glasnost. Economic success has not been achieved in spite of the lack of freedom. On the contrary, China has in some cases used authoritarianism to promote economic growth. There is a direct link between the revival of the Chinese economy this year and the presence of greater government control. It has been easier for China to lean on the banks and force them to lend money; something which has frustrated Alistair Darling for the past year. With little regard for the humans who lie within the path of great economic projects or suffer pollution from them it has been easier and quicker for the Chinese to embark upon Keynesian job-creation schemes.
Big business, while at odds with communist ideology, is a natural bedfellow of authoritarian government: both have an enemy in the little guy and in dissatisfied customers. How much some Western corporations might sometimes wish they could call on government to suppress consumer campaigns. There would be great rejoicing in British boardrooms if the likes of Esther Rantzen and the editor of Which? could be consigned to black jails. What the Chinese communists have done is to contract-out the bits of communism which did not work well — the management of production — but to retain the bit which worked all too well: the management of the people through fear. People have been turned from happy workers into happy consumers.
The question, given the economic success of the Chinese model, is what happens next. Does Chinese wealth and personal aspiration eventually erode authoritarianism, or do Western governments, worried about their economies being surpassed by China, start imitating Chinese social authoritarianism in order to promote economic growth?
My worry is that the latter is already happening. It must be tempting for a Western government minister, admiring the ease with which the Chinese have bulldozed their new motorways through Beijing, to wish for powers to suppress opposition to infrastructure projects. So was that the inspiration behind the creeping use of anti-terror laws in Britain to suppress climate protestors and the instigation of the new Infrastructure Planning Commission, which will do away with public inquiries for the likes of Heathrow’s proposed third runway? Labour has been astonishingly relaxed over the use of British libel laws by big business wanting to crush its critics. There is already growing reluctance of the media to investigate private businesses as its profits head in one direction and the cost of fighting libel suits heads in the other. If no effort is made to defend free speech, we will end up with a Chinese-style system, in which pesky opponents of industrial advance are rapidly put down.
I suspect that the Chinese model will prove unsustainable. Wealth is mobile, and it isn’t going to want to stay in a country which continues to oppress its people. There is only so much attraction to material goods; the novelty of a new car will fade, but the appeal of freedom will surely grow. And in spite of its boot camps, China is steadily losing its battle against the internet: information is certainly getting out even if what gets in is still heavily censored.
Moreover, there are growing warnings that the Chinese economy may be in the final stages of a bubble created by cheap money and low interest rates, possibly even bigger and more damaging than the one which brought Western economies low after it burst in 2007. Chinese cities are even fuller of empty apartment blocks than ours: the results of a mad speculative boom which is bound to end in tears sooner or later.
In the meantime, though, Westerners will have to find some way of defending their liberties other than by claiming that freedom is a necessary condition for economic success. As China has proved, it isn’t. We have to be wary of governments and big businesses who look at the Chinese model and use its success to justify a dash of oppression against what they see as the profit-sapping enemies of progress.
Also in World
Also by Ross Clark
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in