> In July, 2001, Chinese economist Han Deqiang visited the European Parliament
> at the invitation of the Green Group, to participate in a workshop entitled
> China’s Accession to the WTO: Alternative Voices. What follows is an edited
> version of his speech.
>
> China's average industrial concentration is too low to compete with foreign
> counterparts. The level of equipment is more backward, which results in more
> energy consumption per unit product, lower quality and performance.
> Furthermore, China's enterprises are seriously short of capital in general
> and have no ability to improve technology and market share rapidly.
China does, however, have a feisty developmental state, which has kept its currency nonconvertible, keeps tabs on financial flows, and invests in R&D, infrastructure and education; Hong Kong and Taiwan have proved to be reliable sources of long-term capital. As long as the state keeps a tight rein on the financial sector, and doesn't do anything harebrained -- e.g. the way South Korea deregged the financial sector in the early 1990s and let the chaebol speculators get completely out of hand -- China has a fighting chance.
> It is very interesting that under the surface of rejecting the western model
> China learnt everything from America, putting it into practice with the
> reform and opening up policy. American neoliberalism became Chinese fashion;
> Nasdaq upswings, the second board stock market, became the hot topic of
> China's capital market; American communication industry opens to
> competition, and China's communication industry becomes eager to be
> dismantled. This kind of model thinking plays an important role in
> persuading the public.
China's telecom sector is actually one of the brightest stars of the Chinese economy; the state has applied many of Taiwan's strategies, by keeping foreign competition at bay, and quietly building up its technological and industrial base. Still, it's quite true that US neoliberalism was a lodestar for the marketeers -- ideology really is one of America's last export-monopolies -- and that global processes of capitalization and proletarianization are occurring in China.
> With the explosion of the Asian financial crisis, with the rapid growth of
> the unemployed population and the deterioration of the countryside, with
> more state-owned enterprises going bankrupt, public feeling against
> market-oriented reform strengthened. In economic academia, critiques of the
> IMF and the Washington consensus from several American economists such as
> Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman became clearly influential. The translation
> of a German book on the way in which globalisation undermines democracy and
> welfare gave a shock to intellectuals both inside and outside academia.
> Suffice it to say that anti-neoliberalism forces are developing quickly.
Those forces will have to organize themselves on an East Asia level, though, to keep the neoliberal wolves at bay. That means that historic enemies like China and Japan, and more recent enemies such as Vietnam and China, will have to forge some sort of collective economic structure a la the European Union, giving the poorer countries access to Japanese capital and technology and making sure the rich countries (not to mention the super-keiretsu) live up to their global social responsibilities. The JBIC might become the linchpin of such a strategy; I suspect that East Asia is taking careful notes of the EU. Keiretsu capitalism may yet breed keitai socialism.
-- Dennis