China is not growing a hothouse developmental state. What's happening IMHO is that a class of owners/controllers - itself a product of the 'hothouse' of the reforms of the past 20 years - is busily dismantling the *previous* developmental state that brought about the most incredible increases in human longevity, literacy, poverty reduction, etc., even experienced among a population as large as China's. All of the 'positive' and 'progressive' things about developmental states - fantastic rates of industrial growth, lifetime employment, a corporatist labor regime, control over financial capital - were all realized under the CCP but are now being dismantled. The whole tenor of the reforms has been to get everything possible *outside* of state control, and this continues to this day. Millions continue to be laid off from SOEs every year, their assets are sold off to private investors, big Wall Street firms are involved in the disposal of billions in 'bad assets', and even the state banks now want to list on overseas markets! Furthermore, the inviolable right of private property has now been enshrined into the constitution with an amendment, and put on equal footing with state property. This is not the work of a social formation in the midst of forging a developmental state, but its opposite.
Taiwan's developmental state has also been hollowed out from within and without.
Also, inequality in China is much worse than in the US, and rapidly getting worse.
I never said that East Asia was the *most* rapacious or brutal or ecologically toxic regime ever either! I said it was the most rational and efficient form we know of (whether its socialist or capitalist version).
I agree that we can't blindly accept the neo-liberal line, but we have to also critically look at the neo-dirigste line too.
Cheers,
Jonathan
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