> Hm. Would you say more? I am very interested in this development of
> china's very competent industrialization as stacked against the rest of
> the developing world's experience these past few decades. But as I know
> nothing previously about the topic, and come at it without having been on
> any side of the various maoism/china debates of the past generation of the
> left, I find myself without even the most rudimentary assessmnt of china
> and, I guess, vietnam.
China and Vietnam borrowed and refined the developmental state strategies invented by post-WW II continental Europe, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. These countries invested heavily in education and technology, created welfare states or ensured egalitarian distributions of wealth, and most of all, disciplined capital. The state wasn't the executive committee of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie was more like the executive committee of the state. China right now is rolling out a huge national broadband system, and owns major stakes in most of its leading industries. Another example: one third of the German banking system is publicly owned; Germany's powerful unions put a check on what capital can do. Germany's government-mandated renewable energy boom is another fine example of what developmental states can do.
Fascinatingly, this model has spread to Russia, Eastern Europe and Venezuela -- all places horribly plundered by neoliberalism. That's one of the reasons they're bouncing back so fast.
-- DRR