>
> On Apr 11, 2007, at 2:50 PM, Jim Straub wrote:
>
> > Would it be invitation to oversimplification if I asked if people
> > on this list who hold a particular assessment or opinion of China,
> > to put theirs forth in brief if possible? The only large
> > developing nation to make a quantum leap into successful mass
> > industrialization, under the auspices of a nominally communist
> > government, but I don't really know what the scope of opinion is on
> > what their government is doing from the left. Degraded workers
> > state? Worst of both worlds, stanlinst neoliberalism? Hope-
> > inspiring developmentalist rising power?
>
> All of the above. Successful development at an often high social
> cost, and at very high environmental cost. A paradox of evaluating
> China's development from the left is that while polarization has
> increased enormously, average incomes have also increased, though not
> as much as those of the gazillionaires. Also, big diff between urban
> and rural; rural China has done rather badly over the last 20 years,
> while a lot of the urban working class has done better.
>
> Doug
Also it would be an error, I think, to characterise Chinese development as neoliberal. Internal Chinese development hardly follows the neoliberal policy paradigm. And if exporting is all it takes to win the title then both German and Japanese development (and Sweden for that matter) would have to be characterized as neoliberal since the second world war! This would make the descriptor neoliberal void of any content.
Travis