ISMAIL:
One of the main points that Stiglitz always emphasised during his time at the World Bank is that of "sequencing"; in Russia, his argument went,
they privatised/marketised before
"democratising" with respect to creating a more equal society, and in China they democratised before privatising.
JOHN:
If this is an accurate portrayal of Stiglitz' argument, then it's totally at odds with the CPC's own doctrine of "sequencing" -- market reforms first, gradual democratization second.
The lesson that the Deng and Li factions in the CPC took away from Tiananmen was that Gorbachevism was a mortal threat, later confirmed by the Eastern European "revolutions" and
finally the dissolution of the USSR itself. These events confirmed to the CPC that its sequence of establishing SEZ's, breaking up the communes, and making the SOE's rely on retained
earnings and bank loans for investment funds -- BEFORE implementing bourgeois freedoms -- was the correct one. After all, Deng's preferred model was Singapore (or South Korea or
Taiwan before the mid-1980's), an authoritarian developmental state. The only thing this had to do with an "equal society" was a temporary reduction in the rural-urban income gap,
a condition which did not last through the 1990's.
If this indeed is Stiglitz's comparative description, it is more than a little off. Something tells me it isn't.