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The recent workshop on China organised by the China Workshop (poster and programme_05062018) in London asked all the questions, even if it did not resolve them. What are the reasons for China’s phenomenal growth in the last 40 years and can it last? What is the nature of the Chinese economy: is it capitalist or not? What explains under Xi the new emphasis on studying Marxism in China’s universities? Is China’s export and investment expansion abroad imperialist or not? How will the trade war between the US and China pan out?
In the opening session, Dr Dic Lo, Reader in Economics at SOAS, London University and Zhu Andong, Vice Dean at the School of Marxism at Tsinghua University, Beijing (representing a delegation from various Chinese universities) were at pains to argue that China is misrepresented in the so-called West and not just through mainstream capitalist views but also from the left.
All the talk from the left, said Lo, was about political repression, labour exploitation, inequality or Chinese ‘imperialism’. But then how to explain China’s phenomenal growth and success in taking over 850m people out of poverty (as defined by the World Bank) and reaching national output second only to the US. China doubles real living standards every 13 years. It now takes the US and Europe 50 years and Japan even longer. Is this just fake or illusory and if not, how can this ‘capitalist’ and ‘imperialist’ economy have bucked the trend, when the record of all other capitalist economies (advanced or ‘emerging’) can show no such success? “How can it be possible, in our times, for a late-developing nation to move up the world political-economic hierarchy to become imperialist? Can anyone on the left answer this question?”
Dic Lo criticised the majority view of left political economists that China could be characterised as “neoliberal capitalist”, the so-called “Foxconn Model” of labour exploitation. This view was pioneered by Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, made most influential by David Harvey, most systematic by Minqi Li; and politically correct by Pun Ngai. But were they right?
full: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/china-workshop-challenging-the-misconceptions/
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