So Much For Capitalism

摘要

For two decades, in the 1980s and 1990s, China pushed forward a series of economic reforms that came at a vast cost, exceeded only by their vaster rewards. Now, as the financial crisis sweeps across the world, those reforms are going into reverse. It is a sign of how hard governments find it to shake off the habit of ownership.rnWhen China began to extract production from the hands of the state, big firms were broken up, reconfigured or closed. Ever so slowly, the government began to privatise its largest industries, selling slices of companies in public offerings on foreign exchanges, and making them adopt at least the pretence of modern governance.rnHow far China has gone in transforming its economy is a matter of debate. Un-arguably, it remains a place where companies face heavy direct and indirect state control. But in places there has also been dramatic change, and China has prospered as broader economic freedoms contributed to growth. Outright criticism of the shift was muted, even among bureaucrats opposed to the new approach. But over the past year this reticence has begun to wane, as the crisis in the West has led to intense criticism of capitalism-and one domestic industry after another has, as in the West, gone back to the government for support.