It was supposed to turn the Chinese into capitalists, and hence into potential allies. They're not communists any more, that's for sure, of course, they're not Western "liberal-democrats", either, which is why the West is in this whole conundrum.
Yeah, they played the West. The Communists got what they wanted (technology transfer), while keeping everything firmly under their control.
> I think China is actually demonstrating the fallacy of our idea that as a country develops it has to become a liberal democracy.
I don't think that's necessarily been proven a fallacy, the idea that liberalizing China would be simple and automatic certainly has been. The Chinese Communists aren't stupid: they've been carefully studying things like post-Communist Russia and the Arab Spring in order to avoid mistakes that might cause them to lose power. If China liberalizes, it will take a unique path that the Communists probably couldn't see.
I think the hopes were that China, once prospering in the global marketplace as a big player, would turn democratic. Over the last decade or two, we've come to realize the opposite has happened and the Western powers are adjusting.
Of course Western companies have made a lot of money off China with cheap labor and massive marketplace, so it wasn't entirely an altruistic endeavour.
Got it wrong? That's over-stating it quite a bit. Sure, that was the spin to get a toe hold, but ultimately the West's Capitalists saw massive opportunity, and nothing else.
Long to short, 30 - 40 years ago the media ALWAYS referred to China as Communist China. I can't remember the last time I heard that phrase. That's no accident.
Perhaps the politicians got it wrong. That's no surprise. They're (pardon the editorial) just stupid hand puppets anyway. But the elite capitalist? They were spot on. Just look at how the income inequality gap has widened. Again, no accident.
p.s. If anything, China suckered the West, believing it could influence the West's structure, more than the other way around.
No, until a couple years ago there was the expectation (hope?) China would become more liberal and closer to the West. A lot of economic concessions were made with that expectation in mind. Turns out we were wrong.
What was supposed to happen is openness to the West was supposed to move China away from dictatorial government. Approximately nobody cared whether China got rich or stayed poor; the goal was that China become free.
Probably to counter the totalitarian communists by turning them into freedom-loving capitalists or something. But it so happens that freedom can't be bought so we ended up with a totalitarian capitalist (AKA fascist) China.
The original goal was to divide and conquer the communist block (taking advantage of the sino-soviet split/wedge).
After the collapse of the USSR western companies and governments saw shiny ($) ($) in their eyes and could not help themselves. They thought giving up some intellectual property rights was worth getting a leg up on their other western competition because they thought they’d be able to fend off completion local to China as they presumed it would adopt western ideas (law, governance, etc.) despite history indicating otherwise.
I think the hopes were that China would benefit from trade and developed its own industries in a largely decentralized fashion (which happened). What didn’t follow was the assumption that this would cause them to become less authoritarian and more democratic.
Quite the gamble in the end; I don’t think those responsible over many decades realized what the consequences would be for getting this wrong. They all were championed by equally blind stock-market driven CEOs who wanted cheap labor, low/no environmental laws, no unions, a helpful and competent government, and new large markets who didn’t already have lots of stuff.
The US has gotten terrible at long term vision, while China has nothing but long term vision and long term memory.
The Chinese Communists used capitalism to get their country filthy rich while the supposedly "capitalist" west turned into a bunch of socialist dictatorships with high taxes and regulations.
Nothing surprising, if not the fact the western citizens allowed it to happen without revolting. Most likely they were glued to their phones while it happened.
I thought Chinese economic gain was due to the US government opening up relations with the Chinese government as a way of countering the Soviet Union. I'm not sure how much credit the Chinese Communist Party deserves for that.
China's not been communist in anything but name for a loong time. Nonetheless, it serves as a nice testing ground for policies eventually implemented by the West as well, sadly.
Back during the 'most favored nation' debates of the late 1990's it was argued that capitalism would turn China democratic. Obviously that argument turned out to be wrong.
This isn't driven by Communist ideology; if it were, we'd see a return back to Mao's vaguely Marxist policy, not a continuation of Deng; the Chinese are fine with capitalists.
This is not at all what the article is about? I do not think the Chinese are as unified as they are made out to be.
I think it's a joke to pretend that China is some ideal to aspire to, but sadly, I think the West will have to use similar tactics to continue to compete.
I believe a big part of China's current strength is by actively exploiting the weaknesses of Capitalism. For a long time, they've exploited the race-to-the-bottom of pricing, and they've gotten rich from it, partially through the sacrifice of their people.
Now that China has that new-found wealth (the country and the people), they are using that wealth to exploit Capitalism in a different way. Since Capitalism is inherently less directed and "top-down", now they're able to manipulate industries by being a big buyer instead. This is inherently part of Capitalism, but since the Chinese government has a more direct control of their economy, they're able to leverage a huge amount of economic power in a more directed fashion.
You want to sell that product here? Well, you're going to have to do it our way. Western governments will have to do the same, putting restrictions on what compromises Western companies are allowed to make, and putting restrictions on Chinese products as well.
One of the selling points for economic normalization of Chinese relations in the 80s and 90s was the belief that free markets would inevitably lead to our values of democracy and civil liberties overpowering the communist values. No one ever considered the opposite effect, that the emmeshed markets would give communists power to push their values on western companies.
I'm no friend of the Chinese Party/bureaucracy/plutocracy but it seems like someone looking at the West with even slightly jaundiced eyes would see just another kind of machinery for allowing a tiny minority to accumulate wealth.
China's "sell" is you should trade free expression for a bit of sanity and stability. I'm not a fan of that approach but again, the West currently isn't doing a good selling it's approach.
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